Contractual requirements and market forces often hold a private concessionaire to a greater level of accountability for the operation and maintenance of a facility than would otherwise be required of public authorities. For example, a recent GAO report noted with respect to the Indiana Toll Road that "[a]ccording to a Deputy Commissioner with the Indiana DOT, the standards [of the Indiana Toll Road concession] actually hold the [concessionaire] to a higher level of performance than when the state operated the highway, because the state did not have the funding to maintain the Indiana Toll Road to its own standards."134 The report also indicated that in the case of the Chicago Skyway, there is greater accountability for its operation and maintenance under the concession, which specifies detailed operations and maintenance standards based on industry best practices, than there had been under public control when there were no formal standards.
For a private operator, accountability to the public authority that granted the concession and to the users of the facility is of primary importance because the concession is the operator's source of revenue. To the extent performance lags and revenues suffer (either through a contractual mechanism or through market forces) the operator bears the risk of defaulting on debt service payments, reporting losses to its shareholders and potentially losing the concession.
Furthermore, while public transportation budgets typically compete for funding with other public programs (education, health care, etc.) and are subject to cuts when funds are not available, private operators have incentive to fully capitalize a facility upfront and to make necessary investments as soon as they are needed in order to reduce costs in the long run.
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134 Highway Public-Private Partnerships: More Rigorous Up-front Analysis Could Better Secure Potential Benefits and Protect the Public Interest, United States Government Accountability Office (GAO-08-44), February 2008, pp. 41-42.