Transcription:
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio for the authoritative record.
Caitlin Devitt (00:04):
Hello and welcome to another Bond Buyer podcast. I'm Caitlin Devitt, senior Infrastructure Reporter for the Bomb Buyer. My guest today is Bob Poole, director of Transportation Policy at Reason Foundation, who I'm very happy to have join me for conversation about public private partnerships in the transportation space. Mr. Poole is a key figure and has long been a key figure in the development of P3 policy and the P3 market here in the US. He's acted as an advisor for several presidential administrations on infrastructure and transportation as well as to federal agencies and states like Texas and Florida and California, where he helped shape their toll road and P three legislation. As I learned when I was looking over his biography, his 1988 policy paper proposing privately financed toll lanes to ease traffic congestion led to California's landmark private tollway law AB 680. And since then more than 20 other states and the federal government have enacted similar P three legislation. Mr. Poole also publishes a very newsy monthly report called the Surface Transportation Newsletter. Welcome Bob.
Robert Poole (01:12):
Thanks Caitlin. It's good to be here today.
Caitlin Devitt (01:15):
So let's start with a deal pipeline. How active is the P3 transportation space right now? What deals are you seeing coming down the pike this year or future years?
Robert Poole (01:23):
Well, I've just been compiling this for a report that I do every spring and it's a big pipeline this year. I have eight projects that they may not all reach financial close this year, but they are going to be green-lighted. I'm pretty certain Louisiana's I 10 Calcasieu River Bridge expects financial close by April. The legislative committee approved the deal last month after a struggle. Bright Line West looks close to getting its financing altogether. I don't know if they will have a formal financial close, but they have private activity bonds and other grants. New York City MTA project for the subway where they're going to finally upgrade a number of the subway stations with elevators and or escalators. That deal has closed and we'll get underway for sure this year. Georgia DOT is in the final procurement stages for the first of their revenue risk P3 projects for State Route 400, which feeds into the perimeter or all the way around the Atlanta area.
(02:34):
They have two further revenue risk p threes, but they're not going to get that far this year. They will probably go start bidding on them next year. North Carolina, DOT is seriously considering another P three to add express toll lanes on the southern portion of I 77 between Charlotte and the South Carolina line. Be similar to the ones north of Charlotte that have worked very well. The Illinois DOT got legislative approval to do a revised P three law last year and permission to go ahead and do express toll lanes on I 55, which would be the first such project in Illinois. Adding another state to the roster, Texas, sorry, Tennessee DOT last year got choice lanes legislation including P three, presumably revenue risk P3s. They've hired HNTB to start analyzing the first few projects and I don't think we'll get to the point of financing it even though they haven't even got the procurement process set up yet.
(03:40):
But that's a very live process with strong legislative support in Tennessee and Virginia. DOT which has done is probably has such more expressed toll lanes projects in particular in operation as p threes than any other state. They have two more, both dealing with the I 4 95 capital beltway. One would be the northward extension to include rebuilding the American Legion Bridge across the Potomac into Maryland and the other going east to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. That's the other piece of Virginia's I 4 95 that it does not already have expressed lanes. So that's a lot. That's eight big projects. They won't all reach financial close this year. One or two may not actually get into a procurement process, but that's more than we've seen in several recent years. We have a couple of more speculative process for the coming a few years from now. Louisiana has a big Mississippi River Bridge about a $2 billion project in the Baton Rouge area to relieve a very serious congestion where they have one bridge across from the capital city.
(04:48):
Very long shot possibility would be Texas DOT, getting special permission from the legislature to do the central Austin rebuild of I 35 with expressed toll lanes instead of unpriced managed lanes, meaning HOV lanes, which would not do anything. It doesn't add any revenue and it doesn't reduce congestion. But the legislature for years has forbidden them to do any further P3 projects and any projects, new projects that have tolls that would require a city council member has proposed that and the city management is looking at feasibility. The other one that I'm hearing talk about here in Florida is to do add to the express lanes on I-4, which now encompasses 20 miles in operation through Orlando, but there's a lot of congestion on both ends, the northeastern end and the southwestern end. So there's a lot of talk but nothing in print yet about doing more p threes for that expansion. So a lot of stuff going on,
Caitlin Devitt (05:58):
Yeah, that's a fat pipeline. Those are some interesting deals and we'll see some bonds probably coming for some of those deals. I mean, I know Brightline West and they also have the partner project in Florida, the Brightline in Florida, which is going to be doing some refinancing.
