Towards quality service performance of transport infrastructure assets: Case studies of ‘down under’ to unpack risks of PPPs

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) have been a critical vehicle in procuring large-scale infrastructure projects worldwide, offering benefits of innovation and risk sharing. Despite its significant contribution, the arrangements of transport PPPs are more complex, rendering the projects being vulnerable to extensive risks that threaten the service performance of the assets. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the key risks and their interaction in relation to the services of transport PPPs through the case studies of Canberra Capital Metro and Sydney Metro, Australia, in line with the following research questions: (1) What are the key risks relating to transport PPPs ? and (2) How are these risks interacted with one another as a network in determining the asset's service performance ? Using the social network analysis, the empirical evidence highlights a sequence of risk factors covering not only those ‘traditional’ concerns such as ‘budget/schedule overruns’ but also some ‘interesting’ issues like ‘integration with existing transport systems’, ‘uncertainty of acquiring accreditation’ and ‘update of ticketing system’. This research steps into a key concern on service quality of transport infrastructure assets, further expanding the knowledge in managing and facilitating PPPs.