INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT
Building it
When Janis Vanderburgh looks at some of the main streets in the suburbs north of Toronto, she sees land that needs to be bought, utility lines that need to be moved, roads that need to be torn and rebuilt — and all of the legal work involved with such transactions. York Region Rapid Transit Corp., where Vanderburgh is senior counsel, has received $790 mil- lion in provincial funding to make sure fast public transportation is available in one of Canada's fastest growing region-
up
Canadian municipalities are increasingly turning to public-private partnerships to build new infrastructure. By Andi Balla
al municipalities. It involves construct- ing special rapid transit lanes on main roads like Yonge Street and new transit stations in booming bedroom com- munities. To achieve these plans, the Regional
Municipality of York, a confederation of nine cities and towns with a com- bined population of one million, has been working for years in a public-pri- vate partnership with York Consortium 2002, a group of local companies that won an international competition to
design and construct the infrastructure behind the rapid transit system. As with most Canadian entities involved in public-private partnerships, or P3s, the motivation comes from projects that are completed "on time and on budget." But they are often about more than just deadlines and funding, says Vanderburgh. "The reward you get from a good partnership is not some- thing that you can easily quantify, but it comes out in the product," she says. York Region is not alone. Across
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