lease

Support for a lease of the Pennsylvania Turnpike has surfaced with the announcement that two influential politicians are sponsoring enabling legislation - House Appropriations Chairman Dwight Evans, a long serving Democrat representative from the northern part of Philadlephia, and Republican Appropriations Committee member Steve Cappelli, who represents the Williamsport area just north of I-80.

Pennsylvania Governor Rendell has accepted that the state legislature won't consider enabling legislation in time to accept the legally binding Abertis-Citi bid of $12.8b which expires June 20. He told reporters yesterday: "There isn't enough time (this month) to have the General Assembly review the Turnpike lease."

Jordi Graells managing director of Abertis the majority equity holder in the Abertis-Cit partnership selected by the Governor of Pennsylvania for a longterm lease of the Pennsylvania Turnpike said today they will be moving very cautiously on all-electronic tolling. At a minimum he said it would be ten years.

All-electronic tolling (AET), also called 'cashless' would eliminate all toll collector jobs.

US secretary of transportation Mary Peters has expressed enthusiasm for the $12.8b Abertis/Citi proposal for a longterm lease concession of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It appears on Fast Lane", the official Blog of the Secretary: see http://fastlane.dot.gov/, scroll down to May 20:

Peters writes, and we reproduce it in full:

"Pennsylvania Receives Largest Ever Transportation Private Investment Bid

The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch service is reporting that groups led by Abertis and Goldman Sachs are the only two remaining bidders for the 75 year lease concession on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The third group comprising Cintra and Macquarie - two of the most aggressive bidders in past concession procurements - are out.

Cintra and Macquarie one of the three known teams bidding for the Pennsylvania Turnpike lease have dropped out of the bidding. They have told their bankers they are free to work with the remaining bidders on the best and final offers due this Friday.

Cintra and Macquarie said they weren't prepared to increase their bid, so they won't be making any Best And Final Offer.

"They told us the numbers didn't cut it," one of the bankers said.

There's talk that Macquarie is not in the bidding for the lease concession on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Two sources have said TOLLROADSnews was wrong in including Macquarie among the active bidders.

So far as we can establish we are right. We're assured Macquarie is still in, though no one is talking for attribution.

Pennsylvania received bids for the 75 year Turnpike lease concession last Friday but there was a bid within 10% of the top bid triggering another week for best and final offers, Governor Ed Rendell said at a new conference this morning.

The Wall Street Journal reports that two bids have been submitted for the 75 year toll concession on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It says the bids have been made by Abertis and a Cintra-Macquarie partnership.

We don't have any confirmation or refutation of this report.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission's implicit bid in the state's lease concession procurement is $5.3b, versus a likely top bid by private sector bidders in the range $9b to $13b. The $5.3b implicit bid is cited by the Commonwealth Foundation thinktank in Harrisburg today.