Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in Highway Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, and Operations.

摘要

In the context of transportation, a Public-private Partnership (PPP) is a contractual agreement established between a public agency and private sector entity often to allow for greater participation of the latter in the delivery of a transportation product (project or service). Traditionally, private sector participation has been limited to separate planning, design or construction contracts on a fee-for-service basis to deliver the product according to the public agency's designs and specifications. As demonstrated in past research and practice, there are several advantages associated with PPPs that can be tapped to enhance product delivery in the highway sector. However, as stewards of public assets, public agencies need to back any decision to enter a PPP arrangement, with justification that is defensible, comprehensive, and transparent. At the current time, most agencies do not have a set of rational guidelines to help decide, for a given project, whether to adopt PPP and which type of PPP to adopt. A decision support framework is then needed to help highway agencies choose the best innovative PPP contracting approach under a given set of project attributes. It is desired that the best approach should be selected on the basis of criteria whose relative weights can be adjusted by the decision-maker, thus indicating the need for flexibility in the decision support framework. Also, it is useful for any such framework to be demonstrated using at least one evaluation criterion. This study first develops a multiple criteria evaluation framework for contracting approach selection, and then uses cost savings as the evaluation criterion in a case study to demonstrate the contracting approach evaluation framework. To estimate the cost savings associated with each contracting approach, the study uses statistical and econometric techniques to model the empirical statistical relationships between cost savings on one hand, and the characteristics of contracts on the other hand.