Why touted public transport savings from competitive tendering are too high

摘要

A new report from Infrastructure Australia, 'Improving Public Transport: Customer Focused Franchising', and its associated technical report from Pricewaterhouse Coopers will have State and Commonwealth treasurers salivating. The accompanying press release is clearly intended to set their fiscal juices flowing. It suggests that: subjecting the operation of Australia's Government-operated bus and rail services to competitive tender processes could save Australian taxpayers up to $15.5b by 2040...' This $15.5b is the estimated high operational cost savings scenario, in present value terms (2016 prices; 7% real discount rate). Infrastructure Australia/PwC's conservative savings estimate is still a very substantial $11.6b.