Infrastructure

WASHINGTON - Debt service coverage on highway user revenue fund bonds should remain more than sufficient, and the ratings of those bonds should remain stable, even as gasoline prices have spiked to record highs, causing people to drive fewer miles over the past year, a Standard & Poor's report said.

New Jersey officials continue to spar over whether revenue from potential toll increases can be used to help finance a new passenger rail tunnel that will run between Newark and Manhattan.

CHICAGO - The St. Louis Metro transit agency failed to adequately control the costs of its Cross County Extension project or ensure the viability of the developers' proposed design, and issued flawed bid documents, contributing to $136 million in cost overruns on the $550 million project, according to a Missouri audit released this week.

DALLAS - A year after agreeing to the largest debt issuance in its history, the North Texas Tollway Authority is rethinking plans to expand its system amid unprecedented market turmoil.

The Miami-Dade County Budget and Finance Committee last week recommended that elected officials authorize the issuance of up to $1.9 billion of aviation revenue bonds to be sold in one or more series.

CHICAGO - While the Regional Transportation Authority's service boards in Illinois are benefiting from an increase in the sales tax rate won earlier this year, the agency warned this week that they face $190 million in additional fiscal "pressures" as they craft their 2009 budget amid rising fuel and maintenance costs, a drop in state funding, and sluggish sales tax collections.

The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority will not take immediate action on five swaptions involving a Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. subsidiary while, at the same time, officials continue to evaluate underwriting proposals on an $800 million refunding deal.

State and regional transportation agencies will turn increasingly to public-private partnerships as a financing mechanism for highway, bridge, and transit projects as federal grants grow less certain in the near future, and as Congress searches for stable funding for the long-term, market participants and officials said this week at a P3 conference here.

Gary Ridley, director of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, has praised Congress for providing an $8 billion solution to the solvency crisis facing the federal Highway Trust Fund.

The long-stalled Moynihan Station project in Manhattan needs to increase transportation capacity by expanding the number of tracks and platforms, New York Gov. David Paterson said last week.