With states bringing in lower tax revenues, strapped budgets,
and increasing transportation usage, governments are looking to
partner with private firms to provide transportation improvements
and expansions. According to the recent Reason-Rupe
poll, 55% of Americans favor these kinds of partnerships. In
fact, a majority of all political groups favor government working
with private companies to further transportation projects.

Many governments are partnering with private companies to
build and expand highways, airports and other infrastructure
projects that government might not be able to afford otherwise. Do
you favor or oppose these public-private partnerships?

Which statement do you agree with more? Federal and state
governments should spend taxpayer money to build and operate
high-speed rail systems where they think they are needed; or,
Private companies should build and operate high-speed rail systems
where they think riders will pay to use them.

When Americans are asked to choose between government and
private business building high-speed rail, however, a majority of
Americans (55 percent) want private enterprise to build this
infrastructure. In contrast, 34 percent believe government should
build high-speed rail. Partisan divisions do arise for this issue
of high-speed rail: a plurality of Democrats and Occupy Wall Street
supporters prefer government build with taxpayer money, however a
majority of pure Independents, Tea Party Supporters and Republicans
prefer private companies to build these railways.

A partial driver of partisan division may be that if governments
were to build high-speed railways, they would build where
policymakers think they are needed; in contrast, private businesses
would build railways where it is profitable to build—so where a
substantial number of riders would pay to use them. In sum,
deciding between public or private building of high-speed rail
contrasts goals of efficiency and access, and political groups make
trade-offs between efficiency and access differently.

If this poll has accurately gauged attitudes toward government
or private enterprise building and operating railway
infrastructure, this casts doubt on how Amtrak is currently run.
Currently, many Amtrak lines operate at a loss because policy
makers often choose access to rail lines over efficiency in running
the trains, even in areas where there is little demand for train
use.

Find full Reason-Rupe Q4 2011 poll results, question
wording, and methodology here.

The Reason-Rupe
Q4 2011 poll collected a nationally
representative sample of 1,200 respondents, aged 18 and older from
all 50 states and the District of Columbia using live telephone
interviews from December 1-13. Interviews were conducted on both
landline and mobile phones. The margin of sampling error for this
poll is +/- 3 percent.

Follow Emily Ekins on Twitter @emilyekins