Designing Transit Concession Contracts to Deal with Uncertainty by MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE Tara Naomi Chin Blakey OF TECHNOLOGY B.S., Civil Engineering (2004) ARE62009 University of Florida LIBRARIES Submitted to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Transportation at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY June 2006 ©2006 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved Signature of Author............ ... Civil and Environmental Engineering May 26, 2006 Certified by.......................... ............ Prof Nigel H. M. Wilson Professor of Civil aid Environmental Engineering - The1 is Supervisor Accepted by.............................................. And? 4. Whittle Chairman, Department Committee on Graduate Studies 1 BARKER Designing Transit Concession Contracts to Deal with Uncertainty By Tara Naomi Chin Blakey Submitted to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering On May 25, 2006 in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Transportation ABSTRACT This thesis proposes a performance regime structure for public transit concession contracts, designed so incentives to the concessionaire can be effective given significant uncertainty about the future operating conditions. This is intended to aid agencies in designing regimes that will encourage continually improving performance through the use of relevant and adaptive incentives. The proposed incentives are adjusted annually based on actual circumstances. An adaptive regime can also allow the incentives to be more cost and resource efficient and is especially well-suited to so-called "gross-cost" contracts when the public agency retains the fare revenue and absorbs the revenue risk for the services. The motivation for this research is the anticipated transfer of the oversight responsibilities for the Silverlink Metro regional rail services, in outer London, from the UK Department for Transport to Transport for London. This new service will undergo substantial infrastructure and service upgrades in the next several years and an innovative operating contract is required to maintain and improve service levels during this transitional period. The Proposed performance regime is composed of two major components: 1. A "bundled" set of specific performance measures based on which the concessionaire can earn annual bonuses or incur penalties based on a set of adaptive targets; and 2. An excess revenue and/or ridership incentive which is designed to capture all of the intangible actions that a concessionaire can bring to bear to produce more effective service. Together these components should encourage concessionaires to improve upon the major aspects of service under their control as well as pay close attention to strategies which can alter the quality and effectiveness of service. Additionally, the performance regime proposed is expected to provide efficient incentives so that a better overall outcome for the public will result. Thesis Supervisor: Nigel H. M. Wilson Title: Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering 2 Contents C hapter 1: Introd uction ........................................................................... 8 1.1 Background 8 1.2 Objectives 13 1.3 Contracting for North London Railway Service 14 1.3.1 Background 14 1.3.2 Responsibility Allocation 17 1.4 Approach 18 1.5 Organization of Thesis 19 Chapter 2: Basics of Concession Contracts................................................ 21 2.1 Risk and Resposibility Allocation 21 2.2 Alternative Contract Structures 23 2.3 A Theoretical Approach to Structuring Incentive Contracts 25 2.4 The Elements of a Performance Regime 27 2.4.1 Performance Measures 28 2.4.2 Performance Level Target 30 2.4.3 Performance Target Dates 31 2.4.4 Bonuses & Penalties 31 2.4.5 Regime Specification 32 2.5 Performance Measures for the North London Railway 32 2.6 Differences Between Bus and Rail 33 Chapter 3: Case Studies of Current Practice in Concession Contracts.............. 35 3.1 Melbourne 36 3.1.1 Nature of the System 38 3.1.2 Organizational Structure 39 3.1.3 Performance Regime 40 3.1.4 Analysis and Conclusions 45 3.2 Copenhagen 47 3.2.1 Nature of the System 48 3.2.2 Organizational Structure 49 3.2.3 Performance Regime 50 3 3.2.4 Analysis and Conclusions 54 3.3 London 57 3.3.1 Nature of the System 58 3.3.2 Organizational Structure 59 3.3.3 Performance Regime 60 3.3.4 Analysis and Conclusions 62 3.4 General Findings 65 3.5 Potential Performance Regime Structures for the NLR 67 3.6 Desired Characteristics of Performance Regime 70 Chapter 4: The Proposed Performance Regime........................................... 