Fear Of Bankruptcy Looms Over Bridge, Rail Conferences
Builders of both bridge and rail infrastructure are eyeing the next several weeks with a heightened sense of urgency—hoping against hope that Congress will manage to pass some version of President Obama's proposed $302-billion, four-year transportation reauthorization bill. At the same time, alternative delivery methods such as public-private partnerships are higher than ever on the collective transportation agenda.
Transit and rail would be big winners in the bill, called the Grow America Act. It would move a highway-centric program into a more mode-neutral policy and provide $72 billion to transit—a 70% increase, noted Therese McMillan, deputy administrator of the Federal Transit Administration. The FTA's top priority is to address the infrastructure-needs backlog, she told attendees of the American Public Transportation Association's rail conference, held earlier this month in Montreal.