Transportation Asset Management: The Value of Enterprise-Based Financial Reporting

Abstract

The adoption of enterprise-based financial reporting practices in the public transportation infrastructure has the potential to facilitate the use of profitability analysis and, thus, the management of public transportation infrastructure assets. However, a major challenge for successful implementation is the ability to generate in a public setting what the Governmental Accounting Standards Board refers to as “satisfactory” system input values. Because market prices are not generated in these environments, they must be simulated. Two promising approaches for generating such measurements are reviewed: benefit-cost analysis and econometric studies of the productivity impacts of infrastructure investments (on productivity studies). Although the two approaches are subject to several weaknesses that inhibit them from generating satisfactory system input values, ongoing methodological advances in both indicate fair prospects for generating such values in the future. Therefore, a dismissal of enterprise financial reporting practices for public transportation infrastructure may be premature.