Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced
the five finalist projects whose loan guarantee applications will be considered
this year under the federal Transportation Infrastructure Finance and
Innovation Act. TIFIA is a program of federal government loan guarantees
designed to provide incentives and lower interest rates for surface
transportation projects which will generate tolls, user fees or other revenues
to pay back investors over the life of the project. The five finalists are a
$1.5 billion package of new toll roads and non-toll lane upgrades on Interstate
35W in Tarrant County, Texas; a $1.3 billion extension and additional lane
widening for State Route 91 in Orange and Riverside Counties in California; a
$960 million replacement for the Gerald Desmond Bridge in Long Beach; a $927
million conversion of high occupancy freeway lanes to toll lanes in northern
Virginia; and a $140 million project to add bus rapid transit lanes to U. S
Route 36 in Colorado.
The $4.83 billion in loan guarantees on the final
projects represents a little over 37% of the $13 billion in guarantees sought
on 26 proposals submitted for TIFIA guarantees in the 2012 round. According to
Secretary LaHood, each dollar of federal subsidy leverages $10 in loan value
under the TIFIA program.
