For a World Bank Institute course on transport privatization, the authors cover basic issues associated with the regulation of privatized airport infrastructure and services: 1) Economic characteristics of airport. Three types of activities are carried out in airports: essential operational...

The relevance of transport costs has increased as liberalization continues to reduce artificial barriers to trade. Countries need to adopt policies to get closer to global markets. Can improvements in infrastructure and regulation reduce transport costs? Is it worthwhile to implement policies...

Roughly 16,000 buses serve the 16 million inhabitants of the Sao Paulo Metropolitan Region; 12,000 of them serve the Sao Paulo municipality itself, where 8.5 million people live. Congestion is heavy at peak travel times, and traffic signal timing logic favors the flow of automobiles. Bus...

The authors describe how Sao Paulo State granted a 20-year concession for operating a busway, one requirement for which was that the concessionaire replace the diesel bus operation with electric traction (trolleys). This was not a"greenfield concession"but is probably the only"busway"concession...

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...

To increase investment in infrastructure, in the early 1990s Chile's government introduced private capital into the transport infrastructure sector, covering roads and highways, bridges, tunnels, and airports. The chosen mechanism: a concession scheme through which private firms would finance...

Cargo handling in ports is a multioutput activity, as freight can arrive in many forms such as containers, bulk, rolling stock, or noncontainerized general cargo. In this paper Tovar, Jara-D?, and Trujillo analyze the operation of port terminals through the estimation of a multioutput cost model...

The author examines how rural road investment projects should be selected and appraised when the objective is poverty reduction. After critically reviewing past and current practices, the author develops an operational approach grounded in a public economics framework in which concerns of equity...

The main challenge of the transition has been to redefine how the state interacts with firms, but little attention has been paid to the flip side of the relationship : how firms influence the state - especially how they exert influence on, and collude with public officials to extract advantages....

The author describes a bold effort by the state government to increase private sector participation in Rio de Janeiro's urban transport sector, reduce heavy operating subsidies, and establish a foundation for making the sector sustainable. This effort was undertaken with the help of three World...