The 1990s saw an increase in the liberalisation of transport policies and a strengthening of the role of private operators and investors in transport infrastructure worldwide. The search for sustained improvement in efficiency is probably secondary to the need to find additional financing, but it is improvement in services that is at the core of the new role of the government in transport. Governments must now become fair economic regulators of many of the privately operated transport services and infrastructures. This book examines the major challenges that governments are likely to face in taking on their new role in transport.

"Learning to regulate fairly, effectively, and at arm's length may be the main challenge governments face in attracting private investment and financing to the transport sector"--Cover.

Learning to regulate fair ...

Although the link between improved infrastructure services and economic growth is uncertain, it is clear that reforms aimed at creating competition and regulating natural monopolies establish an environment conducive to private sector participation, incentives for companies to strive for efficiency savings that can ultimately be passed on to consumers, and greater provision of services (such as faster roll-out of infrastructure or innovative solutions to service delivery for customers not connected to an existing network). In determining the form that infrastructure restructuring might undertake or the design of a regulatory agency, policymakers can generally benefit from a review of the experiences of other countries. A key element of any decisionmaking process should be a review of how the various types of reform will affect the efficiency of the sector and whether they will increase private financing of its significant investment needs.

This overview of issues that regulators should be aware of in demand forecasting discusses challenges that come with the decision to privatize transport, the perverse incentives introduced when privatization teams use strategic demand forecasts to evaluate assets, the most common problems with demand forecasting, the reasons that demand forecasting matters, and how to think about demand forecasting in the context of regulation.

"Argentina's policy for reform of the transport sector has been a mix of competition in the market and, through concessions, for the market. Capacity has increased, demand has grown, and prices and services have improved. Public financing has not been eliminated but it has been drastically reduced"--Cover.

In the last decade many countries turned to private sources to provide services formerly offered by public agencies. Europeans, particularly the British and the French, were leaders in this movement. Developing countries also experimented extensively with privatization in the 1980s, with varying degrees of success. Because governments around the world are heavily involved in transportation, it is a natural focus of privatization experiments and in many ways has been at the cutting edge. Going Private examines the diverse privatization experiences of transportation services and facilities. Cases are drawn from the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Since almost every country has experimented to some degree with highway and bus privatization, the authors focus particularly on these services, although they also discuss urban rail transit and airports. Highways and buses, they explain, encompass all three of the most common and basic forms of privatization: the sale of an existing state-owned enterprise; use of private, rather than public, financing and management for new infrastructure development; and contracting out to private vendors public services previously provided by government employees. After thoroughly examining these services and discussing the motives for, and objections to, privatization, the authors look at the prospects for privatization in other sectors and industries. They assess those circumstances in which privatization is most likely to succeed and those in which it is most likely to fail, for political as well as economic reasons. The authors conclude that privatization involves many political and social as well as economic dimensions. Privatization is usually not simply a matter of efficiency improvements or capital augmentation but also involves such deeply imbedded societal concerns as equity, income transfers, environmental problems, and attitudes toward taxation and the role of government.

This book provides evolutionary and institutional perspectives on the reform of infrastructure industries, tracing the development of this process in a number of sectors and countries. The contributors contend that infrastructure based industries such as telecommunications, public transport, water management and energy have been increasingly exposed to the dynamism of the market since becoming privatized, and have therefore been stimulated into short-term efficiency and long-term innovation. Drawing on institutional economic theory backed up with case studies such as the California energy crisis, the Dutch gas industry, oil and electricity companies in Spain and the privatization of Schipol airport in Amsterdam the book focuses on process, driving forces, and actors' roles to explain how new balances are established between competing institutions. The degree to which the processes of institutional change are predictable and the effects of deliberate strategic interventions of governments or private actors are explored. Specific technical and sector aspects and their influence on institutional change in various infrastructures are also discussed.

This book examines the major aspects of the relationship between government and the private sector in the provision of high quality, sustainable, and affordable privately funded infrastructure projects. The form of this partnership is often seen as a major determinant of the project risk distribution among the various parties involved, and will thus be crucial in attracting both high quality developers/operators and external institutional funding.

02 This book is based on a seminar held at Oxford University in September 1997. It took place following the election of the first Labour government for 17 years and following the announcement of the consultation process leading up the publication of a Transport White Paper. The seminar sought to address the somewhat contradictory situation of a government of the left inheriting a transport industry largely privatized and deregulated, but unwilling to commit itself either to the expense of re-nationalization or to finding the large sums of money needed for investment in public infrastructure and facilities. The debate reflects views on the legacy of the previous administration and on the challenges facing the new government. The chapters contain a mix of expert academic, regulatory body and industry viewpoints on bus, freight, airline and train industries. Most, but not all, start from an economic regulation perspective. This book is based on a seminar held at Oxford University in September 1997. It took place following the election of the first Labour government for 17 years and following the announcement of the consultation process leading up the publication of a Transport White Paper. The seminar sought to address the somewhat contradictory situation of a government of the left inheriting a transport industry largely privatized and deregulated, but unwilling to commit itself either to the expense of re-nationalization or to finding the large sums of money needed for investment in public infrastructure and facilities. The debate reflects views on the legacy of the previous administration and on the challenges facing the new government. The chapters contain a mix of expert academic, regulatory body and industry viewpoints on bus, freight, airline and train industries. Most, but not all, start from an economic regulation perspective.