Hands up for Public-Private Partnerships!
What is Public-Private Partnerships?
A cooperation between a government and private-sector company to finance, build and operate projects, such as public transportation, parks and convention centres.
What are the benefits of this partnerships?
1.It allows a project to be completed sooner or make it possible. Combining private know-how and technology with the government incentive to push a project to improve citizens’ life quality, a project should achieve its goals faster than it should be working alone.
2. It is a win-win situation. A government might be heavily indebted, but a private enterprise might be interested in funding the project’s construction in exchange for receiving the operating profits once the project is complete since most of the Public-Private Partnership projects involve mass consumption which could generate high return if successful.
3. Efficient division of task. The private participates in designing, completing, implementing and funding the project, while the public focuses on defining and monitoring compliance with the objectives.
In Asia, Toyota Mobility Foundation has begun several projects to improve Mass Transit System in coordination with the country’s government and here is one of the project examples taking place in Bangkok, Thailand.
Bangkok ranks #2 most traffic congestion in the world and one of the most traffic jam street in Bangkok is called Sathorn Rd. where I used to stay for almost 20 years. Sometimes, I spent my time for almost 2 hours just to be 5 kilometres away from the place where I started.
Now I hope you can imagine how bad it is.
What Toyota is doing is they try to ease the congestion by
- Creating a system that allows for a more effective integration of vehicles and other ways of transportation including BTS (Bangkok Sky Train), MRT (Bangkok Underground), Bus, Boat and other transportation service, mostly privately-owned, as well as the ones that Toyota is planning to create with the government.
- Optimising traffic signal operations by partnering with the local police who actually now manage them manually.
- Identifying traffic points or bottle necks and evaluating the situation by coming up with the simulation model.
Above all, the project will not be effective if the people don’t use it, therefore, to encourage Bangkokian, Toyota will promote this campaign and convince the people by using quantifiable message to create an impact among Thai road users.
This project is only one of many under Public-Private Partnerships scheme. From my perspective and the road situation we are facing currently in Thailand, I wouldn’t say it will be easily solved within only a few years. Nevertheless, we are getting closer to our goal.
