As the growth in traditional transportation revenue sources, such as gasoline taxes, continues to decline and operating deficits increase, transportation agencies are increasingly looking for new sources of revenue to leverage funding and to improve project feasibility and cost-effectiveness. One of the most successful methods employed by other infrastructure sectors to improve project feasibility and cost-effectiveness and generate revenues is the use of public-private partnerships (PPPs). In addition to cutting costs and raising new revenue, PPPs can significantly reduce the time it takes to complete a capital project, can help the public sector allocate risks to the private sector that the private sector is better able to manage and can improve the quality of the public's infrastructure. The success other sectors have had with PPPs has led transportation agencies, including a number of transit agencies, to pursue opportunities for applying various types of PPPs to deliver major capital projects. There is ample evidence across the United States that the private sector is interested in increasing its participation in transportation infrastructure projects, including a number of recent transit capital projects structured as PPPs.
This report sheds light on the growing use of PPPs for transit capital projects - a trend which has been driven more by local transit agencies than Federal government encouragement or promotion - to provide significant new sources of funding for transit, help address the country's urban congestion crisis and enhance mobility in many of the country's metropolitan areas.