PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS FOR TRANSIT INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS

Running head: PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS FOR TRANSIT INFRASTRUCTURE
PROJECTS HAVE BEEN CONTROVERSIAL
Public-private partnerships for transit infrastructure projects have been controversial
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PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS FOR TRANSIT INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS
HAVE BEEN CONTROVERSIAL
Introduction:
The paper addresses the use of “public private partnership for transit infrastructure
projects and the controversies involved in such partnership with particular references to
the country Canada”. The transport infrastructure of Canada requires desperate improvement
and this calls for the development of infrastructure. In this regard, Canadians have not been
well served from the conventional process of infrastructural development due to history of
time delays and cost overrun. An alternative to the conventional process is the public private
partnership and such partnership can be defined as the agreement between all the private and
public sector sharing the tasks and responsibilities of delivering infrastructure along with
sharing the reward and risk. Such partnership have been aggressively pursued by many
nations to address the challenge associated with the public provision of infrastructure (Bian,
2016). However, the method of procuring infrastructure has been criticized on several
grounds along with various benefits offered by the public private partnership (PPP). The
objective of this paper is to discuss and present the various controversies or the concern
associated with such partnerships with some instances from Canada.
Discussion:
Public private partnership shifting rationales has always been dubious and the false
economics of such partnership has been exposed by the financial crisis in number of ways.
The claim that risk can be managed better by the private sector compared to public sector
does not have any foundation. Virtually, justification of PPP in Canada has been done on the
ground that a significant portion of risk is transferred to the private sector. However, it is
indicated by the growing list in the country that such partnership is more costly to the public
and is more risky. It is claimed by the proponents that the projects under PPP could be less
expensive, but it was proved wrong due to little transparency, delay and string of failures

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PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS FOR TRANSIT INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS
HAVE BEEN CONTROVERSIAL
(Hueskes et al. 2017
).
There has been cumulative plan and completion of the transportation projects in
Canada and the country has completed 59.5 such projects domestically between 1985 to
2013. The main location for the transportation PPP in Canada is Ontario and British
Columbia. It is revealed by the data analysis of the report that the notable transportation trend
of Canada is the involvement of the projects in the private sector funding and undertaking of
more PPP transportation projects. It has been ascertained that the failure of the project
involving PPP in the country is due to the missing out on the critical success factor.
With the growing popularity of the transportation PPP in country such as Canada, the
concern of the community about the creeping privatization has resulted in facing stiff
opposition. In addition to it, controversies over the loss of accountability and democratic
input on the critical infrastructure decisions and long term loss of control of public over key
public assets also forms some of the challenges being faced in the transit infrastructure PPP.
In Canada, public private partnerships are being increasingly used to deliver the projects of
public transit. This rise of the public transit using PPP has been made particularly possible
due to increasing public expenditure on the infrastructure of public nationwide. It is important
for the public authority to seamlessly integrate the transit projects using PPP (Monk et al.,
2019).

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PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS FOR TRANSIT INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS
HAVE BEEN CONTROVERSIAL
The controversies of the public private partnership in the infrastructure projects would
be discussed in reference to the specific attention paid by them to the governance questions. It
has become essential to address the gap of lacking good governance in such partnership for
the vast majority of nations and also for the nations with established procedures ad
institutions. Numerous benefits are offered by the public private partnership such as new
technology, additional resources, customer satisfaction and speedier delivery and most of the
types of infrastructure. Nevertheless, implementation of public private partnership is faced
with several challenges as it requires establishment and development of political
commitment, strong regulatory and legal framework and effective public administration. In
transition economies, one of the essential components sustaining the economic performance
is good governance (Loxley & Hajer, 2019). Contrary to this, slow economic development
and poor governance tends to reinforce each other. Apart from the benefits offered by such
system of producing infrastructure, there are concerns about the PPP that needs to be
discussed.