- Concession fees for express toll lanes
- Future of the Highway Trust Fund
- Texas express toll lanes P3 success
- New findings on truck user fees
- Autonomous trucks progress in California
- Getting serious about highway safety
- News Notes
- Quotable Quote
Concession Fees for Express Toll Lane Projects
Last month, the Tennessee Department of Transportation selected as its public-private partnership developer for its I-24 express toll lanes, a joint venture of Cintra and Transurban under a 50-year concession. The project itself is estimated to cost $9.2 billion. But the figure that caught everyone’s attention was the $24.8 billion “concession fee” offered by the winning team. I was quoted in a Bond Buyer article calling the huge concession fee a mistake, and I suggested that the toll-paying customers may end up paying more to use these express toll lanes. Needless to say, this procurement has provoked considerable debate.
Concession fees seem to be catching on as something state departments of transportation (DOTs) will expect for greenfield express lane projects. Of the other three bidders for the I-24 project, two offered concession fees of $7.3 billion and $7.4 billion, while a third requested a $250 million state subsidy, Bond Buyer reported.
Since concession fees for greenfield projects such as this are still new, Tennessee DOT’s Bryan Ledford hastened to explain that the concession fee will not be all paid up front. Of the pledged $24.8 billion, only $1.5 billion will be paid at financial close, and the remainder will be paid during construction and over the 50-year life of the concession.
So who will end up paying for that $24.8 billion? My early comments on this subject suggested that it would end up being the express toll lane customers. A long-time transportation colleague suggested that this was unlikely because:
- Tolls are set based on lane capacity and performance, not the concession company’s costs.
- Tolls cannot exceed what motorists are willing to pay.
- DOTs generally propose toll caps linked to utilization.
So then, where does the money come from for the concession fee?
My colleague suggested that increased competition for public-private partnership-financed express toll lane projects has led to developers competing in part by sharing revenue with the relevant state DOT. As noted above, Tennessee DOT selected the team offering the highest (by far) concession fee. But the same colleague noted that following the announcement of the $24.8 billion concession fee, “The stock market is hitting the Ferrovial stock price pretty hard…The market (investors) recognizes that the concession fee is paid from future profits and therefore reduces the rate of return for Ferrovial…The developer and not the drivers pay the fee.”
If express toll lane customers are shielded from paying excessive toll rates for projects that include large concession fees, the cost of those fees will be borne by the public-private partnership (P3) investors. That does not strike me as ensuring a bright future for P3 express toll lanes. But it’s hard for me to imagine that state transportation departments would decide on a no-concession-fee policy, since they would be turning down free money. Consequently, concession fees may be here to stay, at the developer’s expense.
What Future for the Federal Highway Trust Fund?
As we all know, since 2008, federal highway user tax revenues have fallen further and further below what Congress decides to spend on surface transportation each year. A true highway user fee would have been indexed to the consumer price increase or some other metric. But members of Congress were unwilling to “increase taxes” and began supplementing the Highway Trust Fund with general fund money, which these days is borrowed from our grandchildren.
In a July 12 article, Jeff Davis of the Eno Center for Transportation reported that the Congressional Budget Office has calculated that the planned House surface transportation bill will need a $150 billion general-fund transfer between now and 2031 (five years from now). That sum already takes into account the modest increase that will come from federal electric vehicle user fees, assuming Congress enacts them.
While 2031 is only five years away, it will be followed by 2033, when both the Social Security trust fund and a key Medicare trust fund are expected to reach “empty.” We have no way of knowing what Congress will do about that huge problem, but if I had to bet, I would bet on Congress favoring Social Security and Medicare over the Highway Trust Fund (HTF). If that is plausible, the transportation community and leaders need to think now about how to ensure needed ongoing investment in the U.S. highway system when this massive financial crunch unfolds.
In the Oct. 2025 issue of this newsletter, I suggested that Congress could devolve federal highway funding to the states, drawing on ideas from D.J. Gribbin (infrastructure maven during the first Trump administration). I also noted serious thinkers who have proposed devolving federal highways to the states, while retaining various design standards for 50-state consistency.
