Welcome back to Cape Cod, fair-weather visitors.
It's been a long, cold winter on our sandy peninsula, but that's now in the (finally defrosted) rear-view mirror.
It's been even longer since the bridge you likely crossed to get here was built 80 years ago. If things go smoothly, local and state officials hope it won't be nearly as long to build a proposed third automobile bridge across the Cape Cod Canal.
State officials last week took the next in a long line of steps toward selecting a private company to build the span, which would run parallel to the existing Sagamore Bridge. Long discussed as a possibility down the road, an official plan was publicly unveiled for the first time in December and has since gained traction among planners, pundits and the public.
"I think it's good that they're starting the process," Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority Administrator Thomas Cahir said. "It is a serious process. It's not a pie in the sky."
Despite that momentum, the project is far from a sure thing, and work on what a public-private partnership (or P3) to build it will look like has only just begun.
During a meeting of the state's Special Public-Private Partnership Infrastructure Oversight Commission on Wednesday, members were introduced to banking consulting firms that are providing information on how such a partnership might work for three separate projects, including the proposed "twinning" of the Sagamore Bridge.
"We could do it as a concession where all the risk is on the private entity," Massachusetts Highway Administrator Frank DePaola said Thursday.
The company would put up its own money in anticipation of a return on the investment, he said.
Alternatively the state could make so-called "availability payments" to a private company to retire the debt from the project over time, leaving the risk in the state's hands, he said.
"There's variations of the two," he said.
The modern use of a public-private partnership, in which the state contracts with private industry to design, build, operate, maintain and possibly finance major infrastructure, is relatively new to Massachusetts. The third auto bridge over the canal could be the first major project in the state since the law passed four years ago calling for the state commission's creation.
$320 million project
Under the proposal, a new three-lane bridge over the canal for traffic coming onto the Cape would have a toll, although motorists wouldn't be required to stop to pay it. The toll would be collected through a transponder in the vehicle, or motorists would be billed based on information gathered from their license plates.
The existing Sagamore Bridge would take traffic off the Cape toll-free, and the Bourne Bridge would continue to allow traffic to flow in both directions free of charge. In addition, a connector road would be built between Route 3 just north of the Sagamore Bridge to Route 25 just north of the Bourne Bridge.
State officials estimate the total cost of the project at $320 million.
In addition to twinning the Sagamore Bridge, the commission is considering the private operation of rest stops, including several on the Cape, and a so-called "high occupancy toll" lane along a stretch of Route 3.
"For each of the three projects we're considering we hired a firm with experience in public-private partnerships in other areas around the country," DePaola said.
Chicago-based William Blair & Co., which was chosen as the consultant for the Cape Cod Canal bridge project, outlined at the Wednesday meeting the process to develop a request for proposals from firms seeking to perform the work. This includes evaluating the ideal P3 structure, bidder qualification and bid evaluations, as well as environmental, design and legal work.
But, as William Blair's own experience shows, the road to a successful partnership is not without challenges. The global firm, which was founded the same year the Bourne and Sagamore bridges were dedicated, was sued over its role consulting for Chicago in a $1.15 billion deal that gave a private company control over the city's parking meters for 75 years.
Critics railed against steep increases in parking rates and what they called a bad deal for taxpayers. William Blair and the city have defended the deal, saying the city avoided future liabilities. A judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2011.
A William Blair representative directed questions about its role consulting in the Massachusetts partnership to the state's Department of Transportation.
DOT spokesman Michael Verseckes wrote in an email that setting a toll rate would be incorporated into a contract and operating agreement.
The rate would be set based on feedback from the public and what is reasonable to recoup the cost of construction, he wrote.
"So there would be controls in place that would be agreed upon that would govern the rate and would prevent that rate from shifting without any checks or balances," he wrote.
Similar public-private partnerships typically run in the 50- to 70-year time frame, but Bay State officials are considering a 30-year window for the new bridge reverting to the state, DePaola said.
