Leadership

I am Jeff Parker, the principal of HTRIF (“Highway, Transit & Rail Infrastructure Finance”).

For 50 years my work has focused on creative solutions to difficult infrastructure finance and procurement issues. The construction that resulted provides essential services to millions of people in geographies across the U.S., in many instances at costs well below projections.

I served as a founding member of the Investment Committee of IST3, a Zurich-based infrastructure investment fund whose limited partners are all Swiss pension funds. Starting up in 2014, IST3 has grown to over $1 billion in assets under management covering many sectors in OECD geographies. I currently serve on the Boards of the Vineyard Power Co-op and the Vineyard Power Development Fund, the community benefit partner for multiple offshore wind projects.

The story begins in Pittsburgh and leaps to Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, the San Francisco Bay Area, Charlotte, Metropolitan Washington DC, the New York Region, Salt Lake City, Portland, Orlando, Denver, Seattle, San Juan, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Cleveland and Chicago; and includes interesting experiences in Bangkok, Sydney, Buenos Aires, Seoul, Mexico City and Zurich. Detours along the way involved initiatives to foster human capital as a focus for economic development, real estate development in conjunction with transit investment, technology musings that pointed toward today’s AI advances, remote work from home, and multi-modal trip planning software; institutional equity investment internationally, and an effort to introduce new finance and risk sharing frameworks to the U.S. transport sector based on the risk sharing paradigm demonstrated in the Thames Tideway Tunnel (“TTT”).

I founded a consulting firm, Jeffrey A. Parker & Associates, Inc. (“JPA”) in the basement of my home in Northwest Washington, DC in 1981, pre-internet and at the dawn of the personal computer era. The business grew with the addition of my son, Mike in 2002, and ultimately our partners, Robert Bannister, Nick Serianni and Tuyen Mai, along with a dozen gifted staff. Our clients trusted us to find solutions for high-profile, high-risk endeavors. Their loyalty and support gave us the opportunity to prove our mettle. None of this story would have been possible otherwise. Our successes led to our award as Global Transport Financial Advisor of the Year in 2009, numerous “Deal of the Year” honors, and my Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014 after the sale and successful transition of JPA to EY.

There were difficult losses too. My late wife of 44 years, Susan Parker, was diagnosed with terminal cancer two months after our acquisition by EY and died in 2014. Susan supported me throughout the difficult startup years and prioritized our culture of service to the public over profits. Regrettably, a few of our successes did not fare well in the long term. Finally, my efforts to develop real estate in Pittsburgh and innovate using the TTT model resulted in costly dry holes for friends and investors who generously funded my ill-fated pursuits.

My career goal was to steer clear of policy debates and bequeath a legacy of major physical works made possible by collaboration and adaptation to the uniqueness of each undertaking.

The following stories explore both the substance and the processes that led to our success, as well as lessons learned along the way.

Key experiences include:

• IST3 Infrastruktur Global (“IST3”)

• Replacement of New York’s Tappan Zee Bridge

• The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s Goethals Bridge

• Port of Miami Tunnel and I-595 PPPs (the first availability payment projects in the U.S.)

• The +$2 billion Miami Intermodal Center at MIA

• BART Oakland Airport Connector

• Tri-Rail in South Florida, Orlando SunRail, San Francisco Bay Area Peninsula Commute Service, Connecticut portion of the Northeast Corridor, Metra Railcar Acquisition, Public-Private Collaboration Opportunities at NYC Transit Authority, Silicon Valley Transit Extensions, and Caltrain Electrification

• Light rail lines in Pittsburgh, Charlotte, NC, Austin, TX, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Washington, DC, Miami, the Hudson-Bergen LRT in New Jersey and Sydney’s Darling Harbour

• The Dulles Airport Extension (Phase 1) and “Metro Matters” a program of over $1 billion dollars of state of good repair renewals for Washington DC’s Metrorail, New York’s PPP Accessibility Program, BART Renewals Program, Cleveland’s Red Line, and Tren Urbano heavy rail programs

• Denver’s T-REX, Fairfax County Parkway, Salt Lake City’s I-15 Reconstruction

• Applications of the TTT financial and risk sharing framework in the US – Los Angeles Metro, Honolulu Metro, NYC Transit Authority Signals, Gateway Tunnel

• Financial Management Oversight for the Federal Transit Administration and On-Call Technical Assistance Programs – fast turn-around advisory on financial issues, evaluations of new start rail programs, and workouts of multi-billion-dollar rail programs funded with discretionary federal grants, such as Los Angeles Red Line, BART SFO Extension and San Juan Tren Urbano.

• Financial Advisory to the World Bank on toll roads in Argentina and Mexico, as well as infrastructure policy in Korea.

• Acting as developer for an automated people mover and joint development at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh and the 42^nd Street Light Rail in Manhattan

• Joint Transit / Real Estate Development Advisory – Seattle Union Station, Denver Union Terminal, Atlanta Multi-Modal Transportation Center, Disney Orlando Monorail, Trans Bay Terminal San Francisco (initial iterations), Portland Tri-Met

• U.S. Conference of Mayors Railroad Land Revitalization, Community Economic Development Program and Job Training Technical Assistance

• City of Pittsburgh – Mayor’s Office and ”Man-in-Washington”, The Bloomfield Bridge