Robert Poole (06:13):
I just rode that last month to Orlando.
Caitlin Devitt (06:16):
Oh, how was it?
Robert Poole (06:17):
It was great. The only problem was coming back, the train hit a vehicle that ran around the gate, happens again and again, and we were delayed for about an hour and a quarter while the crime scene investigation held everything up and had to photograph everything and so forth. It was a complete deliberate going around the gates as almost all of these are. So
Caitlin Devitt (06:42):
Yeah, they have a high accident rate. They got to get, I mean, whether it's their fault or not, I mean I don't know if it's the speed or what it is, but I think they have, but definitely interesting project and one that we pay attention to closely here in the municipal bond world. So you talked about when you were talking about some of those projects, like with Austin now trying to lobby the state, a lot of the P3 landscape is really sort of shaped by the states and by state legislation. So tell me a little bit about what, and you also mentioned Tennessee, if this question makes sense, which states are advancing P3 policy right now and maybe which ones aren't, if there are some that are not.
Robert Poole (07:25):
Yeah, Tennessee has the strongest legislative support, I think, and it was overwhelming and somewhat bipartisan, which is always a good sign as Virginia's has been. So I think they're in a very good position moving forward. The proof will be in the pudding if they actually get the first project defined, select bitter and can make the numbers work to be able to issue revenue bonds for it. Virginia remains strong with the bipartisan and support. It's been going back and forth between governors of both parties and they're still doing the projects and they're working out well. North Carolina considering it's only its second P3, which would be also its second express toll lane project, since the first one has worked very well, despite there was a bitter battle over getting it approved and lots of anti toll and anti outsider company sort of thing and a lot of contentions that it would not work, would not relieve congestion.
(08:28):
But it's done exactly that just as we've seen all around the country. So I think it's going to be easier to get the second one approved and I would bet that will happen. Also, they don't really have the money in their budget to do it out of regular state revenues. Louisiana, given the big $2.1 billion I-10 bridge getting approval, the new governor, which was a change of party, is positively disposed to this. I think that makes it looking good for the Mississippi River Bridge probably in a couple of years to be able to be done as a revenue risk. P3 now, not a hundred percent revenue finance, the I-10 one is only about half rest is partly federal grants and state money and so forth. But the point is to get the revenue based financing, have the customer provider relationship, that means for the long-term, the company has a legally enforceable through the long-term agreement obligation to be serving the customers well and that you get that stronger with the revenue risk.
(09:35):
And Illinois, I was surprised to see the legislature actually approve what looks like a good P three law that includes allowing unsolicited proposals to IDOT and to also endorse the first express toll lane project where they desperately need the congestion relief. That's very, and it opens up another state that we haven't seen any of this action in before. So that's where I see the positives, the negatives, California and Maryland, you have environmental groups that really don't want to see any more highway capacity and they were very strong in killing the Maryland, which could have been up to a $9 billion project for the express lanes, I think it was or not. No, whatever the I 10 is go up to the northwest and on the Maryland portion of the Capitol beltway and that looks very dead unfortunately. And I don't see, the only P3 they've done is a light rail transit project, which the original team had big problems with right of way and other things, plus some environmental and NIMBY opposition and the original team got replaced and they've had to do back in its second procurement and they're getting underway.
(11:01):
They're still committed to doing it, but because that's transited doesn't get the same amount of environmental opposition as a highway expansion. And California seems to have a policy now of not adding any new highway capacity. So I don't think they're going to have a political climate that favors P3s, that adds highway capacity. And of all places Florida, which has more toll miles than any other state according to federal highway statistics, there continues to be populist anti toll sentiment in the Miami area only in Miami area. And it has strong legislative representation in Tallahassee and that has tried to basically destroy the Miami-Dade Expressway authority as you probably have covered in Bond Buyer. And they have gotten at least one expressed toll lane project killed that was actually about to open, and they got a legislative compromise to allow only one of the two lanes to open.
