Cintra names new US operations president

Transportation development firm Cintra, a subsidiary of Ferrovial, has promoted Belen Marcos as its new president of US operations.

Marcos is now responsible for Cintra’s $8 billion US portfolio of road infrastructure projects. She is replacing Nicolas Rubio, who has moved to Cintra’s headquarters in Madrid to serve as global operations director.

Marcos joined Cintra in 1999 following a stint at NTE Mobility Partners, in which Cintra has a stake. She has since led the operations of some of the firm’s largest transportation projects, including the $2.1 billion North Tarrant Express Managed Lanes, the $2.6 billion LBJ Express and the NTE 35W project, all of which in Texas.

She will now be responsible for Cintra’s $8 billion US portfolio of road infrastructure projects. Her start at the position, however, comes amid recent difficulties with two of the developer’s US transportation projects this year.

In March, the concession company responsible for operating Texas’s State Highway 130, which Cintra has a 65 percent stake in, filed for bankruptcy protection after more than four years of lower-than-expected traffic volume. The project was a 91-mile, four-lane toll road project sponsored by a joint venture between Cintra and Zachry American Infrastructure.

While this had no impact on another Cintra-led transportation project, the I-77 Express Lanes project in North Carolina, it prompted concern from government officials about the financial structure of the project company, I-77 Mobility Partners.

I-77 Mobility Partners said in a statement the Texas’s State Highway 130 bankruptcy had “no financial impact” on the I-77 project, but it faced its own difficulties in June. North Carolina’s House of Representatives voted in favour of a bill to cancel the project after reaching financial close in April 2014. The bill was never put to vote in the state Senate, and the project is still under construction.