By: Sabrina Ahmed, Policy & Public Affairs Manager
With the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) set to expire in September, Surface Transportation Reauthorisation (STR) dominated the agenda at Infrastructure Week this year; beneath the familiar debate about funding levels, a more important conversation was taking place. One of the sharpest observations came from the Build America Bureau: public-private partnerships (P3s) are not a financing mechanism – they are a delivery model. It is a distinction that matters enormously, and one that American infrastructure policy has been slow to internalise.
The instinct, when confronted with a $3.7 trillion funding gap, is to reach for more money. The BUILD America 250 Act – a five-year, $580 billion reauthorisation bill – is the latest expression of that instinct, and it is a welcome one. But with around $106 billion of its authorised spending subject to annual appropriations, rather than guaranteed contract authority, even this landmark bill leaves significant investment dependent on future political decisions. Private capital is not a complement to federal funding in that environment – it is a structural necessity. However, the US P3 pipeline remains thin compared to peers like Canada, Australia, and the UK, not for lack of investor appetite, but for lack of the conditions that would make deals possible.
Georgia’s SR-400 project, cited as the largest greenfield P3 in the country, offers a useful illustration of what the right conditions can unlock: a project structured to transfer risk, attract long-term operational expertise, and free up public dollars for other priorities. The challenge is creating the conditions in which more projects like it can get off the ground. That requires confronting an honest reality: many states simply lack the institutional capacity to develop and manage complex P3 transactions. State DOTs are already stretched between navigating expanded programme scope, discretionary grant applications, and new performance metrics – all whilst competing for specialist talent against private sector counterparts who can offer more attractive compensation. Better frameworks will help, but frameworks alone are not enough without the capability to use them.
That is the core argument of our P3 State Recommendations: that unlocking private capital at scale requires states to treat P3 infrastructure not just as a procurement option but as a serious institutional commitment. Bringing this to fruition will require dedicated P3 units, structure-neutral legislation, long-term concession authority, recognised lender step-in rights, and frameworks explicitly designed to access federal tools like TIFIA, PABs, and RRIF. Driving this simplified approach will need political will from motivated states. States that move first will not only close their own funding gaps faster – they will define what the next generation of American infrastructure delivery looks like.