When it comes to asset ownership in the infrastructure and energy space, commonly-used metrics have become synonymous with good governance… but what if one of them was flawed?
This week’s Infra Dig podcast sees IJGlobal editorial director Angus Leslie Melville talk to Robert Bain (UK) and Sylvain Senechal (Canada) of RBconsult about research they have conducted on toll roads that suggests the sector is sending out misleading messages about asset value and performance.
In one fell swoop, RBconsult has published a fascinating piece of research that exposes “cost per mile benchmarking” – which has been favoured for decades by traffic and revenue consultants – as being “fundamentally flawed and misleading”.
The toll road industry – in particular the owners of these assets – should right about now be sitting up and paying lot of attention as this metric that is regularly used to summarise (and often promote) the value of a particular toll facility, focuses on price alone… conveying nothing about consumer utility or customer satisfaction.
Rob and Sylvain benchmarked 68 toll facilities in the US by price (cost per mile) and by value (cost per minute saved) and have demonstrated that the different metrics result in entirely different rankings.
Tune in to the latest podcast and picture toll facility owners wiping down whiteboards as they reassess value and performance by a different set of criteria that will change the landscape dramatically.