Transportation industry

Bonds from the Southern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority will not be affected by a workers’ strike that halted Philadelphia’s subway and bus service beginning early Tuesday morning.

bus system.Prendergast comes to the MTA from the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority, Vancouver’s mass transit system, also known as TransLink. He served as CEO since July 2008. Prior to TransLink, he had helped oversee infrastructure projects at Parsons Brinckerhoff Inc..

DALLAS — The $8 billion in federal stimulus funds earmarked for high-speed rail development in the United States is the first installment of a program that could reshape the nation’s transportation options as significantly as has the interstate highway system.

DALLAS — The Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act program is likely here to stay, though it is unclear how much funding it will receive in the future, federal officials said here yesterday.

The Bay Area Toll Authority this week began public hearings on proposed toll increases on seven state-owned toll bridges in the San Francisco Bay Area.

CHICAGO — The Illinois State Toll Highway Authority will head into the market this fall with the sale of up to $300 million of toll-backed revenue bonds in a deal that will mark the final financing planned for its five-year-old $6 billion capital program.

Pushing principal and interest costs out to future years has weakened the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s balance sheet, with an independent report released yesterday estimating the mass transit agency faces a cumulative structural deficit of $1.19 billion by fiscal 2014.

Kentucky’s appointees to a bi-state authority that will determine how to finance the $4.1 billion Ohio River Bridges Project have been announced by Gov. Steve Beshear and Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson.

SAN FRANCISCO — Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa last week proposed borrowing to speed construction on $20 billion of mass transit projects approved by Los Angeles County voters last year.

WASHINGTON — The Georgia Department of Transportation is poised to launch a public-private partnership initiative it hopes will encompass 17 projects, including a multimodal passenger terminal in Atlanta, connector highways, toll roads and privatized highway rest stops.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick Friday announced five members to serve on the board of the state's new transportation bonding authority, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority will be looking across the pond for ideas on how to improve service and management and how to address its capital needs.

The Texas Department of Transportation is proposing $1.1 billion for the widening of heavily congested sections of Interstate 35 between Austin and Dallas using more than half of the so-called Proposition 12 bonds authorized by lawmakers.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission Thursday evening re-filed its application to the Federal Highway Administration to implement tolls on Interstate 80.

DALLAS — Amid a continuing plunge in revenues, transportation planners in the Phoenix area are cutting nearly $7 billion from a $16 billion freeway program financed through revenue bonds.

The $700 million of bonds to finance a professional basketball arena at the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn could be sold and the proceeds placed into escrow as legal challenges to the project are resolved, an official at the Empire State Development Corp. said yesterday.

The Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge, the Bay Area Toll Authority’s busiest bridge, was expected to reopen today after it was closed earlier in the week when five tons of recently replaced steel supports fell into traffic and damaged cars.

DALLAS — The Arizona Department of Transportation estimates it would have to fire up to 60% of its workforce, halt all non-emergency maintenance, and close all highway rest stops under a legislative plan to close a $2 billion budget shortfall.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport officials announced Monday that the airport received $34 million in stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to help pay for construction of the new Maynard Holbrook Jackson Jr. International Terminal.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey plans to competitively price $300 million of tax-exempt bonds today in what it expects to be its last bond offering of the year.