(12:11):
This is at the day of the ribbon cutting. So it's bizarre that you have that in a state that has used the total financing so much to cope with the growth that just as Texas was doing for a number of years, and Tennessee is now planning to do because it's rapid growth, but it's a bizarre isolated thing. And I don't think, we don't in Florida have a revenue risk P3s, we have wholly used availability payment one. Several have had tolls in them, but paid to the state, not to the developer operator. So we really need revenue risk P3 legislation and there's going to be an attempt in the next year, probably not this current session, but I talked to a number of people who were working to develop a case for this. I've actually seen draft legislative proposal and commented on it, so that I hope will get within the next year in Florida because Florida like several other states, puts the liability of a 30 or 35 year stream of availability payments onto the state's balance sheet. And they limit that just like they have debt limits, they're not in a position to do several billion worth of additional availability payment p threes while they have the existing liabilities. So that's where we are
Caitlin Devitt (13:36):
As that shows these projects are really political, just that Maryland project alone, which when it was a P3 was when they were going to do those, that expansion, which I think was going to be one of the biggest in the country, like you said, about $9 billion. And that was a signature project by Governor Hogan who just announced he's running for Senate. And so I guess I'm just wondering, is there anything that, I mean maybe it's so project and deal oriented that it's not, but is there anything that proponents or supporters of this can do to sort of mitigate some of the political opposition?
Robert Poole (14:16):
Right. Yeah, I mean there's several different kinds of political opposition. I mean, one is anti toing sentiment per se, and that's probably going to arise to some degree almost anywhere. And I think part of the reason for that is that Congress in particular has by continuing to have grant programs paid for out of general revenues rather than fuel tax as a user pay. Third thing disguises the cost, the true cost of big new infrastructure projects, highway projects, because people, they don't feel see the real costs. And so when they see that a new bridge is going to cost $2 billion, oh my God, we can't do that. That would be completely unaffordable. But here you have Congress, here's the Blatnick Bridge, just got a $1 billion dollar federal grant between Minnesota and Wisconsin, and you see a thing like that and say, well, why should we go through all the struggles and fighting over total financing when there's free big bucks available from Washington?
(15:23):
So I think that as long as there it, it's bad. Now with the IIJA, that's a lot more free money than we've seen in the last 20 years per year. And that is of course, it's nowhere near enough to go around. There's loads of bridge projects, big bridge project including Oregon between Washington and Oregon, replacing that very ancient I five bridge. That could be, but there's no real P three legislation in either state, so I don't see that, but it's going to have tolls as part of the financing package for sure. I think both state legislatures have agreed to that. But the toll is one thing. Another is because many, I would say most of the leading companies that are developers are headquartered in Europe or Australia. And so you can get populist opposition to foreigners controlling our roads, that's very sloppy. It's not really true.
(16:27):
These are US affiliates that hire US people to do most of the work, and they're regulated by the DOT as the public partner. It's not like you just give them carte blanche, but it's a very easy populist thing to go railing against foreign ownership of our roads. And so not everywhere strong, but it comes up in states. Another one that seems to be unique so far to is the traditional contractors who do design bid build projects really make a case and lobby extensively. I wrote a paper on this and I've given presentations on it claiming that p threes are unfair because local contractors don't get the work that is partly false. As I documented, I'm looking at about 15 P3 highway and a couple of transit projects showing that most of these projects, about 50% of the total construction budget is subcontractors. Those are almost all local or state subcontractors because they know the territory, they know about utility relocations, they know all the local knowledge that the big international developer doesn't have, and developer knows they need that local knowledge.
(17:49):
But in Texas, that has been a part of what has got the legislature to keep the ban on new p threes and on new towing. And of course in states where anti highway, anti-car environmental groups are strong, any project that expands capacity, no, they may, maybe they wouldn't be as opposed to replacing existing capacity. But for example, on the bridge in Louisiana, the Calcasieu River Bridge that is 71 years old was built before the interstate system, and it only has two lanes each way. The interstate on either side of it has six lanes. So the bridge per se is a bottleneck. And so you would be insane to replace that with a four lane bridge and go to all the trouble and still have the bottleneck. You wouldn't be in bad shape, but it would be still an obstacle and not state of the yard.
