The Supply Mechanism Of Transport Infrastructure

Transport infrastructure plays an important role in the progress of economy and human society. It is an important prerequisite of social progress and economy development and a main safeguard of public life. After the foundation of People Republic of China, particularly since carrying out the reform and opening policy, transportation infrastructure has developed rapidly in the government-led supply system, and achieved remarkable results, but there are also some problems:The summation is insufficient; the efficiency is not high; the structure is not reasonable and so on. There is a certain gap between transport infrastructure and the needs of people living the social development. To achieve the effective supply of transport infrastructure does not only assure the needs of China’s social and economic sustainable development, but also meets the requirement for building a harmonious society.China is in the critical period of establishing socialist market economic system. In the area of general commodities, the dominant position of allocating market resources has been basically established, but in the domain of transport infrastructure, the competition between government and the market always exists. Although some achievements in the practice of marketization are made, the disputes between the government and the market are always hot. At the same time, the voluntary supply, which played an important role in the transportation infrastructure supply, particularly in rural transport infrastructure supply, is not emphasized correspondingly. After thirty-year exploration of "trial and error", the supply of transportation infrastructure facing the problem where to go, that is, the starting point of this dissertation. On the basis of wholly analyzing the transport infrastructure supply, the author attempts to propose a transport infrastructure supply mechanism adapt to China’s socialist market system through studying a variety of supply mechanisms systems. This study is interdisciplinary, involving transportation engineering, economics, public administration, political science and other study fields. To achieve the study objectives, the main methods of this dissertation are specifications and qualitative study. There are also some quantitative study to meet the needs of problem discussion and description. In accordance with the above design of methods and ideas, this dissertation is divided into three parts, seven chapters:The first part includes Chapter one and Chapter two. In this part, the history of transport infrastructure supply and the status analysis of the transportation infrastructure are summarized on the basis of clear concepts and literature reviews. The main reasons for the formation, choice and change of China transport infrastructure supply system are discussed from the informal system perspective by using the theory of institutional change. The current problems and causes of transportation infrastructure supply in China are also classified and illuminated. The total supply of transport infrastructure is insufficient; the structure is not reasonable; and the efficiency of supply is not enough. The reasons for these problems are rooted in the supply system, mainly due to the absence or the offside of government functions, a high concentration of decision-making, the lag-behind financial system reform, and the absence of the public interests demonstration. The achievement of effective transport infrastructure supplies depends on the innovation of transportation infrastructure system.The second part includes Chapter three, Chapter four and Chapter five. In this part, the different supply mechanisms are analyzed mainly using the methods of empirical analysis, comparative analysis and so on. The author classifies the supply of transport into three categories:the government supply, market supply, voluntary supply, according to the differences of the supply subject and funding sources. Besides, an in-depth study of the various key issues on supply mechanisms is conducted, such as power mechanism, restraint and incentive mechanism and funding mechanism.The third part includes Chapter six, Chapter seven. In this part, diversified transportation infrastructure supply mechanism adapt to the national demand-oriented of China is put forward to fitting the specifications of China’s socialist market mechanism, according to the requirement of the scientific outlook on development. The overall construction principles are proposed including public participation principle, the principle of government taking responsibility and the principle of equity and efficiency. The rational structural arrangements are set up including government-led, market priority and voluntary participation. Optimization program of supply system is established, that is, the government supply on the basis of public finance, the market supply on the basis of effective competition, cooperative supply on the basis of mutual benefits and voluntary supply on the basis of social welfare. To assure the effective construction of requirements-oriented multiple supply system of transportation infrastructure, the author proposes the decision-making system taking public participation as a core, the monitoring system taking performance evaluation as a criterion and the security system taking democracy and laws as a prop. The three systems above make up the main contents of system innovation.The author attempts to make innovations in the following areas:1, The author integrates economics, politics, public administration and other basic theories to examine the problem of transport infrastructure supply, breaks traditional government-market analysis framework through reviewing the changes of China transportation infrastructure supply system and summarizes the transport infrastructure supply models:the government supply, market supply and voluntary supply. Besides, the characteristics of them are analyzed in-depth. According to the need of China’s socialist market economic system, the overall structure of demand-oriented and diversified transportation infrastructure supply mechanism is constructed innovatively. The constructive principle is established, which takes public participation as the core, the responsibility of government as the basis, and equity and efficiency as the goal. The overall optimization program of transport infrastructure supply, government-led, market-priority, voluntary-participation, is proposed by combining with China’s social and economic development status and trends.2, In the traditional supply of transport infrastructure, decision-making is mainly relied on indirect democracy and centralized representative decision-making system. There are complex games among the transport department, between transport department and other departments, between the government budget department and these spending department. There is also complex game between the government budget department and the representative institutions. In the demand-oriented and diversified transportation infrastructure supply mechanism, government is the dominant power. It is necessary to improve the technical measures of traffic-direction tax in order to reduce losses. Besides, optimizing decision-making mechanism is the key to effective supply. So it is essential to build a decision-making mechanism taking public participation as the core. The combination of indirect democracy with direct democracy, the combination of the check and balance system with procedural restriction, and the combination of expert advices with public opinions should be achieved by enhancing the role of the NPC, strengthening direct participation, improving decision-making procedures and emphasizing information disclosure and so on. Meanwhile, the supervision system should be established taking a performance evaluation as a means, and the security system backed by democracy and the rule of law should be built.3, A relatively systematic solution is given for the crucial problem, financing in the government supply and market supply of transport infrastructure. As for the area of government financing, the orientated tax is analyzed in-depth, which is neglected in the previous studies. It is proposed that the financing in government supply of transport infrastructure take public finance framework as the basis, optimized orientated tax as the main channel of government financing, general tax and public charge as the addition, the transport infrastructure development fund established on non-debt financing as the carrier, revenue bond as the main channel’s overall framework of the government transport infrastructure projects financing. In the area of market supply financing, the innovative methods of transport infrastructure industry fund and finance lease are put forward.