Infrastructure

WASHINGTON — A group of Senate Democrats sent a letter yesterday to Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., urging them to add billions of dollars for transportation-related investments to the draft climate and energy bill the two recently unveiled.

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority wants ideas on how to create a new credit with revenue streams enacted in last year’s state bailout, according to its first request for proposals for underwriting services in five years.

BRADENTON, Fla. — The Kentucky Turnpike Authority plans to begin pricing $334.2 million of new-money and refunding revenue bonds Monday for in-state retail investors. Final pricing is expected Tuesday.

The Georgia Transportation Investment Act of 2010, signed into law by Gov. Sonny Perdue last week, seeks to make the biggest investment in state transportation infrastructure in the last 50 years.

CHICAGO — The Illinois State Toll Highway Authority will enter the market as soon as tomorrow with roughly $400 million of fixed-rate refunding bonds, the first of two sales planned this year to restructure a chunk of the agency’s synthetically fixed-rate debt to reduce bank and liquidity risks.

Puerto Rico will refund prior Puerto Rico Highways and Transportation Authority debt next week before heading to market with a combined new-money and refunding sales-tax bond deal.

DALLAS — The Louisiana House Ways and Means Committee has backed an 11-point outline of how the state should finance transportation projects.

Demand for federal high-speed rail funds has once again exceeded supply, as the Federal Railroad Administration confirmed this week that 23 states flooded it with a$137 million of applications for proposed projects.

The global airline industry is expected to post a large profit this year and see a significant increase in passenger traffic, an airline trade group announced yesterday.

Heavy-load road traffic associated with natural gas drilling in northwest Arkansas is causing highway damage that will cost much more to repair than the state highway department is receiving from the severance tax on gas.