(18:53):
No state DOT would consider doing that, but there's not that kind of strong environmental opposition in a state like Louisiana at this point in time. So that really didn't come up in the battle there. I think the environmental groups, some construction contractors, the anti foreign and the dislike of tolling trucking industry is particularly anti toll and continues to tell stories that are not true on the website of their alliance for toll-free interstates, they claim that the cost of collecting tolls eats up 35% of the revenue. Now, that figure might've been true in the 20th century with cash tolling and all the losses from theft and all kinds of things, but it's definitely not true. The congressional budget office did a study about a decade ago that said by that point even it was only 12% of the revenue reason found. I commissioned a study with two electronic toll expert pioneers and looked at some very new projects, small projects that had been done with all electronic tolling from the outset and with a very streamlined business model to take full advantage of the electronic tolling.
(20:06):
And they estimated that between five and 8% of the revenue went into the costs of collection. And I think then when you look at, so let's assume 5% is what we could get to in the near future, but that's for cars because the way you figured this is the amount of revenue to go end miles divided by the cost of collecting the toll for that. Well, the cost is the same between a car and a truck, but the trucks on, let's say on an interstate typically pay four times as much per mile as cars. So the cost of collection, the way it's calculated, would be a quarter as much for a truck as it is for a car. So you're talking 1.25% if the car is at 5%. And so that argument is completely bogus and it's getting more bogus every year, but they still use it.
Caitlin Devitt (20:58):
Well, I know that the trucking opposition was a big deal with Louisiana Bridge the fight over I 10 and the state ended up the new administration, as you mentioned, ended up bringing down those tolls to kind of assuage some of that.
Robert Poole (21:11):
It was a significant reduction for the big trucks and a reduction for the five parishes right in the area where they can get a real much cheaper rate than all other personal vehicles. But it was an okay compromise. I mean, it gets the project done, the state had to kick in a little more money. Yeah,
Caitlin Devitt (21:32):
The state kicks in more money. Okay, we'll be right back after this important message. And we're back talking with Bob Poole, transportation director at Reason Foundation about all things P3 transportation. So you talked a little bit about Congress, or at least on the federal front, how it holds back because it contributes to some unrealistic ideas about cost of infrastructure. What in your opinion, could Congress do to advance the P3 sector in the US And also an adjacent question, is IIJA and the Inflation Reduction Act doing anything to help promote or maybe unsupport the industry?
Robert Poole (22:17):
Well, the IIJA and other federal grant programs, it's a two-edged sword. I mean, they do provide, they have more money available. So to the extent that many of these P3 projects are not totally total financeable, you need some state money. And if the state has a dozen fairly large projects that ideally should be done now, they're going to have to, if there's no federal money, they're going to have to space those out over a number of years in order to pay for their portion of a P3's cost. And in the table I've been keeping for about a dozen years now on revenue risk P3 project in particular, it averages about 20% state support for these kinds of projects. Now, there's a few that have zero state support, including the most recent express toll lane in Northern Virginia, the I 66 that had zero state or federal direct investment in it.
(23:17):
But that's unusual to have that. So the money on the one hand, but on the other hand, if a state can get a billion dollar grant for a billion and a half dollar bridge, they're not going to go to bother to try to go through all the additional work of doing a P3 competition and negotiation and all this sort of stuff and the legal and financial advisory costs that go into that also. So it's a two-edged sword, definitely. Now what Congress could do if we're going to have more P3s, the kind of pipeline I'm seeing, the private activity bonds a maximum of $30 billion is not going to be sufficient. So sooner or later and preferably sooner, Congress should up that or remove the cap. There's no cap as far as I know on tax exempt municipal bonds CAP was initially was put in was, well, this is a new thing.
(24:11):
We don't know if anybody's going to want this. We are not going to offer the moon when we don't know if there's going to really be serious takers. But I would say at least double the 30 to 60, if not eventually they should take the cap off because it's an unfair discrimination between state finance and P3s and TIFIA has been a tremendous help to a lot of these P3 projects. A large majority of them, whether they're availability, payment based or revenue risk, have used TIFIA loans. It's good gap filling financing that is in second place. It's not in first place and of the debt providers, unless they get into trouble and then it springs the springing lean, it goes to equal parity with the other debt. But that's only in extreme bad circumstances. So expanding that also to cope with the projection likely growth in these projects would be good thing.
