Transportation industry

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority may delay payments to its pension fund if a New York State deficit-closing proposal reduces funds available to repay revenue anticipation notes, the MTA said yesterday.

SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco International Airport last week used a tender offer to refinance as tax-exempt about $120 million of private-activity bond debt that had been subject to the alternative minimum tax, making it the first airport to successfully pull off the maneuver.

CHICAGO — The Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission enters the market beginning today with its second large financing in recent months as it sells $300 million of mostly taxable Build America Bonds, the final tranche of borrowing planned under a $2.2 billion road building program.

National Public Finance Guarantee Corp. is sharing what it knows about municipal bonds.

Senate transportation leaders are pushing for a six-month extension of programs that provide funding to states and metropolitan areas for highways, bridges, and other surface transportation projects, Environment and Public Works Committee chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told officials gathered in California over the weekend.

WASHINGTON — The public sector should provide 55% or 65% of high-speed rail costs through gasoline and other taxes, Richard Harnish, executive director of the Chicago-based Midwest High Speed Rail Association, said at a conference here Friday.

CHICAGO — The Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Airports Commission enters the market as soon as tomorrow with its first sale this year, a $156 million refunding that should generate about $7 million in savings to help the agency as it manages through the recession and its impact on air travel and the airlines.

WASHINGTON — The development of a 17,000-mile national high-speed rail network would cost $600 billion, or $30 billion per year through 2030, Andy Kunz, president and chief executive officer of the U. S. High Speed Rail Association, said here at a conference yesterday.

BRADENTON, Fla. — Top Florida officials are considering calling a special session of the Legislature in early December to solve problems that could prevent the state from getting federal stimulus funds for a variety of rail projects.

The Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners, the governing body for Los Angeles World Airports, this week approved the sale of up to $1.625 billion of revenue bonds for Los Angeles International Airport.

Transportation officials and an advocacy group in Virginia are battling over whether a Virginia or District of Columbia judge should decide whether drivers on the Dulles Toll Road are being illegally charged tolls used to back bonds issued for the Dulles Metrorail project.

Massachusetts Wednesday announced that it has resolved a termination event on the fifth and final Massachusetts Turnpike Authority swap with UBS Securities LLC as counterparty.

The Charleston County Airport District’s outstanding revenue bonds were upgraded last week to A1 from A2 by Moody’s Investors Service despite a negative outlook on the airport sector, which the agency expects to maintain through early 2010. The airport has $13.3 million of rated debt outstanding.

SAN FRANCISCO — The Oakland-based Bay Area Toll Authority plans to sell $1.3 billion in its first taxable Build America Bond deal next week.

The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority is seeking investment banking services, as the agency could refinance fixed-rate bonds associated with $800 million of floating-to-fixed-rate swaps.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Transportation’s inspector general is warning that at least 10 airport improvement program grants distributed by the Federal Aviation Administration under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act “may have questionable economic merit or could involve recipients that have had grant management problems.”

BRADENTON, Fla. — The $1 billion Port of Miami Tunnel project Thursday reached financial closing — a conclusion that took nearly four years due to economic challenges, political problems, and diminished access to credit for large transportation-related public-private partnerships.

The Federal Railroad Administration last week released an early draft of a national rail plan that includes alternative-financing strategies that could involve bonds.

Construction costs for an major part of the New Haven Rail Yard could come in lower than recent estimates, Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell said last week. The lowest construction bid for a 293,000-square-foot maintenance facility to service newer Metro-North commuter trains came in at $124.8 million from O&G Industries of Torrington. The most recent estimate of the “change-out” where the trains will be maintained had been put at $291.5 million by a firm hired last year.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority plans tomorrow to sell its first Build America Bond deal, set for $213.8 million, after offering $39.3 million of traditional tax-exempt debt to retail investors today.