Paper in WCTRS Conference, Istanbul, 2004. (with Esko Sirvio)
Consultant to the World Bank
ABSTRACT
Low volume roads normally comprise about 80 percent of the total road network, but serve but 20% of the traffic. This has caused a difficult problem in many countries for owning, administering and managing this large road network whose importance is unquestioned but whose maintenance is neglected. This paper explores the various options for approaching these issues from the perspective that the vision is reached gradually through a process of incremental steps. It is taken for granted that the private sector carries out the supplier functions, the road works whether maintenance, rehabilitation, or construction.
In the Scandinavian countries the (very) low volume roads are privately owned, by the users and beneficiaries. The users/beneficiaries can be easily identified. The beneficiaries form a Private Road Association (PRA), a legal entity, and are responsible for maintaining the road, but also can receive state subsidies. Studies show that PRAs maintain their roads at half the cost of equivalent public roads. In addition to the efficiency, private roads obviously reduce the size of the country’s (public) road administration. Recently, PRAs have evoked much interest and the concept has been adopted in the Baltic countries and is under consideration in many developing countries.
The starting point was of the paper is the extant situation in Finland where a large part of the low volume road network is owned by the PRAs or by the landowners whom the road serves. The private road legislation is forty years old and no longer synchronous with the developments in road management technology. An important factor also is the desire of the affected interests to have a direct voice in decision-making.
The paper expands the scope of the PRA. It starts from the common situation in which the state, the regional government, or town alone owns all public low volume roads. In many countries, although not in Scandinavia, this also means all too often that nobody really owns, finances, administers, and manages them.
It is proposed in the paper that to “modernize” the PRA begs the questions of vision and process: what the goal for should be owning and managing the low volume road network and what process should be employed. The paper proposes that the solution for the ownership, administration, and management consist of four phases: (i) vision, what is the good thing that the users and the society want; (ii) model, what different ways are available to arrange the caring for the low volume roads; (iii) process, what evolutionary steps are needed to implement the model to reach the vision; and (iv) technique, how should the planning/analyst team work with the stakeholders to bring the vision into reality through this process.
The paper discusses the most important issues regarding the the low volume roads. It proposes that the goal is to serve the citizens’ and to help make their daily lives better, and support good governance. The former is pursued individually, and the latter articulated by democratically elected general-purpose government. For the low volume roads, the good things comprise (i) recognition of the value of the (current practice and) concept of private road associations; (ii) (regional) equity in road access; (iii) preservation of “everyman’s rights”1; (iv) good, well-timed maintenance of roads; (v) reasonable costs; and (vi) stakeholder voice in decision-making.
The paper presents three concepts for owning private (very) low roads: public, co-operative, and corporative. It is shown that ownership of low volume roads can be arranged in any of these three legal ways, each having advantages and disadvantages. Experience shows that administering and managing low volume roads has both economies of scale and scope. Therefore, it is important that the concept of ownership, administration and management of low volume roads takes advantage of these economies but preserves the voice of the roads’ owners and users. The paper explores the advantages of four different governance models, which already exist in the Finnish law: Public Administration; Association, including Joint Venture (Group); Cooperative; and Corporation.
The paper discusses, evaluates and compares the different possibilities, including responsibility and liability; administration, including decision-making; voice of users and other affected interests; user charges and payments; financial management and audits; taxation; government subsidies; costs of road maintenance; beneficiary attractiveness; training and capacity building requirements; legal development; and international comparison.
The paper offers conclusions.
Keywords: Low volume road, Association, Administration, Management, Stakeholder, Contractor
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