Financing transport infrastructure remains a key challenge for authorities. Increasingly many governments seek private sources of finance to realise their infrastructure needs. “Financing” infrastructure, is about who borrows the money for the project, whereas “funding” is about who repays what was borrowed. There can be no financing without funding. Calling on users of the infrastructure or taxpayers to pay more, however, is often politically challenging. Hence how to spend available money more efficiently remains a major question and the context in which private finance should be considered.
Unprecedented innovation in passenger mobility transport services over the last decade has drastically changed around the world. Traditional centralised transport service provision, based around collective public transport services and taxis has been supplemented or replaced by new forms of services based on cheap and widely available telecommunications that provide decentralised and more personalised services to clients.
