Infrastructure

Municipalities throughout Virginia will receive a share of nearly $155 million in state funds to help with infrastructure projects, Gov. Bob McDonnell announced Friday.

Moody's Investors Service has downgraded to A1 from Aa3 the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority's $5 billion of airport revenue bonds.

A U.S. House panel has given initial approval to an appropriations bill that would slash funding from programs that support public infrastructure projects as part of an effort to cut federal transportation and housing spending by $7.7 billion.

Providence, R.I. Mayor Angel Taveras desires $39 million in federal TIGER grant money to help fund a streetcar project he called essential to the city's comeback.

The Highway Trust Fund will need an additional $85 billion in U.S. general fund transfers over the next six years just to keep the program operating despite recent events that have shown that current spending is not enough, a Department of Transportation official told a Senate Panel Thursday.

The Senate is expected to vote on whether to confirm Charlotte, N.C. Mayor Anthony Foxx as Secretary of the Transportation Department during the next few weeks, but has not yet scheduled the vote, a congressional aide said Tuesday.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced Tuesday that his agency received applications for $9 billion of Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grants, when only $474 million is available.

The chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, on Monday named Sens. Mark Warner and Richard Blumenthal to lead two subcommittees.

With the nation's state and local governments already financing some 75% of America's public infrastructure and the federal surface transportation program on the brink of insolvency, the Finance Committee paper is a recipe for undermining the single most critical source of financing the nation's public infrastructure.

Puerto Rico has disclosed that the U.S. Treasury is no longer skimming money from federal grant payments backing the commonwealth's Garvee bonds, a day after Moody's Investors Service placed the debt on notice for possible downgrade.

U.S. toll roads are maintaining high investment-grade ratings, despite the slow economic recovery, Fitch Ratings said Thursday, releasing its first annual review of the toll roads it rates.

In a move showing that Garvees, like Build America Bonds, are subject to the risk of federal offsets, the U.S. government has reduced transportation funds backing Puerto Rico's Garvees to make up for the Commonwealth's failure to pay money owed to a federal agency for river projects.

Rep. John Delaney, D-Md., has introduced a bipartisan bill that would create an American Infrastructure Fund to provide loans and loan guarantees to state and local governments to help finance certain infrastructure projects.

Soaring gasoline prices are the result of price increases for crude oil, not federal and state gas taxes, which must be raised to help pay for transportation infrastructure improvements, the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy said in a recently released paper.

President Obama signed a presidential memorandum today that the White House said will modernize the Federal infrastructure permitting process, cutting timelines in half for major infrastructure projects.

Public utilities must awaken ratepayers to the reality that, while energy sources are expanding, water is growing increasingly precious, experts told the Bond Buyer symposium on public utility finance.

Rising concern about the availability of future water supplies and the need for new infrastructure will take center stage at The Bond Buyer's Financing Municipal Utilities Conference.

The Senate voted 83-14 Wednesday to pass the Water Resources Development Act of 2013, which authorizes federal water program spending and includes a a pilot program that would offer low-interest loans and loan guarantees for water infrastructure projects.

Creating a municipal road and bridge revolving fund is crucial to improving Rhode Island's roads and bridges, Treasurer Gina Raimondo told a House panel in Providence.

Managed toll lanes carry greater credit risks than traditional toll roads because they are challenging to implement and subject to extreme traffic volatility, according to a new report from Moody's Investors Service.