Sharada Vadali

Financial Model to Assess Value Capture Potential of a Roadway Project

Value capture refers to the process by which all or a portion of increments in land value attributed to community efforts rather than to landowner actions are recovered by the public sector. As such, it is a form of a public–private partnership. It is widely used across the country and around the world for transit applications; however, its applications to roadways have only recently emerged into discussions of roadway finance, out of motivation stemming from the transportation funding crisis. Two states have legislative provisions for enabling value capture for financing transportation. In Texas, this takes the form of a transportation reinvestment zone (TRZ). This paper presents specifications for a TRZ based on a case study approach and then applies a financial evaluation model based on those specifications to a case study corridor in El Paso, Texas, to assess preliminary revenue sources and cash flows that can be accrued for value capture bonding capacity.

Supply chain dynamics and the “cross-border effect”: The U.S.–Mexican border’s case

Abstract A system dynamics model is proposed for analyzing the uncertainty caused by delays and disruptions at the U.S.–Mexican border, and how their effects propagate through the cross-border supply chains. Since Mexico’s geographic proximity and low wages provide logistics advantages to North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it is becoming a favored manufacturing and logistics location. Nonetheless, crossing the border between U.S. and Mexico remains one of the most important challenges to the NAFTA supply chain competitiveness. Based on literature review and real-life information, the security policies at the U.S.–Mexican border and their cost implications to cross-border supply chains are identified. Information regarding the impact of variability on supply chain dynamics due to “cross-border effect” derived of security inspection policies is provided. Results are based on an auto-industry case study that was chosen due to its process standardization; however, results could be applied to other global supply chains. As conclusions, implications for the design of cross-border supply chains are exposed and future research is presented.