President-elect Donald Trump’s camp says it can help rebuild the nation’s infrastructure – as well as create jobs with a revitalized construction industry – by using public-private partnership’s to build new projects.

Details are sketchy on Trump’s proposal that could employ tax benefits and special financing arrangements to induce investors, construction companies and governments to build. And Congress will certainly have its own ideas on the matter.

Orange County needs no introduction to this notion.

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We’ve got three toll roads – 91 Express Lanes, the 133/241/261 Foothill/Eastern and the 73 San Joaquin – that seem to fit the rough concept loosely discussed by Trump and some of his inner circle. All three local tolls roads were debt-financed projects in which public transportation options were added with relatively non-traditional construction and operational arrangements between private builders and government transportation agencies.

In the process, Orange County has seen the pros and cons of such road-building deals. Here are six lessons worth sharing.

ROADS GET BUILT

Nobody is reinventing the wheel with this proposal.

Orange County has proven that you can design, finance and build roads with cooperation between numerous parties.

Trump’s idea could be quickly up and running, assuming there’s congressional will to buy in and legitimate projects to build. It’s a comparatively simple formula for roads: plan, borrow money, build … then repay the debts with toll collections. At the core, it’s user financed.

DRIVERS USE THEM

It isn’t simply build-it-and-they-will-drive-it, even though Orange County’s tollways get plenty of use: Drivers took 108 million trips in the last fiscal year while paying $331 million in tolls.

That use is not because of any genius business strategy. Local freeways are so crowded that any additional lanes for traffic – even ones that cost significant cash to drive – will be used, especially at peak commuting hours.

Remember, it took years for Orange County’s masses to largely accept the concept of paying to drive. But you can only imagine how extra-bad local traffic would be without these roads.

MIXED POPULARITY

Not everyone is a fan of toll roads – and that’s both drivers and local policymakers.

That resistance will be a hurdle for any new fee-based infrastructure project. Expect significant push back from both local planners and drivers – not to mention neighbors of any proposed projects.

Those concerns, if nothing else, may scare off some potential industry partners or nudge those developers to ask for more generous terms for the work they do.

Drivers are skeptical, too, and in Orange County that meant toll roads initially drew less traffic than hoped for. That created various needs for additional and expensive financing tricks to pay off the original construction debts.

TOUGH BUSINESS

Selling toll roads is no easy task.

Drivers – for professional or personal trips – carefully watch their transportation budgets. And tolls, at least in Orange County, aren’t cheap.

If the product isn’t priced right, or the overall economy is cyclically challenged, Orange County tollway operators have learned their cash flow will fluctuate wildly.

Not only have Orange County’s toll roads faced severe financial pressures, similar byways in Texas and Illinois have ended up in bankruptcy. These deals are no slam-dunk money makers.

TRANSLATABLE?

OK. We know that using novel financing can work to build new roads.

Using such schemes with other forms of transportation – like rail or air – may translate well. But what of crafting other new public works? And what about the nation’s under-maintained, even crumbling, existing infrastructure?

How does a financing idea that’s essentially a lease program fix outdated bridges, transpiration terminals, hospitals or public safety facilities?

FOR THE POOR?

Orange County is a wealthy region where overpriced transportation like toll roads will be used.

Will similar infrastructure financing schemes work in regions with far less prosperity? Will investors want to bet on inner cities or rural America?

You can even make an argument that in Orange County the toll roads are little help to the region’s less fortunate. Well, unless you consider the reduction in traffic from toll-lane use as a quantifiable benefit.

Contact the writer: jlansner@scng.com