The Chicago-Kansas City Tollway: Lessons for Future Projects and Policy

by Steven A. Steckler, Price Waterhouse, United States,



Document Type: Proceeding Paper

Part of: Engineering and Business: Converting Engineers to Businessmen

Abstract:

The paper discusses an innovative mixed public-private financing plan and implementation plan for an investor-owned toll road connecting Chicago and Kansas City. The two plans utilize revenues from non-highway uses of the right of way, special cost-reduction measures and legislative and regulatory innovations. The new legal, regulatory, and financial analysis ground covered in the study supports several conclusions applicable in other projects and public policy deliberations. They include: the national impact of the bias toward public ownership in the local cost of capital; how to mix public and private financing in the same infrastructure project; why significant government involvement is an aid rather than a burden in privatization projects; the case against traditional rate of return regulation for tollways; the role of exotic or volatile revenue sources in infrastructure financing; and the impact of bias in federal transportation grant programs.

Subject Headings: Public private partnership | Public policy | Tolls | Financing | Urban areas | Urban and regional development | Systems engineering | United States | Chicago | Illinois | Kansas

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