The City of Victoria council now has three options for the Johnson Street Bridge:

1. hold a referendum
2. decide not to replace the bridge
3. get the money somewhere else

I’m not going to speculate on the political cost, but there’s an obvious way to do #3: a design-build-finance-operate public-private partnership. Instead of just constructing a bridge with government money, the construction partner borrows the money on the private market and the government promises to pay them fee over the lifetime of the contract. These partnerships make the most sense when there is a revenue risk, such as a toll.

The Golden Ears Bridge on the Fraser River is the obvious precedent. The Golden Crossing Group is paid a fixed fee and tolls go to Translink (I suspect a private partner would demand power to set the toll if it were their source of revenue). The contract includes things like safety bonuses, maintenance standards and availability guarantees.

The P3 idea was first floated, to my knowledge, by Victoria Vision. Putting a toll on the bridge would solve the complaint of some Victoria residents that they’re paying for a bridge used mostly by people living in eastern municipalities. The BC Liberals like P3s, so the project might attract some money from the provincial government.

I’d like to see a P3 request written generally enough to get both refurbish and rebuild proposals, which can then be compared based on hard, fixed costs. This can be done by specifying a pay scale for the hand-back condition of the bridge at the end of the contract: the company gets a pay-out based on years of life left.