Infrastructure

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority's bond ratings may be too high, according to a report released by Bank of America-Merrill Lynch yesterday.

CHICAGO - St. Louis' Metro has settled on restructuring plans for two pieces of its debt as the transit agency seeks to chip away at a series of operational and capital challenges that prompted a two-notch downgrade earlier this year and drove steep service cuts.

DALLAS - The North Texas Tollway Authority expects to issue $620 million of toll revenue bonds and $740 million in other forms of debt to design and build a new toll highway in western Dallas County, officials said.

WASHINGTON — Arlington County, Va., is suing state and U.S. transportation officials to stop a high-occupancy toll lanes project on Interstate 395 and I-95, alleging an "arbitrary and capricious" failure to do adequate research on environmental and other impacts.

Bills recently introduced by key members in the House and Senate would set up a major deterrent to banks and other equity investors seeking to force issuers to fork over termination payments for lease-back deals. The prospect of such deal terminations threatened to jeopardize the fiscal conditions of transit agencies and electrical utilities last year after credit rating downgradings of insurers on the deals.

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority is no longer on watch list for a possible downgrade of its transportation revenue bonds, Moody's Investors Service said yesterday. The rating agency affirmed the credit's A2 rating and said its outlook was stable.

CHICAGO - In a larger version of its spring general obligation sale, Wisconsin is planning to competitively sell $423 million of new-money GO bonds on Wednesday in a deal divided into two series with bidders able to submit tax-exempt and taxable bids on the later maturities.

DALLAS - The Texas Transportation Commission will issue the state's largest tranche of Build America Bonds to date, with $1.1 billion of the taxable debt scheduled to price on Wednesday.

DALLAS - Fitch Ratings has downgraded $120 million of taxable revenue bonds sold in 2001 for a car rental facility at Houston Intercontinental Airport. Citing declining coverage ratios, Fitch cut the rating on the debt one notch to A-minus from A.

An arbitration panel last week awarded unionized transit workers at New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority an 11.3% raise over three years. The raises for Transit Workers Union Local 100 workers will cost an estimated $350 million, the MTA said.