In the April 2026 issue, the lead article was headlined, “Preparing for the Last Surface Transportation Reauthorization Bill.” It drew heavily from an Eno Center study by Jeff Davis and Rebecca Higgins: “Last Exit: Fixing the Highway Trust Fund.” That report looked seriously at alternatives for fixing the Highway Trust Fund. Their assessment of potential HTF fixes found none to be very realistic. They then offered as a serious alternative devolution of the highway program to state transportation departments.
My assessment then and now is that this is the best (or least-bad) alternative when the Social Security and Medicare insolvency crisis materializes in the early 2030s.
Were Congress to take this seriously, as they should, instead of a 2026 business-as-usual highway and transit reauthorization with yet another huge general-fund transfer, they would start planning for devolving highways to state DOTs and transit systems to metro-area governments. Instead, Congress will enact a business-as-usual surface transportation reauthorization bill, leaving the major changes for their successors five years from now.
TxDOT Celebrates 10 Years of P3 Success in North Texas
The Texas Department of Transportation released a report called “TEXpress Lanes in North Texas.” In 16 pages, it documents the three major express toll lane projects in northern Texas and provides quantitative evidence of their benefits.
This report is important and timely. These projects were developed at a time when Texas’ governor and legislature strongly supported public-private partnerships and express toll lanes. Those supporters are no longer in office, and there have been few, if any, additions to the three major P3 express lane projects that opened in 2014, 2015, and 2018/2023. By the time the projects opened, there was no longer legislative or gubernatorial support in Texas for P3s and express toll lanes.
Consequently, this timely report documents the large-scale benefits from the three TEXpress projects in North Texas, implicitly suggesting that more such projects would be wise.
The three key projects in the DFW metro area are the LBJ Express on I-635, the North Tarrant Express (NTE) on I-820 and SH 121/183, and the NTE 35W. Some general results for all three express toll lane corridors include the fact that 85% of the ETL users take only one to three paid trips per week, and that 70% spend less than $30 per month on tolls. Also, HOVs receive a 50% peak-hour toll discount.
There are more benefits from the TxDOT P3 concessions than I was aware of prior to reading this report. On each of these three corridors, the P3 company operates and maintains the entire corridor, not just the toll lanes. This includes the frontage roads, bridges, ramps, and overpasses. This saves TxDOT $100 million a year in operating and maintenance costs on the three corridors. TEXpress also provides complimentary roadside assistance to motorists using those corridors.
As long-term P3s, these projects were financed similarly to those in other states. The table below shows key figures for the three projects.
Table 1: TEXpress Lane Projects in North Texas
| Project | LBJ | NTE | 35W |
| Length (mi.) | 13.3 | 13.3 | 16.9 |
| Total Cost | $2.6B | $2.13B | $2.1B |
| Opening date | Sept. 2015 | Oct. 2014 | July 2018/June 2023 |
| Equity % | 26% | 20% | 28% |
| Debt % | 56% | 52% | 69% |
| Public | 18% | 28% | 4% |
| User benefits (to date) | $2.4B | $3.1B | $3.0B |
This being Texas, the operational parameters are a bit different from express toll lanes in other parts of the country. For example, the targeted minimum speed in the toll lanes is 50 miles per hour, with a top speed of 75 miles per hour. Both are higher than the averages I’ve observed elsewhere.
Another section of the report documents a total (so far) revenue stream that TxDOT has received due to these three projects:
- Revenue sharing, per the P3 agreement: $87.6 million
- Refinancing gains: $58.1 million (M)
- Payment for Segment 3C of 35W $102.1M
- Payment for NTE ramp $48.5M
- Line of Credit and Other savings $17.8M
- Total to date $314.1M
I don’t follow current Texas politics very closely, so I don’t know if these impressive results might lead to increased political support for more projects carried out via long-term P3 concessions like these. But with Texas’s continued rapid population growth, its highways will continue to need expansion. This report documents the success story of this set of well-done projects in North Texas. They provide a model for what could be done in other large metro areas in Texas.
