Type of Organization

1. Transportation Consulting

Top benefits of PPP

Better project selection (based on ROI);

Greater accountability;

Reduced life-cycle cost;

More timely additions of needed capacity

PPP Concern 1

Transparency; Concern over how decisions to award concessions get made, raising suspicions of sweetheart deals.

PPP Concern Mitigation 1

Balance needs for temporary confidentiality with full disclosure of selection criteria, scoring, and concession agreement details.

PPP Concern 2

Politicization of process, especially to unfairly favor public-sector toll agencies.

PPP Concern Mitigation 2

Need to adopt level-playing-field competition procedures, to permit fair competitions that don't tilt toward either public-sector or private-sector bidders.

PPP Concern 3

One-size-fits-all rules and regulations for PPPs

PPP Concern Mitigation 3

Educate public officials on the differences among projects (e.g., robustness of potential traffic demand, extent of capital investment needed, role of pricing, etc.) to explain the need to tailor concession agreements to the specifics of each project, resisting standard lengths of term, toll rate formulas, etc.

PPP Concern 4

PPP Concern Mitigation 4

PPP Concern 5

PPP Concern Mitigation 5

Factors to consider by decision-makers

Competitive procurements;

Tailoring the deal structure to the specifics of each project;

Full disclosure/transparency;

Prudent limits on "non-compete" provisions

Contract structures/techniques to protect public interests

Long-term concessions offer the greatest set of benefits. But to take maximum advantage, it's important to include availability payments as well as real tolls-and in some cases, combinations of these [e.g., (project) in (state)].

Other perspectives