Do Public Private Partnerships improve road safety?

Abstract

Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) are mostly implemented for three reasons: to circumvent budgetary constraints, encourage efficiency and improvement of quality in the provision of public infrastructure. One of the ways of reaching the latter objective is by the introduction of performance-based standards tied to bonuses and penalties to reward or punish the performance of the contractor. One of the most important indicators adopted are defined in terms of the safety performance of the road. The aim of this paper is to identify whether the incentives to improve road safety in PPPs are ultimately effective in improving safety ratios. To that end we have calibrated several econometric models using information of toll motorways in Spain. We found that, even though road safety is highly influenced by variables that are not much controllable by the contractor such as the Average Annual Daily Traffic and the percentage of heavy vehicles in the motorway, the implementation of safety incentives in PPPs has a positive influence in the reduction of fatalities, injuries and accidents.