Highway transportation agencies across the United States face fiscal challenges caused by the growing gap between the costs of providing and preserving highway infrastructure and available highway program funding. The inability of motor fuel taxes to provide adequate funds has prompted transportation policymakers to consider alternative ways to develop needed transportation projects. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) represent a wide variety of project financing and delivery approaches which offer the potential to expedite projects and cost-effectively operate and maintain the resulting facilities and services. By leveraging scarce public funds for transportation facilities, PPPs can help transportation agencies "do more with less." The common element of a PPP is that public sponsors of transportation projects engage the private sector to a greater degree in the performance of certain functions previously handled by the public sector. This can range from contract maintenance to life-cycle finance, development, operations, and preservation.
The U.S. Department of Transportation and its surface transportation administrations are encouraging their counterparts at the state and local government levels to consider the use of PPP approaches to accomplish more projects in their work programs. This document provides guidance in the application of PPPs to transportation projects based on the experiences of transportation agencies in the U.S. and other countries that have applied these delivery approaches. The guidebook is aimed at both early practitioners of PPP projects as well as those agencies just beginning to consider the possibility of instituting PPP approaches for projects currently stalled for lack of available resources.
The PPP User Guidebook describes the many participants, stages of development, and institutional factors associated with developing and implementing PPPs for transportation infrastructure projects. It considers the full life-cycle of transportation facilities, from development to execution to performance reporting. It identifies and discusses statutory, regulatory, financial, and institutional issues associated with implementing and managing PPP projects. It suggests a general process for developing transportation PPP programs and projects and strategies for addressing impediments and managing risks faced by public and private sector partners during contract development and project implementation phases. It also provides summary information on a sampling of prior or current PPP projects, including lessons learned from these projects.
The PPP User Guidebook on is intended to assist sponsors and providers of transportation projects take the necessary steps and precautions to promote successful delivery of PPP projects while protecting the public interest, especially the ultimate users of the facilities so developed.
Two companion reports present descriptions of PPP programs and case studies of transportation projects using PPPs. One report focuses on PPP projects in the U.S. while the other report focuses on PPP programs and projects in other countries where PPPs have a longer history of use. The report on international PPP programs and projects describes how PPP approaches continue to evolve and be introduced in additional countries seeking to expand their transportation networks to better participate in the growing global economy.