Failure Analysis: 91 Express Lanes Project - Business Development

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the 91 Express Lanes project failure. It examines the project's background, including its categorization as a high-occupancy toll lane and its public-private partnership structure. The core of the analysis focuses on the reasons for the project's failure, primarily attributing it to the complexities and conflicting motives inherent in public-private partnerships. The report highlights issues such as clashes in ideas, delays in construction, budget overruns, poor governance, loss of customer trust, and market competition. It also emphasizes the role of poor project management. The conclusion reinforces the argument that the public-private partnership model, coupled with inadequate management, was the primary cause of the project's failure, suggesting that better management practices could have led to a successful outcome. The report references several academic sources to support its claims.

Running head: FAILURE OF THE PROJECT- 91 EXPRESS LANES
FAILURE OF THE PROJECT- 91 EXPRESS LANES
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author note

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FAILURE OF THE PROJECT- 91 EXPRESS LANES
Introduction
State various route 91 or SR 91 is one of the major east-west state highways in the
United States. This highway serves regions of the Greater Los Angeles. The 91 Express
Lanes are 29 km in length and are categorized under the high occupancy toll lanes (Göçmen,
Phillips & van Ryzin, 2015). The project is a joint work of public and private firms. In this
paper, the probable reason for the failure of the project will be analyzed.
Reasons for failure
The main reason behind the failure of the project is public-private partnership. It is the
responsibility of the public sector firms to provide basic transportation infrastructure. The
concept of public ownership points to establishment of welfare state but now-a-days, Public-
private ownership models are popular in case of public infrastructure delivery and these
models are being considered as an alternative to the public sector as they provide value for
money (Soomro & Zhang, 2016). The project of 91 Express Lanes was also a public-private
venture and this is the major reason why it failed. In public-private partnership, it can be said
that both partners though working for same goal have different motives. On one hand the
public firm’s motive is to provide a welfare state and on the other hand the motive of the
private firm is profit maximization. Two different motives give rise to clashes in ideas that in
turn have a drastic effect on decision making. There are various other risk sources in public-
private partnership such as delays in construction, increase in the budget, politics, lack of
cooperation and economic environment (South, Eriksson & Levitt, 2018). Specifically in case
of transportation cases such as 91 Express Lanes, public-private partnership showed that
many different problems can be encountered while proceeding with the venture. The main
problems were uncertainties in the market, sociopolitical risks and lastly errors done by
humans involved in the project. Many number of project partners in the project increased the

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FAILURE OF THE PROJECT- 91 EXPRESS LANES
complexity making it difficult to take decisions. Clashes in ideas led to delays in the
construction thus adding to the planned cost or the initial budget of the project. Poor
governance led to slow progress in the project and thus can be attributed for the failure of the
same. Another major thing that had an impact on the project was loss of customer’s trust that
in turn resulted in low demand for traffic thereby generating less revenue (South, Levitt &
Dewulf, 2015). The project was not capable to face the market competition and thus failed as
a whole.
Conclusion
The discussion made above, clearly reveals that the public-private partnership was the
reason behind the failure of the 91 Express Lanes project. The lack of proper project
managers was definitely a cause for the failure. The different motives of the partners and not
sticking to the initially decided budget and time are some of the result of this partnership.
Thus, it can be said that the project could have been a success only if the management would
have been done properly.

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FAILURE OF THE PROJECT- 91 EXPRESS LANES
References
Göçmen, C., Phillips, R., & van Ryzin, G. (2015). Revenue maximizing dynamic tolls for
managed lanes: A simulation study.
Soomro, M. A., & Zhang, X. (2016). Evaluation of the functions of public sector partners in
transportation public-private partnerships failures. Journal of Management in
Engineering, 32(1), 04015027.
South, A. J., Levitt, R. E., & Dewulf, G. P. (2015). Dynamic stakeholder networks and the
governance of PPPs.
South, A., Eriksson, K., & Levitt, R. (2018). How infrastructure public–private partnership
projects change over project development phases. Project management journal, 49(4),
62-80.