The influence of public private partnerships on social justice

As transportation agencies continue to search for different ways to not only provide transportation options for all communities, but also hope to finance larger infrastructure projects responsibly, it is important to look to cases that tackle both issues head on. Many urban professionals have deemed the implementation of the FasTracks project to be a large success in the field. These observations call for investigation of the University of Colorado A Line commuter rail, the first full transit Design Build Operate Finance Operate Maintain (DBOFM) PPP in the United States to understand if the project has been deemed successful or not in the eyes of those that use it most frequently; the people of the metropolitan region with a special focus on social justice when understanding the PPP’s performance metrics. In order to increase success, scholars and urban practitioners involved in PPPs find social justice important to look at. The main objective of this study is to understand if PPPs can generate different outcomes that reflect social justice values and aims to explain what actions within a PPP framework are most relevant to social justice. This study utilized the mixed methods approach. In order to determine the factors that generate social justice values from all perspectives, the following methods were utilized in data collection and analysis: 1. Existing reports, documents and data were studied from the project to understand the emphasis placed on social justice indicators, 2. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with those most familiar with the project to solidify or challenge social justice findings from existing reports and, 3. Community surveys were administered to understand the public’s perspective of social justice to ultimately determine the emphasis of values in different portions of the PPP in the eyes of those who use the University of Colorado A-Line service most. Findings ultimately determined best practices and actions to for generating PPPs with the public and social justice in mind.