New Findings on Future Truck User Fees
Over the past decade, The Eastern Transportation Coalition (TET Coalition) has produced a series of important research studies on the future of U.S. truck road user charges. The series of research projects (which have been summarized in previous issues of this newsletter) is notable for having involved motor carriers, which took part in pilot projects and provided ongoing advice via a motor carrier working group. In July, the TET Coalition released its Phase 5 Final Report, Future of Transportation Funding: 2025/26 Motor Carrier Work: Unwrapping Complexities. This article is based on that report.
One of its strengths is the ongoing participation of trucking companies, via an advisory group that worked with the Coalition for the entire five years. As context, the introduction to the report’s summary notes that while commercial trucks constitute only 5% of all vehicles in this country and only 10% of vehicle miles of travel, they account for an estimated 42% of all federal Highway Trust Fund revenue.
Phase 5 of this project focused on several issues, including the pros and cons of a truck mileage-based user fee (MBUF), kilowatt-hour-based fees, and flat annual fees. Two new pilot projects in Phase 5 analyzed (1) weight-based fees, and (2) kWh-based fees.
The weight-based pilot project explored a number of possibilities, but perhaps its most-important finding was that a truck’s weight can vary by trip, within a trip, and across normal daily operations. To charge by actual weight would be enormously complex. After reviewing various alternatives, the researchers concluded that registered weight would be the most practical figure for highway truck user fees.
While the future extent of electric and hybrid trucks is uncertain, the study’s pilot project on this topic found that charging data needed for a user fees is “not consistently available, reliable, or standardized across vehicles and reporting systems.” The conclusion was that “a kWh-based fee would be more variable and harder to administer consistently” than a weight-based fee.
The study also assessed the pros and cons of some kind of flat fee, such as an annual fee. The most important shortcoming is that a flat annual fee would not take into account the number of miles traveled (and hence the impact on pavements and bridges). That would shift costs dramatically, with lower-mileage operations facing a higher effective cost per mile than higher-mileage operations.
An additional part of the research looked into how roles and responsibilities depend critically on system design. Trucking companies want simplicity at the front end (their operations), while those handling regulation and revenues want auditability, revenue assurance, and enforceability at the back end. This kind of analysis will be part of potential future work.
Over my decades of work on transportation policy, I’ve read many academic papers on issues such as trucks and highway user fees. While they offer interesting ideas, I don’t recall any that dealt realistically with how highway trucking actually operates and how to define a truly workable truck user fee system. This project sets a new standard for meaningful research on truck user fees.
Autonomous Trucks Begin Testing in California Despite Policy Uncertainty
By Marc Scribner
California ended its longstanding prohibition on heavy-duty autonomous vehicles (AVs) earlier this year when its Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) adopted updated regulations. In August, AV truck developers Aurora and Kodiak were the first to be approved for testing permits under the new regulatory framework. But in the same month, the California Teamsters filed suit seeking to block the DMV’s new AV trucking rules. Despite California being home to most major AV developers, the state-level policy environment for AVs is growing increasingly uncertain.
The amended California autonomous vehicle rules were approved in April 2026 after a two-year process that included robust public input. After multiple rounds of public comment and refinement, the new rules allow autonomous vehicles weighing over 10,000 pounds to operate without drivers on public roads only if certain conditions are met.
Aurora and Kodiak, leading AV truck developers based in California, have been focusing their testing and deployment operations in Texas due to the longstanding California ban on heavy-duty AVs. The companies applied for test permits under the new rules and met the DMV’s strict conditions, which is the first step in a long deployment process. Permits for both companies were granted in mid-August and TechCrunch reports that Kodiak started testing almost immediately upon the DMV issuing its permit, but the company currently only has “a handful of test trucks… primarily around its Mountain View office.”
