Demand risk in the Portuguese SCUTS and the 2010 renegotiation

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to study the demand risk of those SCUTS highways that were renegotiated in 2010 and 2011, in which the demand risk was fully passed to the public sector. Is the State carrying now riskier highways, regarding the demand risk, comparing to the private benchmark – Brisa? The 2010 renegotiation is also analysed to study if the initial demand forecast errors of those 3 SCUTS renegotiated were corrected, adjusted to the historical data available and counted with the negative effect of the introduction of tolls. This article, using the model proposed, compares the demand risk of the ex-­‐SCUTS highways with the private benchmark highways chosen. The renegotiation of 2010 is analysed through the study of the previous forecast errors and the historical pattern of traffic. The study concludes that besides the ex-­‐SCUTS, in a first analysis, do not show a significantly higher demand risk, the 2010 renegotiation with the introduction of tolls highlighted some questions about the usefulness of those highways, given the huge fall in the volume of traffic. It is also showed that the renegotiation ignored the historical pattern of traffic, the forecast errors already known and the negative effect of tolls, and projected future traffics very optimistically, completely misappropriated, leading to a great burden to the State. The conclusions are limited by the short data and because of the comparison between highways without tolls (ex-­‐SCUTS) with the benchmark highways (that always had tolls).

Date of Award	Jun 2012
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ricardo Reis (Supervisor) & Joaquim Miranda Sarmento (Supervisor)