For transportation officials and researchers interested in the details on managed lanes financed by revenue bonds, Fitch Ratings’ annual review of this topic is a uniquely valuable resource. I’ve been relying on it for years, and am especially impressed by its 2026 edition, released March 30 and titled “U.S. Managed Lanes Poised for Growth.”
In addition to providing the usual comprehensive data tables on the 13 bond-financed managed lanes that Fitch rates, the report explains ongoing trends in this sub-sector of surface transportation infrastructure.
One new development at Fitch Ratings is that the staff producing this report now comprises two teams: the municipal infrastructure team analyzes and rates government-owned and operated managed lanes, and the infrastructure/project finance team analyzes and rates managed lanes developed and operated under long-term public-private partnerships (P3s). In addition to providing more focused analysis, this change enables comparisons between these two managed lane models.
Since Fitch has conducted these annual assessments for many years, its teams are well-positioned to spot and discuss evolving trends. They find that priced managed lanes have earned somewhat higher ratings as they have matured and become more widely used. Because of that, Fitch has modernized its cash flow assumptions, moving away from the conservative cash-flow assumptions used in earlier years. Thanks in part to these analytical changes and the sector’s robust growth, Fitch notes that of the 13 managed lane projects it rates, the median rating has risen from BBB- in 2016 to BBB+ today. Underlying this change is the median debt service coverage ratio. It was 2.6X in 2021 but is now 4.3X as of 2025.
Another finding is that a significant fraction of managed lane customers use these priced lanes even when the general-purpose lanes are not congested. This demonstrates that those customers appreciate the value of reliability in addition to the time savings.
The Fitch report includes a summary table comparing attributes of municipal ownership and public-private partnership ownership, including:
- Who the issuer is;
- The typical kinds of financing;
- Project-type examples; and,
- Primary Fitch analysis team.
Fitch also notes that the expansion of priced managed lanes into new states, such as North Carolina and Tennessee, is being led by public-private partnership projects. The report suggests that “P3s enable faster delivery of managed lane infrastructure while transferring or sharing financial risk to private partners. This reduces the risk to state transportation departments that have not previously implemented priced managed lanes.
Two additional trends discussed in the 2026 edition are the growth of regional managed lane networks and more municipal managed lanes moving to dynamic pricing. The regional networks at this point are municipally owned in Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, Hampton Roads (VA) and Denver.
Another trend is that municipal managed lanes are moving to dynamic pricing rather than variable-rate time-of-day pricing.
The Fitch data also show that while public-private partnership projects seek to maximize revenue, municipal projects aim to strike a balance between maximizing throughput and maximizing revenue. The report notes, “Private developers have become extremely sophisticated at building revenue-maximizing facilities, incorporating design, pricing, and configuration expertise to deliver a world-class driving experience.”
For data mavens, the report is a gold mine of data, though it is limited to the six municipal managed lane and seven P3 managed lane projects Fitch rates. But that is enough data to enable some interesting number-crunching.
For example, I created a small spreadsheet to compare the six municipal and seven P3 projects. Most of the P3s have BBB or BBB+ ratings, while the municipal ones range from A- to BBB+. The average corridor length is 22.3 miles for P3s versus 17.9 miles for municipals. Significantly, the number of priced lane-miles averages 77.7 for P3s versus 38.1 for the munis. Hence, the average P3 project has 3.5 priced lanes (which means some have four and the others have two). The municipal projects average 2.2 priced lanes, which suggests that most are only one lane in each direction.
The P3 projects’ larger size (more lanes and longer distance) suggests that the cost to build them is significantly higher than that of the Muni projects. When I compared the annual revenue of the P3 and municipal projects, the public-private partnerships average 3.8 times the muni average revenue. Their considerably larger projects do require significantly more revenue.
Overall, this is a very encouraging progress report on the growing U.S.-priced managed lanes market. With large new public-private partnership projects planned in Atlanta, Charlotte, and Nashville, there will be a lot more managed lanes to analyze in the coming decade.
A version of this column first appeared in Public Works Financing.