Tolling technologies for PPP toll facilities. The case of the Autostrada Cispadana

Public Private Partnership (PPP) is a widespread way to build new public facilities, especially the most expensive ones, such as toll roads and bridges. Though manual collection of tolls for this infrastructure is still the most common collecting system in several countries all over the world, new systems are available to automate this activity (Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) technologies). In order to choose the preferred mechanism for tolling, an accurate analysis of cost and benefits of each technology should be conducted, both from public and private standpoints. The aim of this paper is to show how evaluating PPP projects, such as toll roads, from only one perspective (government or sponsor) can lead to a wrong choice and thus the failure of PPP implementation. A complete and integrated assessment, indeed, can lead to select the tolling technology, which is “financially sustainable” from both public and private sectors. This analysis is accomplished through the case of the Italian Autostrada Cispadana, a toll highway in Italy. The results show that radio identification would make the project more profitable for private investors (NPV), and would also allow regional government to reduce its funding to investors increasing Value for Money. GPS technology adoption, instead, would cause losses which could be avoided only by means of a substantial increase of the public funding