California's Innovative Corridors Initiative: A New Model for Public-Private Partnerships in Transportation

California's Innovative Corridors Initiative (ICI) is a multi-year project to test a new approach for accelerating the deployment of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technologies, products, and services along major California corridors. As part of the effort, ICI governmental partners developed a Call for Submissions (CFS) to solicit proposals for pilot demonstration projects to be showcased in conjunction with the forthcoming 2005 ITS World Congress in San Francisco, California. The unique nature of the project is that no public funds will be awarded as part of the solicitation. In this paper, the authors explore public-private partnerships as a means to accelerate ITS deployment, including legislative and initiative-based approaches to partnership. A review of the public-private partnership literature in transportation reveals several case studies that involve access to public rights-of-way or other public facilities. The authors present lessons learned from three relevant case studies (upon which the ICI builds), an overview of the ICI planning process, a discussion of four possible business models for future ITS deployment resulting from the CFS, and ICI lessons learned to date. Early findings from the ICI reveal that the CFS resulted in: 1) 28 project proposals intended to improve mobility and safety for California travelers; 2) inter-agency cooperation among ICI partners; 3) additional expertise brought on by multiple-agency participation during proposal evaluation; 4) a broader perspective at the table by engaging in negotiation with the private sector; and 5) an opportunity for industry and government to work together beyond the initial demonstration period, if appropriate.