Serving just 125,000 people, the U.K.'s Halton Borough Council (HBC) might seem an unlikely sponsor for a $900-million privately financed highway bridge. But construction is underway, with barge-mounted rigs installing cofferdams in the mudflats of the River Mersey for the cable-stayed Mersey Gateway crossing.
To get here, the authority, 20 kilometers upstream of Liverpool, overcame government reluctance and the banking crisis. It deployed innovative financing tools and a novel tolling strategy to reduce revenue risk to itself and the public- private partnership contractor.