The benefits of public-private partnerships are not limited to cost savings. By providing access to alternative financing sources, public-private partnerships can facilitate the construction of projects that might otherwise have been delayed or not built at all. In addition, the same efficiencies that produce cost savings often enable projects to be constructed faster.
Completing a project faster minimizes public inconvenience and traffic disruption. In addition, a project constructed earlier than scheduled produces public safety benefits. Work zones are removed faster and the public is able to benefit from the additional capacity and safety improvements sooner. This section discusses the benefits a public-private partnership contributes to design and construction time-savings.
The Battelle Report showed that innovative contracting methods can result in as much as a 50 percent time reduction in project duration when compared to the traditional design-bid-build approach.[51] For some projects this time-savings is a result of the innovative financing methods brought to the project by the private sector member of the team. The public-private partnerships can bring additional capital to a project and enable States to build transportation projects that they want and need to build, but are prevented from doing so due to fiscal constraints. Following is a discussion of public-private partnership methods and specific examples of projects built using public-private partnerships that realized significant time-savings as a result of innovative financing.