(25:15):
The one other thing is that Congress over the last probably two decades has gradually eased up on the federal ban on tolls on interstate highways, but you still can't, if you wanted to rebuild a whole interstate, you can't just say, alright, well we're going to total finance this and that's the way we'll do it and have it run by individual P three projects for the various sections. So Congress could do a great thing by simply removing that ban on the remaining bans, on tolling on the interstates, you could say, okay, you can't do it just in general to just take money off, but if you want to do it to finance reconstruction, which a huge TRB study several years ago said is desperately needed over the interstate. Most of the interstate system has outlived its design life and not only in many places, not enough capacity, but also simply is worn out and needs to be replaced.
(26:16):
And Congress has done nothing directly aimed at facilitating that the TRB study said, create a new program with a major increase in gasoline, diesel taxes. But we know that with growing electrification, gasoline and diesel, Texas are starting to be on a downhill slide that makes it not really a viable alternative. So a total finance I thing would be very in the nation's interest in terms of really getting our interstate backbone being fit for another a hundred years and doing it in a way that we've proven now that these long-term p threes work and also the federal government, federal Highway Administration, the Build America Bureau, has done yeoman work on producing how-to reports and special reports on things like hand back conditions at the end of a 40 or 50 year P three. So there's a lot of resources available, and that's very good to have.
(27:20):
So a state like Louisiana that's starting out doing their first or second project has a lot of resources they can go to at Federal Highways to make sure they are not starting off naively and know the kind of things you really need to be taking into account. They know that they'll need expert legal advice and expert financial advice, and that's a cost of getting the thing off the ground and you need to budget for that. So things like that, there's no excuse, there's no reason why a state DOT or a legislature should go into a thing like this naively when there's all that help available.
Caitlin Devitt (27:58):
The Build America Bureau, have they released that new, aren't they supposed to do develop standards for the value for money analysis?
Robert Poole (28:04):
Yes. That's still not out. We all thought it would be out last year, but it's still not out. So hope for the best.
Caitlin Devitt (28:14):
Okay. So let's talk a little bit, just a few minutes. I know you've written about this in the past, infrastructure funds, investing in the space. So just tell me a little bit about how infrastructure funds, pension funds, how they think about the space, what they want, how much they're able to do, what they want here in the us.
Robert Poole (28:36):
Right. Well, the interest of the pension funds and the infrastructure funds are aligned but not the same. The infrastructure funds generally want a good 10 year return. Some of them hold projects for longer, but a lot of them are on a 10 year basis, so they're probably not as interested. They're more interested in finished projects than in construction projects. There's also a lot of shuffling of portfolios with the infrastructure funds, selling some, buying others even within a 10 year window to try to meet whatever internal goals they have during that time. Pension funds, I think they really, they're long-term investors. They're needing to shore up their finances with things that are not cyclical with the ups and downs of the economy and the regular bond market. So revenue risk P3s that produce, that have likelihood of a rising revenue profile over a long period of time make a very good fit.
(29:47):
And that's why insurance companies also, they have a similar need for that kind of assets to have a sound portfolio to meet their future obligations. So we're seeing every year when I write the annual report on P3 transportation finance, I see more and more pension funds either deciding for the first time to make an allocation for revenue producing infrastructure or increasing their commitment to that. And they generally place it with one or more of the infrastructure investment funds rather than trying to make selections themselves. Now, there's a handful that do that. Very big one, CalPERS has selected, they're invested in Gatwick Airport P3 was one of their early and I guess pretty wise investment. And also in the Indiana Toll road concession, IFM based in Australia represents pension funds and can create portfolio for them if that's one way to go. They don't don't have to shop around with three or four different funds.
(30:55):
They can go to a conglomerate, I guess like IFM, and have a whole balanced portfolio to be investing in. So I think there's a lot of virtuous circles going on here where the creation of investor owned investments like this gives returns that pension funds don't get from nonprofit sorts of investments. So I think it's good to see this happening. We have a lot, a huge number of underfunded state government and city government, county government pension funds that have very large unfunded liabilities. And reason foundation has a whole large, I think our largest policy program is public sector pension reform. And so they're doing yeoman work, getting some reforms, meaningful reforms implemented. But one of the things that I keep stressing to our team is that encourage them also to invest in long-term infrastructure because that will help with their problem. They have structural problems that's different, but once they get that straightened out, their portfolios should be leavened with revenue generating infrastructure.
