Northampton County, in Pennsylvania (USA), and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) have recently issued a request for proposals (RFP) for the Northampton bridges P3 project, which consist of the improvement and renewal of the county-owned bridges.

The announcement comes after Pennsylvania's public private partnership (P3) Board received an unsolicited proposal from a private-sector developer to design, build, finance and maintain a portfolio of 33 bridges in the county. More concretely, the private sector firm will have to replace 28 bridges and repair 5 more. 

In exchange for the project development, the private firm developer will receive annual payments from Northampton that will be laid out in the P3 agreement.

According to Northampton County Executive John Brown, the use of the PPP model could lower the cost of bridge repairs by 30 % to approximately US$40 million.