Road infrastructure in appropriate conditions is a requirement for the development of any country. The formulation of policies oriented to preserve road networks responds to political, socio-economic, and environmental interests. Through a hybrid methodology that integrates system dynamics (SD) and analytic hierarchical process (AHP) approaches, this paper compares some strategies employed in the development of sustainable road maintenance policies in Colombia. Using a hypothetical case study of a national road network, a set of maintenance policy alternatives are evaluated through the SD model in order to analyze the evolution of road conditions, and quantify costs and emissions. Then, a multi-criteria evaluation is performed applying the AHP methodology. Results show that in the Colombian context, decision-making processes regarding maintenance policies are highly influenced by economic factors, which lead to short-term strategies such as performing corrective maintenance over predictive maintenance. However, further analysis demonstrates that predictive maintenance allows the road network to remain in good conditions. Simultaneously, roadways in adequate conditions contribute to mitigate the environmental impact, because CO₂ emissions are directly related to the interventions performed to preserve these roads. The proposed methodology can be used as a support tool to formulate maintenance policies that consider the long-term effects at the technical, environmental, and economic levels.

Public–Private Partnership (PPP) programs have been developed widely for more than 30 years across the world. The continuity of these programs depends on an adequate balance of three-dimensional sustainability (i.e., economic, environmental, and social). Nevertheless, social sustainability has been demonstrated as being fragile because of the challenges to achieving the intended social legitimacy in PPP programs. This study aims to understand key challenges in achieving social legitimacy in road PPP programs by analyzing contractual clauses, legal frameworks, and stakeholders’ interviews of two toll road PPP programs in Chile and Colombia. Three key challenges to social legitimacy were found: social involvement issues, distrust between impacted and responsible stakeholders, and lack of social criteria within toll tariff policy. Findings reveal that it is required to move beyond current consultation mechanisms and thoroughly involve the impacted groups as a relevant stakeholder typology in order to maximize value creation in user-pay PPP programs. In line with that, this study exposes that the claim of previous research for developing relational governance between the public and the private sectors is not enough for overcoming governance limitations and addressing social legitimacy in user-pay PPPs. It is also necessary to enhance relational governance in a triadic approach. This study contributes to the PPP body of knowledge by redirecting the discussion from overall legitimacy to social legitimacy challenges and by including the impacted stakeholders in the analysis of PPP governance mechanisms.

Risk allocation plays a crucial role in the successful development of public-private partnership (PPP) projects. However, despite being an important topic for scholars and practitioners, the existing literature does not provide sufficient evidence on how managing risks in solicited (SP) and unsolicited (USP) road PPP projects, and subsequently, on what the sustainability implications are for such managerial processes. This study aims to extend risk allocation studies by analyzing contracts in Chilean highway PPPs over the last decade based on a systematic content analysis framework and case study data. The framework was developed through line-by-line coding of contract provisions associated with risk-related issues, and data were collected from semi-structured interviews with Chilean PPP practitioners. Results show that, although the majority of risks are either shared or transferred to the private party in most contracts, there are important variations in the way allocation procedures are implemented for SPs and USPs. Contracts analyzed revealed that risk arrangement mechanisms have usually focused on the economic dimension of sustainability without fully incorporating social and environmental considerations, increasing protests in the long-term. Conclusions indicate that risk allocation procedures and sustainability considerations are highly dependent on project-specific features and contextual factors. Overall, the analysis uncovers that the level of autonomy given to the private sector in both SPs and USPs has contributed to properly manage technical and economic risks, but has failed to successfully allocate social and environmental concerns.

For several decades, governments around the world have increasingly used public–private partnerships (PPPs) to improve the road infrastructure sectors in their jurisdictions. In response, research has examined the managerial and organizational methods associated with PPP procurement processes. Although the PPP body of knowledge continues to grow, the functioning of special purpose vehicles (SPVs) formed to pursue PPP projects, particularly the relationships among SPV equity investors, remains largely unexplored. Building on concepts from the PPP and social network analysis (SNA) domains, the main goal of this study is to examine the patterns of behavior associated with SPV equity investors participating in the PPP tendering processes. The methodology uses data from public and proprietary databases to examine the networks of relationships among PPP equity providers within the road infrastructure sectors in Canada, Chile, and the United States over the last 26 years. The main outcome of this analysis is a characterization of the PPP equity markets in these three countries. Results show that PPP investors seemingly exhibit collaboration-based connections in the Canadian network, competition-based relationships in the Chilean market, and a combination of competition and collaboration features in the US network. Conclusions suggest that, despite their differences, the PPP networks studied are complex and self-organizing structures that exhibit preferential attachment mechanisms between central and peripheral players. Future studies are suggested to add insight on the ways that PPP markets and SPVs mutually influence one another and affect project performance.

The traditional techniques employed in the development of road infrastructure projects consume large amounts of energy and nonrenewable resources. This paper evaluates some consequences of roadway construction and maintenance processes by comparing the expenditures and emissions generated by both traditional techniques and more sustainable alternatives. Using a system dynamics (SD) approach, this study presents a model capable of reproducing the deterioration processes of the Chilean road network and calculating the carbon emissions and costs associated with pavement-related interventions. Results of a counterfactual analysis suggest that employing sustainable practices in maintenance and rehabilitation activities has a greater impact on costs and emissions than exclusively focusing on the use of green techniques in new construction projects. It also shows that road network conditions can be improved if higher priority is given to road maintenance rather than rehabilitation. The proposed model can be used as a tool to develop infrastructure policies and opens the door to further research focused on green interventions for existing road networks worldwide.

The emergence of public–private partnerships (PPPs) over the last few decades has prompted multiple literature reviews of the PPP body of knowledge. However, these studies typically report thematic classifications and bibliometric data. Based on the concept of governance, this paper takes a systems approach to synthesize evidence around complexities of the shaping phase of road PPPs. The approach employs a textual analysis of road PPP case studies reported in archival papers listed in Scopus and Web of Science between 1997 and 2018 and uses the system dynamics method to provide a holistic view, synthesizing major insights and layout interdependencies across financial, operational, and sociopolitical variables. The outcome of this endeavor is a systems map, which helps consolidate varying evidence from the past cases, and goes beyond a narrow focus on single causes of governance issues in road PPPs. Results show that, although no silver bullet exists for PPP governance problems, reaching satisfactory feasibility levels in the shaping phase is enabled most by having government agencies highly capable of dealing with procurement issues and generating attractive projects to the private sector. The map provides a synopsis of the relationships (the forest) as well as insights into the variables (the trees) behind PPP shaping efforts.