Venture Strategies « The American Monorail Project

Introduction to Public-Private Joint Venture Strategies

Local government entities representing community-level interests may join monorail system builders in mutually supportive joint ventures and development agreements that maximize the value of publicly-owned property and rights of way uniquely suitable for use as monorail guide way corridors, station locations and urban transportation networks. Joint venture and joint development agreements entered into by county boards of supervisors, city councils and other local governmental officials and decision makers would reinstate local jurisdiction over transportation planning and services that have been all but removed from community-level control by regional transportation authorities. Current transportation planning, funding and decision making processes are under the virtually exclusive control of appointed directors of regional transportation authorities, who routinely shape transportation system development, policy, financing and local tax structures with little or no participation or influence from local government elected officials or community interests.

By realizing the value if their public land and right of way resources, local government entities and jurisdictions may choose to enter into transportation system development agreements that directly serve and benefit their respective local communities, economies and constituencies, independent of the plans and spending regimes of regional, state and federal transportation authorities. With little incentive to address community-level impacts of transportation system developments, regional transportation authorities forge ahead with developments and vast financing schemes that increasingly burden city and county taxpayers with the costs of supporting marginal, and often dysfunctional transportation systems and services that add little or nothing to local economies or employment bases. Establishment of local government-controlled transportation planning processes strategically organized to foster mutually supportive joint development and joint venture participation by coalitions of community interests and private sector financial and industrial entities can free local officials and constituencies from the unrepresentative, wasteful juggernaut of regional transportation authority-dominated spending, taxation and transit development.

Organizing of transportation-centered planning processes that proactively seek to bring together private resources with elected community representatives and decision makers in efforts to develop transit systems that are integral to municipal economies, community planning and local work forces, can free local resources and tax-based revenues from regional, state and federal transportation authorities. Supported by the full faith and credit of an entrepreneurial monorail transportation industry, community based monorail development coalitions can potentially reshape and reinvigorate urban conditions, local economies, municipal infrastructure and a wide range of quality of life factors currently beyond the influence of regional, state or federal transportation planners and authorities.