Losing bidder sues Tennessee over I-24 P3 toll lane records
Ferrovial
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A losing bidder on Tennessee’s first toll lane public-private partnership has sued for the release of public records related to the bidding process on what is one of the nation’s largest P3 toll lane projects.
24 Choice Lanes Partners, a consortium made up of Acciona, ACS Infrastructure, and Meridiam, filed the
Filed Monday in the Chancery Court for Davidson County, the lawsuit accuses the Tennessee Department of Transportation of violating the state’s public records act by withholding various documents related to the bidding process after the consortium made two separate requests.
Among other things, the team asked to see complete proposals from competing bidders DriveTN and Music City AccessPartners, as well as evaluation and scoring records and communications and negotiations related to concession fee payments.
“The public is entitled to know whether the agreement executed after contract award preserves that [concession fee value] or materially changes the amount, timing, structure, or certainty of those payments,” the complaint said. “If material changes were made after the competition ended, the public is entitled to know what changed, why it changed, and whether the same opportunity would have affected the competitive result.”
The complaint seeks a court order compelling expedited production of the documents and a declaration that TDOT violated the Tennessee Public Records Act.
One of the largest toll lane P3s in the country, the I-24 Southeast Choice Lanes project will add two variably priced express toll lanes in each direction along a stretch of I-24 between I-40 in Nashville and I-840 in Murfreesboro. The design-build-finance-operate-maintain concession term is 50 years.
It’s the first of what is expected to be a series of managed toll lane P3s in Tennessee, which
The winning DriveTN consortium includes Cintra — Ferrovial’s toll road and managed lanes subsidiary — as well as Transurban and Tikehau Star Infrastructure. In addition to its $24.8 billion concession fee, the team put a $9.2 billion price tag on the I-24 project.
24 Choice’s proposal totaled $12.8 billion with a $7.25 billion concession fee.
Music City Access Partners, led by Plenary Americas, Sacyr, and Shikun & Binui, estimated the project at $8 billion with a $7.4 billion fee.
Choice Mobility Partners, led by ASTM North America, FCC Concesiones, and InfraRed Capital Partners, submitted a $9.4 billion bid with a $250 million subsidy from the state.
Drive TN’s winning bid was $17.4 billion higher than the other proposals, noted 24 Choice in its lawsuit, saying the difference “underscores the importance of public access to records concerning this process.”
The teams that submitted proposals dedicated “significant time, money, and resources to bidding the project and therefore have a significant interest in the procurement process — especially given that the [Transportation Modernization Board] anticipates additional P3 projects in which each proposer may compete again,” the complaint said.
The requested records also shed light on “whether the procurement requirements were consistently applied and whether any clarifications, cures, exceptions, assumptions, qualifications, or proposal changes affected the selection of the Best Value Proposer (i.e., the winning bidder) or whether TDOT has or will negotiate terms in the concession agreement that materially deviate from the terms set forth in the Instruction to Proposers,” the complaint said.
TDOT and Ferrovial did not respond to requests for comment.
