Category: RéaltaCore

Elyse Maltin, Harvard Business Review, January 08, 2019

Despite spending $2.5 trillion a year on roads, railways, ports, water, and other public infrastructure projects, countries around the world are still falling far short of what they need to invest, according to one estimate. Thus, it’s no surprise that there is renewed interest in public-private partnership (P3) projects, where businesses supplement public investment in return for reaping rewards such as tolls and fees. The White House, for one, suggests using private investments to fund most of its proposed $1.5 trillion in U.S. infrastructure spending.

But many P3 projects go off the rails. For example, a European Union review of nine such projects launched between 2000 and 2014 found seven were late and over budget. A U.S. interstate highway project near Indianapolis was found to be 51% over budget and two years past the proposed completion date. These highly publicized travails not only make P3 projects a public nuisance (or more), they create big political hurdles to overcome the next time a much-needed infrastructure project requires outside funding.

Find the complete article here . . .