General Framework for Evaluating Long-Term Leasing of Toll Roads
The long-term leasing of toll roads, a type of public–private partnership (PPP), has been attracting the attention of state governments since the two landmark cases of the Chicago Skyway in Illinois and the Indiana Toll Road in 2005 and 2006, respectively. To assist public agencies in making appropriate decisions to enter PPP agreements that are in the best interest of taxpayers, this paper presents a general framework for evaluating the long-term leasing of toll roads and investigates the two main criteria in the decision-making process: economic efficiency of privatization and the protection of public interest. The economic efficiency of PPPs is also analyzed with an uncertainty-based net present value method, which is demonstrated with a case study of the lease of the Indiana Toll Road. The analysis with Monte Carlo simulation demonstrates that over the analysis period, a public agency is not likely to gain as much benefit from the up-front payment lease amount as from that of continued in-house management of the toll road. The following analyses are conducted: a sensitivity analysis of revenue and cost factors and a break-even analysis to examine and establish the conditions under which the public agency could obtain as much benefit from continued in-house management of the toll road as the agency received from the privatization of the toll road. Finally, the actions taken by Indiana officials to protect the interest of its citizens and toll road users are discussed.