ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the idea of using value capture techniques to support transportation investment. It highlights potential opportunities to develop more robust funding mechanisms, and opportunities for institutional change that may arise in the next few years, including the possible desirability of developing transportation institutions at the metropolitan level along the lines of a publicly regulated utility. The philosophical basis is that there are external benefits of transportation and accessibility that are distributed broadly throughout the society and conducive to economic growth, and that financing transportation investment, maintenance and operation is a general purpose of government. The institutional political weakness in the mayor's position was that, in contrast to Livingstone, Bloomberg needed the approval of the legislature, and does not control the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). The European Union and World Bank relationship to national governments is somewhat similar to that of the US federal government vis-a-vis states and cities.
