Among democracies, there are a variety of approaches that have been undertaken in recent years to invest in inner-city rail projects. My view is that there are a range of approaches. There is the United Kingdom approach, which has been at an extremely high cost and is based on an almost private concession model for high-speed rail development. That was the process that was undertaken for the line connecting the Channel to London, and now from London to Birmingham. That line has been quite pricey. I'm not sure that the U.K. has done a great job of controlling costs.
On the other side, there's the Spanish model, which is very much public sector driven. The Spanish government has done an excellent job through its infrastructure management, called Adif, to restrain costs. Spain has some of the lowest high-speed rail infrastructure costs in the world, which is interesting, because it is true that it has taken a purely public sector approach.
That said, it's worth noting there are many varieties here. I agree with my fellow panellists that the key issues—more than who is ultimately building or managing the line—are transparency, and assurances from the government that the government is controlling the day-to-day project design, planning and construction. Without high levels of capacity coming from the public sector, you're likely to see some major problems with cost escalation and major problems with design changes over time.
No matter what, it would be in the country's interest to ensure that it has a large number of public staff members with high-level capacity working on overseeing the project, whether or not the project is ultimately private or public in composition.