A Review of Alternative Financing Methods for Roadway Projects in Small Urban and Rural Areas of Texas

A Review of Alternative Financing Methods for Roadway Projects in Small Urban and Rural Areas of Texas
Author: Nicolas Norboge
Publisher:
Total Pages: 71
Release: 2016
Genre: Roads
ISBN:

"This report summarizes a number of revenue stream options (options providing new revenue for transportation) and financing tools (methods used to secure funding for the construction of a transportation project) currently available under Texas law. The report is the result of an analysis that sought to summarize funding and financing methods used in small urban and rural areas outside the four major metropolitan regions of Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio. Based on a review of scholarly literature and government reports, researchers found instances of successful alternatively financed projects in these small urban and rural areas, especially when the locality was able to leverage multiple revenue streams from local sources."--

Development of a Special Topics Course on Civil Engineering Project Finance for the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering of Texas A & M University

Development of a Special Topics Course on Civil Engineering Project Finance for the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering of Texas A & M University
Author: Ivan Damnjanovic
Publisher:
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2011
Genre: Civil engineering
ISBN:

Experts predict that the highway trust fund will deteriorate rapidly over the course of the next several years. This situation has led many state agencies to seek alternative financing methods that can meet both social and economic needs. One possible solution to the problem is to partner with the private sector and together, utilizing project finance methods, deliver facilities. This innovative approach has only recently found new applications in delivering transportation infrastructure. This trend is likely to increase in the near future. Because it has been widely adopted in other infrastructure sectors, mainly for delivering power plants, major pipelines, etc., many valuable cases and lessons learned can be brought to the transportation arena. Nevertheless, very few, if any, of the educational programs in the country have a project finance course integrated into the core curriculum for graduate civil engineering students. Even fewer programs treat project finance as a truly interdisciplinary topic. In fact, the topic of project finance often constitutes only a small part of the structured finance curricula. The purpose of this project was to bridge this gap by developing educational and teaching materials for an interdisciplinary course in project finance. This course communicates the implications of financial decisions on engineering choices and vice versa. The course is directed toward graduate students at the Master of Science level to better prepare them to deal with real-world transportation financing.

Gravel Roads

Gravel Roads
Author: Ken Skorseth
Publisher:
Total Pages: 112
Release: 2000
Genre: Gravel roads
ISBN:

The purpose of this manual is to provide clear and helpful information for maintaining gravel roads. Very little technical help is available to small agencies that are responsible for managing these roads. Gravel road maintenance has traditionally been "more of an art than a science" and very few formal standards exist. This manual contains guidelines to help answer the questions that arise concerning gravel road maintenance such as: What is enough surface crown? What is too much? What causes corrugation? The information is as nontechnical as possible without sacrificing clear guidelines and instructions on how to do the job right.

Planning Tools to Assess the Real Estate Leveraging Potential for Roadways and Transit: Technical Report

Planning Tools to Assess the Real Estate Leveraging Potential for Roadways and Transit: Technical Report
Author: Sharada Rallabhandi Vadali
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2011
Genre: Local transit
ISBN:

Abstract of technical report: "A funding crisis exists for financing much needed transportation infrastructure projects across the nation and Texas is no exception. Texas has responded to the crisis by passing several bills allowing innovative financing and alternative options for project financing. Among these is Senate Bill 1266 (SB1266), which is a landmark legislation and was passed in 2007 as part of the 80th Legislature to provide the legal backdrop for the creation of the Transportation Reinvestment Zone (TRZ) to facilitate value capture of the tax increment from a future transportation project. This research aimed to provide various mechanisms to augment the implementation and understanding of SB1266 provisions across the state of Texas including but not limited to documenting the current understanding and knowledge of the legislative provisions, compilation of actual implementation case examples, development of standardized methods for screening, TRZ development and revenue assessments, and also presents the results of a workshop held to augment the understanding of TRZ for highway projects. An additional section of this research explores the implications of SB1266 for transit finance and discusses this aspect within the larger context for innovative finance of all transit infrastructure both those on the state highway systems and off. Finally, specific recommendations to the legal framework are made in the light of specific objectives of the research both for highways and transit in regard to the use of increment based finance."