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P3s Focus of Panel Discussion on Capitol Hill; Congressional Public Transportation Caucus Convenes Experts
BY PATRICIA DOERSCH, APTA Legislative Counsel
Michael Schneider, senior vice president, HDR/InfraConsult, and chair of APTA’s Public-Private Partnerships Committee, recently moderated a panel on Capitol Hill that explored some of the critical questions related to public transportation’s public-private partnerships.
Reps. Daniel Lipinski (D-IL) and Michael Grimm (R-NY), co-chairs of the Congressional Public Transportation Caucus, brought together the panel of representatives from business, public transit agencies, and organized labor.
Specifically, the panel focused on the challenges and advantages of public-private partnerships for both private- and public-sector organizations when delivering—and, in some cases, financing, operating, and maintaining—complex public transportation projects. The panelists addressed a number of strategic questions:
Why are there so few public transit P3s?
In the U.S., relatively few public transit capital projects have been delivered to date via P3s, due in part to interface challenges for new projects within existing systems. Where new, discrete rail service is established, private-sector partners may be better able to control and therefore accept performance and revenue risks. Given the enormous backlog of system preservation needs for aging U.S. public transit systems, this interface issue remains a potential hurdle.
What can or should the federal government do to support expedited project delivery via P3s?
From the perspective of organized labor, when operations and maintenance responsibilities lie with the private sector, caution is needed to ensure that performance penalties and bonuses do not undermine safe, high-quality public transit service.
While there is some support for a national P3 unit, similar to PPP Canada, to make incentive grants to P3 projects in the U.S., other experts believe DOT already has the tools it needs to support private investment, e.g., via TIFIA and private activity bonds, and should not overreach.
How can we ensure the public interest is protected in P3s?
A transparent, open, and competitive bid process is essential. The public agency must make clear its public policy goals from the outset and embed them in the concession agreement. Private sector partners do not want to make policy decisions; they want to implement the clearly defined policy goals of their public sector partner.
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