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.
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.
Una guia para reguladores.Hacer que el sector privado se convierta en un agente mas activo ha sido la parte mas facil de la reforma del transporte. Conseguir que los gobiernos asuman de forma efectiva su nuevo papel como reguladores va a ser probablemente un reto mas dificil. En muchos casos, la existencia de empresas dominantes no va a notarse unicamente en su capacidad de subir los precios, sino en otras dimensiones como la limitacion a la entrada de competidores; por eso las politicas publicas deberan ir orientadas a evitar practicas predatorias y anticopetitivas. El objetivo de este libro es ayudar a los gobiernos a aprender a asumir estas nuevas tareas.Este trabajo se ha beneficiado de los comentarios y la experiencia de numerosos participantes en los cursos sobre regulacion del transporte que el Instituto del Banco Mundial ha organizado en varias ocasiones.
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.
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.
Privatization began in the 1970s with Carter's deregulation of some business, and increased with the Thatcher administration in the United Kingdom, the Reagan administration in the United States, and many communist and socialist countries. One area of concern in privatization is transportation—airports, water ports, roads, and mass transit. Privatization can be implemented in financing, construction, operation, and maintenance of the transportation system, the main motives being the belief that the private sector can be more efficient than the public sector, and because public funds are becoming less plentiful for a variety of reasons. The focus is on ideas and innovations for expanding the private role in transportation. Specifically covered are ideas and innovations for expanding the role of private sector in U.S. transportation projects, private financing of urban transportation, airport privatization, water port improvement, toll roads, and competitive contracting for transit services. The distinguished list of contributors includes the co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Economics, William Vickrey. The audience for the work are scholars dealing with the discussions concerning the economics and politics of privatization, business people who are likely to be interested in potential opportunities, governmental regulators and staff, and policy makers.
