Why Cost Per Minute Saved Rather Than Cost Per Mile Is A Better Benchmarking Metric For Toll Roads
A Value For Money Review Of Toll Bridges & Tunnels Across The United States
WHEN: Thursday, October 26th, 2023 at 12:30 – 1:30 pm
LOCATION: ECJ’s 6.706 Conference Room
Presented by Robert Bain and Sylvain Senechal
A standard benchmarking metric employed for comparative analysis in the toll industry is cost per mile. It’s supposed to reflect attractiveness to the consumer. All things being equal, policy-makers, planners, investors and the public prefer low cost per mile projects. Cost per mile is easily calculated but, as a benchmark of value it is flawed. It is an engineering metric that focuses solely on project length and toll price. As such it is a misleading indicator that fails to take account of utility or the consumer experience. Drivers value travel time savings, not distance traveled.
As investment analysts (working for a number of the leading infrastructure investors in the world) we – and they – prefer cost per minute saved. We come across many rankings of projects by cost per mile but, until now, we have never seen rankings by cost per minute saved. In this webinar we explain how we looked at all the toll bridges and tunnels across the United States and evaluated them in terms of value to the consumer (cost per minute saved). The webinar concludes with a summary of our findings and practical recommendations for industry professionals.
Robert Bain is based in London. He was a transportation modeler for over 20 years before joining the Infrastructure Finance Ratings team at Standard & Poor’s. Today, with Sylvain, he conducts commercial due diligence on candidate investments in the road and rail sectors for many of the world’s leading infrastructure investors. Robert is regularly retained by top-tier law firms as an expert witness (arbitration and litigation).
Sylvain Senechal is based in Ottawa. He led the research team at Brookfield – one of the world’s largest alternative asset managers – before joining forces with Robert and providing consulting services to infrastructure investors. Sylvain holds an MBA from National Chengchi University and is a CFA charterholder.