Gaining approval for actual commercial trucking operations will take time, and there are key test milestones that must be met under the new DMV rules. Aurora and Kodiak must now complete at least 500,000 miles of testing with a human driver behind the wheel and turn over detailed data to the DMV. Next, if the DMV is satisfied that these vehicles are safe, Aurora and Kodiak must then log an additional 500,000-plus miles without a human driver. Only after no fewer than 1 million miles of testing on public roads has been safely carried out to the satisfaction of regulators—and with at least 200,000 of those miles logged on California roads—will Aurora and Kodiak be approved to deploy commercially in the Golden State.
If granted a deployment permit, autonomous trucking companies will be subject to strict data collection and reporting requirements, the same safety and weight audit requirements of conventional trucks, and constant oversight by the DMV that is empowered to immediately suspend permits of violators.
California was one of the first states to establish an AV policy framework but has by far the most onerous regulations, especially for trucking. For instance, robotaxi developers need only to log 100,000 miles of safe on-road testing to achieve a deployment permit versus the million miles for commercial trucks. In contrast, Texas largely has a self-certification system for AV companies, including those deploying autonomous trucks. Like in California, AV companies found to be behaving unsafely in Texas can have their authorizations terminated, but the Texas regulatory framework isn’t based around European-style type approval with arbitrary mileage thresholds.
Despite the California DMV’s extremely high bar for AV truck deployments, the Aurora and Kodiak testing permit approvals were welcome news for the AV industry. This was especially true because the California Teamsters union had filed suit challenging the new DMV rules on procedural grounds the week before.
The main argument of the Teamsters is the DMV failed to properly estimate the economic impact of the new rules. Under the California Administrative Procedure Act, a “major regulation” is one estimated by the rulemaking agency to have an economic impact of greater than $50 million. The California DMV estimated annual costs of compliance at several million dollars. The Teamsters argue the costs over the next 12 months are far greater, owing to large near-term investments by autonomous vehicle companies and job losses arising from new competition, and also that the rules should have forced DMV to conduct the more-detailed economic impact analysis required of all major rules.
The problem, as the DMV argued in its responses to similar claims made by the Teamsters on the administrative record, is that regulators anticipate AV trucking growth to be small and gradual in the near-term. The high burden to achieve a deployment permit in California and the limited existing deployment track record of driverless trucks outside California support this argument. The Teamsters present no evidence that the DMV’s new regulations will result in material impacts on the California transportation market over the next year, let alone their extreme forecasts on near-term effects on the trucking workforce and roadway operations.
The Teamsters’ legal weak tea suggests they are attempting to relitigate past battles over AV lawmaking. While the Teamsters have made repeated failed attempts to outlaw autonomous trucks in statute, California’s Administrative Procedure Act specifically prohibits using regulatory impact analyses to “reassess statutory policy.”
As I covered in the Feb. 2023 issue of this newsletter, when the DMV began the process of updating its rules to legalize AV trucking back in Jan. 2023, the Teamsters organized a rally outside the California State Capitol to debut legislation to ban AV trucking. Fortunately, that bill (AB 316) and the similar bill introduced in 2024 (AB 2286) were vetoed by California Governor Gavin Newsom.
But California Gov. Gavin Newsom is leaving office, and his likely successor, Xavier Becerra, has said he opposes driverless trucks and would reverse the DMV’s April 2026 regulatory amendments. Such a move would likely spawn separate litigation from the AV industry. And the California legislature is no more supportive of AVs than it was in previous years, so failed legislation advanced by lawmakers under Gov. Newsom could be revived.
AV companies will need to demonstrate their value while facing these political headwinds in 2027 and beyond. The ride-hailing industry faced a similar environment when it challenged the incumbent taxi cartels in the 2010s, but the AV industry is at a relative disadvantage. Scaling will be slower due to the capital-intensive nature of AVs. While the firsthand experience of consumers with robotaxis can generate public confidence in AV technology that would hopefully extend to trucking applications, it is unclear if popular support can materialize quickly enough to overcome the political power of entrenched special interests.
Getting Serious About Highway Safety
By Baruch Feigenbaum
Every state department of transportation prioritizes safety. Every year between 35,000 and 40,000 drivers die in traffic accidents. While it is impossible (despite what some Vision Zero activists claim) to eliminate all traffic fatalities, some states need to prioritize reducing their fatality rates.
A recent study from the Davidoff Law personal injury firm seeks to examine why some states are more successful by comparing the fatality rates and approaches of different states. I was initially somewhat skeptical of the report because lawyers are not engineers, and they might not understand some of the more technical aspects of roadway safety, such as geometric design. Further, lawyers may have a vested financial interest in highlighting states with high fatality rates. Cue the vision of lawyers as ambulance chasers. But the report was well researched and written.
The Davidoff report uses numbers from the Federal Highway Statistics Series. The study examined the last five years of data and created a cumulative average based on those five years. The winner (or loser), South Carolina, had the highest fatality rate of all states at 1.72 fatal crashes per 100 million miles driven. Arizona was second at 1.54. Both are rural states, and rural fatality rates tend to be twice as high as urban rates.
Reason Foundation’s Annual Highway Report also compares the fatality rates using the Federal Highway Statistics Series, but our report uses annual numbers and separates fatality rates into three different categories. Of the three categories, the rural fatality rate applies to rural Interstates, other freeways, expressways, and major arterials. The fatality rate includes a count of fatalities and a measure of travel (such as vehicle miles). Our source is the Federal Highway Statistics Tables FI-20 and VM-2. Table FI-20 provides a count of fatalities by state and highway functional class, and Table VM-2 provides an estimate of annual vehicle-miles of travel for each state by functional class. The national average fatality rates are the weighted averages across the states.
The urban fatality rate examines urban fatalities on the same roadway types. The other fatality rate examines minor arterials, collectors, and local routes. This is the biggest difference between the Davidoff report and Reason’s. We split our fatality rate into three categories. In our most recent report, Alaska, South Carolina, Hawaii, Oregon, and Wyoming had the five highest rural rates. New Mexico, Wyoming, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Florida had the five highest urban rates. Kentucky, West Virginia, Arizona, Mississippi, and South Carolina had the five highest other rates. Note that South Carolina and Arizona were at the bottom in both reports.
In Reason Foundation’s report, South Carolina has a particularly high rural arterial fatality rate. Compared to its geographic peers, it has a five-year simple average fatality rate of 2.13, the only state with a rate above 2.0. Texas’ rate is 1.45, while Georgia’s is 1.19.
Some of the largest factors in fatality rates are highway design, driving style, speed limit, and enforcement. Some factors are out of a state’s control. For example, Florida has a higher fatality rate because, for the same injury sustained in a crash, the elderly are more likely to die than younger people.
Other factors may be outside the state DOT’s purview. For example, traffic enforcement is conducted by the state police, not the DOT, and driving under the influence or excessive speeding can be a problem.
But many factors are within the DOT’s control. Road design has a major effect on fatalities. In rural areas they include ensuring 12-foot lane widths, reducing the severity of curves, having long-enough on-ramps and off-ramps, and eliminating weave locations. Adding more reflectors to highways and including a physical median barrier on four-lane roads also helps.
And some of the common beliefs about what causes fatalities may not be true. The overall speed limit does not appear to be statistically significant. This could be because some speed limits are set artificially low. In fact, South Carolina (top speed limit 70 mph) has a much higher fatality rate than Texas (which has top speed limits of 80 and 85 mph. It has lower speed limits on rural two-lane highways than neighboring Georgia and North Carolina. In fact, Georgia, which has some of the lowest fatality rates in the Southeast, actively enforces a “slowpoke” law that requires slower traffic on a multilane highway to travel in the right-hand lane.
