Recent experience in the utilization of private finance for American toll road development

Restricted until 10 May. 2011.The last two decades have seen increasing interest in utilizing private finance to develop toll roads in the United States. This dissertation is designed to answer two related questions: What factors determine the utilization of private finance for a toll road project? How do public and private parties shape a partnership to develop a toll road with private finance? To answer the first question, a decision-making model is designed to consider social, political, legal, and economic influences on the decision of utilization of private finance. The model is empirically explored using data on toll road activity in the U.S. between 1992 and 2008. The results provide support for the model as both project characteristics at micro-level and state fiscal, political, and economic conditions at macro-level affect the private finance decision. For project characteristics, initiation at a later time and localized or professionalized public sponsorship reduce the likelihood of private finance involvement. For macro environment, states with an umbrella debt limit, conservative political ideology, higher proportion of public employees, and higher average personal income are more likely to utilize private finance for toll road development.; For the second question, the dissertation develops a formation model that considers partner selection, division of roles, joint risk management, and building of trust and mutual understanding as four critical components of partnership formation. The model is empirically explored through a multiple-case study that contains eight toll road projects with private finance involvement initiated after the late 1980s in the U.S. The findings show there are two types of partnership formation: government-solicitation partnership and private-initiation partnership. The four components of partnership have had significant changes in the last 20 years, including a transition from self-motivated domestic companies to foreign professional toll road giants in response to government initiatives, increasing support from federal and state governments, greatly improved management of project risks, and effective trust creation and mutual understanding building. These changes in partnership have led to changes in project contracts, such as more projects for the purpose of congestion relief, larger project scale, new contract terms for protection of the public interest, and longer concession periods