Caitlin Devitt (32:15):
And of course, it's often a hedge against inflation, which has been an issue like with the Indiana Toll Road, the toll rates linked to inflation. Right. Okay. Well, I just want to end about a question. You've mentioned Brightline earlier, since you're an expert, I want to talk, we've been following the high speed rail. We've got a bunch of a handful of projects, I shouldn't say a bunch. We've got the California public one Bright Line West Bright Line in Florida. Then in Texas, there's a few,
Robert Poole (32:42):
Right that might happen.
Caitlin Devitt (32:44):
What do you think is that outlook, the prospect for these projects?
Robert Poole (32:49):
I think it's sketchy and uncertain. High speed rail advocates point to Japan and Europe as models and say, well, we should be like them. But the problem, I've researched this for many, many years and read books on the subject, European and Japanese cities are on average closer together. And those cities have largely, well-developed transit systems that when you get off the high speed rail, you get onto that system and go where you really need to go. And we don't have that here. Our cities are farther apart. We have a lot higher fraction of trips made by car rather than by transit. And so I think it's, and both the European governments and the Japanese government very heavily subsidized not only particularly the capital costs and to some extent the operating costs. Some international study I've seen it quoted many times in the rail industry says that there are only, I think three high-speed rail lines that claim to be covering their full capital and operating costs from Fairbox, the original TGB line in France, the original todo line in Japan and probably the Beijing to Shanghai line in China.
(34:19):
We don't have a US audited financial statements to make sure those claims are accurate, but they're, they're plausible. But the problem is that each of those countries can have a first project that's the cream of the prop that everything is right for that order. And then they think, okay, well now we can do a dozen more like Spain did and expect the same results. And you're unlikely to get them because you did the one that was most likely to succeed. And many of the others are there for political reasons, not for sound financing or operational reasons. California HighSpeed Rail is a great comparison to Bright Line Florida and Bright Line West in that sense, in that the route, the natural normal route between San Francisco and Los Angeles would be up the I five quarter. There's already right of way there. You don't have to buy up farms and ranches and have years long eminent domain battles.
(35:17):
But know the politicos, every politico in all those Central Valley cities where Old Route 99 is wanted to have the thing their city on the high-speed rail line. So with the French National Railway, was an original consultant to the high-speed rail authority and was assuming would go the straight up low cost I-5 corridor. When they found out that they were hoping maybe they'd get an operational contract or something when they found out that they were going to go to the zigzag route roundabout, they said, nevermind, goodbye. This is not a business. They're trying to run a business. So I doubt that California project will ever be finished to go all the way even from Los Angeles, San Francisco, let alone from San Diego all the way to Sacramento, which was the original plan that the voters voted on 20 years ago. So we'll see.
(36:15):
But I think Brightline offers the idea of a public private partnership that is conceived and managed and planned as a business. I think Brightline, Florida will probably end up actually making money and being viable. They are doing real estate development as an integral part of it, and that models the Hong Kong and Japan rail systems where it's not just the Fairbox, that's your revenue source. High speed around California has never occurred to them that there might be anything that they could do along those lines. It's not planned to do that, and I think it will fail. Bright Line West. I'm not so sure. I'd say it's a sketchier proposition than Bright Line Florida because they don't have the same degree of real estate thing. And they're also not going all the way from Las Vegas actually to Los Angeles. They're going to Rancho Cucamonga, which is way east, and they connect to a much slower commuter rail line that does go to a number of places. So I may be wrong on that, but we'll see.
Caitlin Devitt (37:21):
They're very idiosyncratic, but the Feds just gave a bunch of money, so to Bright Line West, 3 billion and I think California 2 billion, right? Or is it 3 billion? They both got 3 billion.
Robert Poole (37:32):
I think 2 billion was in private activity bonds, but
Caitlin Devitt (37:35):
Yeah, 2.5 billion in private activity. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Bob Poole. Good stuff. Good stuff. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank
Robert Poole (37:42):
You.
Caitlin Devitt (37:43):
And thanks to the listeners of this latest podcast. Special thanks to the Horizon Studio who did the audio production. Don't forget to rate us. Review us and subscribe@www.bond buyer.com/subscribe For the bond buyer, I'm Caitlin Devitt, and thanks again.