The biggest challenge may be the culture. If people are used to driving more aggressively or not wearing seatbelts, that needs to change, and it takes time. Clever communications, such as humorous roadside signs, may help, as would better driver education and enforcement. In our report, South Carolina has low spending, good bridge quality, good pavement, and manageable traffic congestion. But as long as its fatality rates are sky-high, it will never top the safety rankings. Whatever approach is used, poor-performing states need to close the gap.
Nonstop Train Proposes 15 Minutes Between Chicago and O’Hare
Crain’s Chicago Business reported that a private organization has proposed a nonstop 15-minute train between downtown Chicago and O’Hare Airport. The O’Hare Flyer would run every 15 minutes between 4 am and 10 pm. Its projected development cost is $2.25 billion, partly because it would use former freight rail lines. The current Chicago Transit Authority Blue Line takes 45 minutes or more due to numerous stops. The project would require new elevated track at O’Hare and contracting with three freight railroads to lease right-of-way. Proponents include a former Illinois Tollway director and a former Amtrak rail planner.
Ferrovial Wins €2.95 Billion Czech Motorway Concession
A consortium led by Spanish company Ferrovial’s Cintra Global subsidiary won the competition for the D35 Motorway. The consortium includes STRABAG, Budimex, and Invesis. Its bid was lower than that of two competing teams. The D-35 will link Opatovec and Mohelnice. The concession will make use of availability payments, according to a report by Antonio Fabrizio for Infralogic (July 29).
Why Do Italy’s Passenger Trains Run on Time?
The answer provided in the Aug. 8 issue of The Economist is that “competition makes rails fast and cheap.” More specifically, the Italian government opened entry to passenger rail service, leading to competition between state-owned Trenitalia and investor-owned Italo. That competition has led to a 40% reduction in fares since 2012, leading to a doubling of rail passengers. The article noted that thanks to EU-wide open entry, Italo has entered the German passenger rail market, where state-owned Deutsche Bahn offers poor service and high fares. The article also notes that open entry has led to passenger-rail innovation in the Czech Republic, Spain, and France.
Brightline Florida Faces Potential Bankruptcy
Caitlin Devitt and Jessica Learner reported (Bond Buyer, Aug. 27) that Brightline Florida’s ongoing revenue shortfalls have led to a potential bankruptcy filing for the eight-year old passenger rail line between Miami and Orlando. The focus of that article was news of a possible bankruptcy loan from Assured Guaranty Ltd. The passenger rail company has issued $5.5 billion in bonds. The article also noted Bloomberg’s report that Assured would provide the railroad with at least $350 million in loans in the event of a bankruptcy
Cube Highways Seeking Eight Highways in India
Rouhan Sharma reported (Infralogic, Aug. 11) that I-Squared-backed Cube Highways plans to bid for a portfolio of eight highways in India. Megha Engineering & Infrastructure, the developer of the highways, is in touch with several potential buyers. The highways are mostly in operation or nearing the end of their initial construction. The concessions are based on India’s “hybrid annuity model,” in which the National Highways Authority covers 40% of the initial cost, with the remainder financed privately via equity and debt.
Who Pays for Tariffs Acknowledged by the White House
Advocates of taxing imports, such as the Trump administration, typically argue that those taxes are paid for by the governments of countries where the imports to the United States originated. Yet the White House made a 180-degree change when it agreed last month to refund the $100 billion in “Liberation Day” tariffs that were found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Based on that ruling, the federal government is refunding the $100 billion it collected from importers. Let’s hope those importers share this windfall with the consumers who paid tariff-inflated prices.
Record Mega Tunnels Under Way Overseas
The world’s deepest and longest undersea road tunnel is under construction in Norway, and the world’s longest immersed-tube tunnel is under way between Denmark and Germany. The Norway tunnel is described in detail by Niall Firth in the July issue of MIT Technology Review. It is 16.6 miles long and 1,280 feet below sea level at its deepest point. The two tunnel sections should meet in the middle by 2029. Expected cost? $2.4 billion. The world’s longest immersed-tube tunnel is also under way. The Fehmarnbelt Tunnel linking Denmark and Germany will be 11 miles long with five tubes, handling both railway and highway corridors. The estimated cost is $8 billion, per ENR. The road tubes will open first, generating revenue to help complete the rest of the project.