74 4.1 Specific Performance Measures 75 4.1.1 Default, Initial, and Maximum Thresholds 76 4.1.2 The Adaptive Process 77 4.1.3 "Floors" and "Ceilings" for the Penalty and Incentive Levels 81 4.1.4 Calculation of Payments 83 4.1.5 Incentive and Penalty Pools and Weights 93 4.1.6 Restarting Target Setting 96 4.2 The Ridership/Revenue Incentive 96 Chapter 5: Implementation of the Proposed Regime..................................... 101 5.1 Contract Design 101 5.1.2 Scenario Testing and Development 102 5.2 Procurement 105 5.3 Performance Monitoring 107 Chapter 6: Conclusions and Suggestions for Further Research..................... 108 6.1 Summary 108 6.2 Further Research 110 A p p e n d ix A ....................................................................................... 113 A p p e n d ix B ....................................................................................... 123 4 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1-1: Silverlink Metro Rail Lines Map 15 Figure 3-1: Tram Service Monitoring 41 Figure 3-2: Incentive Payment Calculation 43 Figure 3-3: OPR Targets by Year 44 Figure 3-4: Bus Costs per Hour, 2002-prices, DKK 55 Figure 3-5: Excess Wait Times 62 Figure 3-6: Millions of Passenger Journeys by Year 63 Figure 3-7: Average Number of Tenders per Route by Year of Award 64 Figure 3-8: Cost per Vehicle Mile of Bus Operations by Year 64 Figure 4-1: Default, Expected and Maximum Levels 76 Figure 4-2: Incentive Threshold Upward Adjustment 78 Figure 4-3: Incentive Threshold Downward Adjustment 79 Figure 4-4: Floor and Ceiling Levels 81 Figure 4-5: Increasing Slope Payment Method 85 Figure 4-6: Cumulative Increasing Slope Incentive Payments, Multiple Scenarios 87 Figure 4-7: Cumulative Increasing Slope Payments, Multiple Ceilings 88 Figure 4-8: Constant Slope Payment, Year One 89 Figure 4-9: Cumulative Constant Slope Payments, Multiple Scenarios 91 5 LIST OF TABLES Table 3-1: Customer Satisfaction Service Charter Compensation 45 Table 3-2: Performance Statistics by Assessment Period 45 Table 3-3: Quality Index Calculation 51 Table 3-4: Satisfaction Survey Response Weightings 51 Table 3-5: Percent of Bonus Awarded by Service Level 54 Table 3-6: Performance Payments by Year 63 Table 4-1: Possible Default, Expected, and Maximum Levels for Customer Satisfaction Scores 77 Table 4-2: Possible Floor and Ceiling Designation for Customer Satisfaction Scores 82 Table 4-3: Concessionaire Performance Scenarios 86 Table 4-4: Revenue Incentive, 1 99 Table 4-5: Revenue Incentive, 2 99 6 Acknowledgements This work represents the efforts and support of many individuals and a few organizations. Among those who contributed, I would especially like to acknowledge: - Nigel Wilson and John Attanucci, - Fred Salvucci, - Giorgia Favero, - the Transit Reseach Group - Transportation for London, - the Chicago Transit Authority - the Transportation Students Group, and - Ginny Siggia. I would also like my friends and family for their invaluable encouragement throughout. 7 Chapter 1: Introduction This thesis proposes a performance regime structure for public transit concession contracts, designed so incentives to the concessionaire can be effective given significant uncertainty about the future conditions. Because it is important to deal with unexpected conditions so service quality can be maintained, this work intends to aid agencies in designing regimes that will encourage continually improving performance through the use of relevant and adaptive incentives. An adaptive regime can also allow the incentives to be more cost and resource efficient. 1.1 BACKGROUND A trend towards privatization began in the post World War 11 era and became more dominant in the 1980's and 1990's, where "privatization is the process of transferring property from public ownership to private ownership and/or transferring the management of a service or activity from the government to the private sector" (Wikipedia, 2006). Forms of privatization have been used to restructure a range of government services, from energy provision to health and education programs. The deregulation of the bus industry in the United Kingdom in the 1980's is credited as the first major privatization of urban transit services. Before deregulation of the UK bus industry, British public transport was provided entirely by the government. Like most American systems today, all infrastructure and assets in pre-reform UK was publicly-owned, and all services publicly managed and operated. The British government, under Margaret Thatcher, initiated a program to privatize the provision of bus services in order to achieve reductions in the subsidy those services required, expecting little to no negative effect on quality of services (Rye & Wilson). Deregulation in the United Kingdom took on a different form for systems outside the Greater London metropolitan