'IT CAN BE A GOOD SOLUTION'
There are several advantages to the additional bridge: It could be converted to two lanes in each direction in the off-season if work needed to be done on the existing bridge; it allows lanes on the existing four-lane bridge, which is too narrow for current standards, to be reduced by one and widened; and it allows for more capacity in the event that the Cape needs to be evacuated, he said.
"Heaven forbid Labor Day weekend we have a Category 2 hurricane (headed toward) the Cape," he said.
Another advantage of the proposal is that the bridge and the connector road could be built separately, he said.
"They both have benefits to traffic in the region," he said.
The connector road presents a larger environmental challenge than the second bridge, which would be built in an area that is already well-developed, DePaola said.
"There's no area of critical environmental concern," he said about the area where the bridge would be built.
The state is in communication with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which controls the existing bridges and has jurisdiction over the canal, and DePaola said he doesn't expect the federal agency to oppose the project.
Another federal agency, the Federal Highway Administration, encourages the type of alternative procurement the state is considering, DePaola said.
Public-private partnerships are becoming more common around the country and state officials have cited projects in Virginia and Indiana as precedent.
A $2.3 billion project to build bridges and other highway infrastructure in Indiana and Kentucky on either side of the Ohio River is being partially built through such a partnership, according to Will Wingfield, spokesman for the Indiana Department of Transportation.
"Originally the states were going to share the cost of the project," he said.
Indiana eventually chose to enter a public-private partnership with WVB East End Partners to build its portion of the project, Wingfield said.
The state is repaying WVB in two ways: Payments tied to construction milestones and fixed payments dependent on the roadway being open to the public, he said.
"They have their own investment and equity," he said about WVB.
Indiana and Kentucky are splitting revenue from electronic tolls on the two bridges, which is separate from the work itself, Wingfield said.
"The private companies do not receive the toll revenue directly," he said.
The project, which has been under construction for about a year, is scheduled to be complete by 2016, he said.
"Given the right conditions, it can be a good solution to accelerate construction and derive benefits from that construction sooner," he said about a P3 arrangement.
PUBLIC MEETINGS LATER THIS YEAR
The decision to go with a public-private partnership depends on a number of factors, including what the financial markets will bear and an individual state's creditworthiness, Wingfield said.
With less revenue generated for highway projects through the gas tax, everyone is looking for other ways to pay for highway infrastructure, said Cahir, a former state representative who later served in several high-level positions at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.
Cahir said he saw a P3 work for a portion of Route 3 north of Boston, he said.
"That was the first public-private significant project MassHighway did a few years ago," he said. "It worked out."
It's important to have good communication with development teams and the public so everyone understands the expectations, Wingfield said, adding that a firm timeline is also important to give private developers confidence that the project is a worthy investment.
In the Indiana-Kentucky project, a lot of attention also was given to the impact on historic resources and, of course, the tolls, which haven't existed in the area for decades, Wingfield said.
Like the plan for the Cape Cod Canal bridge, the tolls for the Ohio River project will be collected through a transponder or billing by plate number, Wingfield said.
The base toll for drivers using a transponder will be $2 for single axle vehicles, $5 for medium size trucks and $10 for heavy trucks, he said.
There will also be a discount of a $1 for frequent commuters with a transponder, but additional costs for anyone relying on billing through their plate number.
DePaola said Massachusetts officials are likewise considering a discount for local residents and maybe a seasonal rate.
"We're going to have people who just out of principle don't want to pay a toll," he said. "That's what the Bourne Bridge is for."
DePaola said he hopes to have public meetings about the project in the fall and an environmental notification form — the first major step in an environmental review — done by the end of the year.
In the unlikely event that there is no opposition to the plan, the environmental review could be done within three years and construction completed three years later, he said, adding that this timeline is admittedly aggressive.
"I'm encouraged by the number of folks who have contacted us who think it's a good idea," he said. "I'm trying to find out the opinion of the people who don't think it's a good idea."
Anyone who had the misfortune to travel the interstates feeding
Cape Cod preceding the holiday weekend knows GRIDLOCK!
Traffic becomes a slow moving parking lot having nothing to do with bridges or flyovers.
No comments:
Post a Comment