California Failed to Buy High-Speed Rail Trains
In 2025, the US Department of Transportation pulled back $4 billion that was promised by the Biden administration, based on an audit report saying that the California high-speed rail project has “no viable path forward.” One commitment by the California High Speed Rail Authority was that it would buy trainsets for the project, per 2024 and 2025 DOT deadlines. But new HSR CEO Ian Choudri changed the specifications for the trains when he arrived in 2024. Daniel Gligich of the San Joaquin Valley Sun reported that the authority’s 2026 business plan (June) left the status of trainset orders blank.
Australian Toll Roads May Adopt Dynamic Pricing
Max Stevens reported in Drive.com.au that the leading toll road provider in Australia—Transurban—is considering a shift to dynamic pricing for its urban toll roads in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Nearly all the toll facilities in Australia operate on fixed-rate tolls. However, on Melbourne City Link, variable tolls are charged for heavy commercial vehicles.
North Carolina MPO May Pay $60 Million Penalty
The Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization (CRTPO) has been asked by NCDOT to pay back the agency’s $60 million investment in the planned I-77 express toll lanes, which CRTPO had originally supported but has recently opposed. That original support led to the I-77 express toll lanes project being added to the state transportation plan. CRTPO plans to review that subject at its late-September meeting.
Electronic Tolling on Tampa Bridge Express Lanes
The expanded Howard Frankland Bridge in the Tampa, Florida, area includes new express toll lanes. Electronic tolling went live on these lanes on Aug. 22 using Florida’s SunPass system. The new express lanes link Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.
Norway Plans Ship Tunnel
ENR reported that the Norwegian Coastal Administration had selected a design-build team for the planned Stad Ship Tunnel. The mile-long tunnel will enable ships to avoid using a dangerous stretch of coast where many shipwrecks have occurred. It will enable ships up to 165 ft. high and 120 ft. wide. Construction is planned to begin early in 2027.
CK Hutchison Seeks $1.5 Billion in Damages re Panama Port Concessions
Infralogic reported (Aug. 20) that Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison’s board of directors has commenced international arbitration proceedings for Panama’s breach of an investment protection treaty. The company is seeking over $1.5 billion in damages from the cancellation of its concessions for the ports of Balboa and Cristobal.
Halmar and Skanska Win Penn Station Redevelopment
Public Works Financing reported that Amtrak has selected the team of Halmar and Skanska for the planned redevelopment of Penn Station in New York. The current plan calls for retaining Madison Square Garden above Penn Station. The project will include adding a new “grand entrance” to Penn Station from Eighth Avenue.
“Autonomous vehicles, including trucks, are positioned to improve road safety dramatically. Automated driving systems cannot drive drunk, drugged, drowsy, or distracted. They can react far faster than human drivers, ‘see’ in the dark, and are programmed to follow the rules of the road. These technologies could eliminate the nine out of 10 crashes caused by human error or misbehavior, and early data bear this out. Autonomous vehicles also have the potential to significantly reduce operating costs by lessening and eventually eliminating the role of human driving, a shift that has predictably sparked a backlash from organized labor.”
—Marc Scribner, “Organized Labor Takes Aim at California’s Driverless Truck Rules,” Reason.org, Aug. 25, 2026
“Texas partnered with the private sector to accelerate construction of the first TEXpress managed lanes. And I remember the skepticism when we first discussed this approach. Public-private partnerships were unfamiliar to many Texans, and questions about toll roads and private investment dominated the conversation. Today we have results: more than $25 billion in economic output generated across North Texas; more than 121,000 jobs supported; More than $314 million returned to the Texas Department of Transportation through revenue sharing; refinancing gains; and other financial benefits that can be reinvested in future transportation improvements.”
—David Laney, “Public-Private Partnerships Keep Texas Moving,” Dallas Morning News, Aug. 9, 2026