The performance of the Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD) in its implementation of Colorado Senate Bill 164 of 1988 and Senate Bill 8 of 1990 and the resulting performance of the contractors selected by RTD to provide transit service in the region were reviewed. The bill required that RTD contract at least 20 percent of its service to qualified private businesses in negotiated contracts. Furthermore, the bill required that RTD contract with an independent certified public accounting firm for a neutral and unbiased performance audit. Over the 5-year term of the privatisation contracts, RTD is projected to save more than $29 million (25 percent) on a fully allocated basis and nearly $16 million (15 percent) on an incremental basis over its in-house costs. And, for many measures of safety and quality of service, the contractors performed as well as or better than RTD. These positive findings must be tempered, however, by the consideration of significant front-end RTD costs resulting from contract administration and operational oversight; uncertain future contractor-proposed prices; lower performance by the contractors, in terms of some performance measures for some types of service; and poor initial performance by all of the contractors and continuing problems with one of the contractors. In addition, the results at the conclusion of the 3-year base term of the contracts (or after 4 or 5 years, if RTD exercises options with the current contractors) may vary from the findings contained herein, given the relatively short-term focus of this study. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting