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July 2000 - This guide to the issues at stake when toll roads are privatized answers many questions that privatization teams and regulators should be asking-providing useful information to project specialists, many of whom are now learning how much they did not know when they started. Road transport has long been the dominant form of transport for freight and passenger movement throughout the world. Because most road projects require investments with long amortization periods and because many projects do not generate enough demand to become self-financing through some type of user fee or toll, the road sector remains in the hands of the public sector to a much greater extent than other transport activities. But governments throughout the world, including those of many poor African and South Asian countries, are commercializing their operations to cut costs, improve user orientation, and increase sector-specific revenue. There seems to be demand for toll roads in specific settings, but the problems met by many of this first generation of road concessions-from Mexico to Thailand-have given toll projects a bad reputation. Many mistakes were made, and tolling is obviously not the best solution for every road. Most of the alternatives aim at improving efficiency (lowering costs). But there are many ways of getting the private sector involved in toll roads, thus reducing public sector financing requirements for the sector. Understanding the context in which toll roads are viable is essential both for their initial success and for effective long-run regulation. Estache, Romero, and Strong provide a broad overview of issues at stake from the viewpoint of both privatization teams and regulators responsible for supervising contractual commitments of private operators and the government, to each other and to users. This paper-a product of Governance, Regulation, and Finance, World Bank Institute-is part of a larger effort in the institute to increase understanding of infrastructure regulation. The authors may be contacted at aestache@worldbank.org or jstrong@worldbank.org

Arterial Roads --- Costs --- Demand For Road Transport --- Freight --- Highway --- Highway Systems --- Investments --- Piers --- Rail --- Road --- Road Projects --- Road Sector --- Road Transport --- Toll --- Toll Road --- Toll Roads --- Traffic --- Transport --- Transport Activities --- Transport Economics, Policy and Planning --- Urban Roads --- Vehicles

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While most economists assume that aid is fungible, most aid donors behave as if it is not. The authors study recipient government responses to development project aid in the context of a specific World Bank-financed project. They estimate the impact of a rural road rehabilitation project in Vietnam on the kilometers of roads actually rehabilitated and built. Using local-level survey data collected for this purpose, the authors test whether the evidence supports the standard economic argument that there will be little or no impact on rural roads rehabilitated, given fungibility. They find evidence that, although project aid impacts on rehabilitated road kilometers were less than intended, more roads were built in project areas. The results suggest that there was fungibility within the sector, but that aid largely stuck to that sector.

Communities & Human Settlements --- Costs --- Grants --- Housing and Human Habitats --- Infrastructure --- Inspection --- Length of Roads --- Ministry of Transport --- Motor Vehicle --- Road --- Road Building --- Road Improvements --- Road Links --- Road Maintenance --- Road Network --- Road Sector --- Roads --- Rural Roads --- Rural Transport --- Tax --- Taxes --- Transport --- Transport Economics, Policy and Planning

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Economic development is affected by infrastructure services in both volume and quality terms. However, the quality of infrastructure is relatively difficult to measure and assess. The current paper, using firm-level data collected by a business environment assessment survey in 26 countries in Europe and Central Asia, estimates the marginal impacts on firm costs of infrastructure quality. The results suggest that the reliability or continuity of services is important for business performance. Firm costs significantly increase when electricity outages occur more frequently and the average outage duration becomes longer. Similarly, increased hours of water supply suspensions also reduce firms' competitiveness. In these countries, it is found that the total benefit for the economy from eliminating the existing electricity outages ranges from 0.5 to 6 percent of gross domestic product. If all water suspensions are removed, the economy could receive a gain of about 0.5 to 2 percent of gross domestic product. By contrast, the quality of telecommunications services seems to have no significant impact.

Communities & Human Settlements --- Driving --- Elasticity --- Infrastructure development --- Infrastructure Economics --- Infrastructure Economics and Finance --- Infrastructure investment --- Private Participation in Infrastructure --- Private Sector Development --- Road --- Road quality --- Road sector --- Roads --- Town Water Supply and Sanitation --- Transport --- Transport Economics, Policy and Planning --- Transportation --- Transportation costs --- Urban Slums Upgrading --- Water Supply and Sanitation