The Infrastructure We Ride On: Decision Making in Transportation Investment

This book explores the various economic and institutional factors that explain why huge investments are made in unworthy transportation mega-projects in the US and other countries. It is based on research, the general literature, economic analyses, and results from a specifically collected database showing that a significant proportion of implemented mega-projects have been found to be inferior ex-ante or incapable of delivering the returns they promised ex-post. Transportation infrastructure and other public investments of a similar scope (“mega-projects”) reflect public sector priorities and objectives, non-pecuniary as well as financial constraints, and a range of decision-making processes. This book describes how decisions made in the public sector with respect to transportation infrastructure investments are affected by the large populations and territories they serve, the estimation of the substantial opportunity costs they entail, the formal procedures instituted for quantitatively appraising projected outcomes and monetary returns, and the political environment in which these decisions are made.

Joseph Berechman is the Marvin Kristein Professor in the Department of Economics and Business at the Colin Powell School, the City College of New York, USA. Between 2007 and 2014 he was the department’s chairman. Before coming to CCNY, he was the CN Chair Professor in Transportation and International Logistics at the Sauder School of Business, the University of British Columbia, Canada. Dr. Berechman has consulted on a variety of transportation and urban projects in different countries and has been a principal investigator in several major studies done for the European Union. For the past several years he has been engaged in major cost and investment studies of transportation infrastructure projects in New York and elsewhere. He has published numerous journal papers and six books.