The Bond Buyer's 2026 Public-Private Partnerships Survey
The Bond Buyer’s Public-Private Partnership survey was fielded online during April 2026 with 125 municipal finance professionals who work across a variety of roles in the buyside, sellside and issuer market segments.
Top findings from the report- More than half of respondents agreed that private sector partners stand to benefit the most from the increased use of P3s.
- Toll roads, airports/ports and utilities were the areas that saw P3s generate the most successful outcomes.
Results from the report are highlighted below using interactive charts. Mouse over each section for more detail, click on the chart labels to show or hide sections and use the arrows to cycle between chart views.
This item is the start of a series diving into new research from The Bond Buyer. Click the links below to read the other parts of the overall research.
- Part one: Funding challenges are increasingly driving municipalities towards P3s
- Part three: Coming soon
- Part four: Coming soon
Who stands to benefit the most from increases in P3 volume?
Key takeaway: More than half of respondents agreed that private sector partners stand to benefit the most from the increased use of P3s.
When it comes to P3s, those in the private sector are reaping the greatest rewards.
Private sector partners (56%) were the group identified the most by respondents as who would benefit the most from regional increases in the use of P3s. Close behind were municipalities and enterprise revenue bond issuers (43%), contractors and vendors (39%) and the municipal finance industry as a whole (35%).
Respondent organizations (32%) and taxpayers/residents (32%) were also noted as groups likely to benefit from increased usage of P3s.As market perception of P3s continues to change with more issuers seeking out these deals, state and local municipalities are enacting legislation facilitating these funding pipelines.
In April, the Trump administration debuted the
"The Trump administration is calling on every governor to join us in clearing the bottlenecks and cutting waste to save Americans both time and money," Sean McMaster, FHWA administrator, told The Bond Buyer. "We want local solutions that serve all road users, instead of federal bureaucrats favoring one mode of travel over another."
The wins and misses of P3s.
Key takeaway: Toll roads, airports/ports and utilities were the areas that saw P3s generate the most successful outcomes.
The increased use of P3s across different market sectors doesn't mean that all will see success.
For private partners, toll roads (75%), airports and ports (70%) and water, sewer and electric utilities (59%) were the top three sectors that saw P3s yield successful outcomes. Toll roads (29%) were also the sector that saw the most issues generated by P3s, followed by mass transit (24%) and airports and ports (15%).
The same three sectors took the top spots for municipalities, with toll roads (71%), airports and ports (71%) and water, sewer and electric utilities (60%) each named by more than half of respondents. The three sectors that had the largest share of problems were mass transit (45%), toll roads (42%) and housing authorities (41%).
For taxpayers and residents, airports and ports (56%) were tied with water, sewer and electric utilities (56%) for the top spot of sectors with positive P3 outcomes, while toll roads (51%) was third. Sectors where P3s created issues included toll roads (42%), K-12 (32%) and mass transit (31%).Regulators are continually evaluating the value of P3s over public funding, and, as such,
One example of such a deal is Georgia's P3 to help fund the
Despite originally planning an "availability model" for the project, which would have meant the public sector pays a private partner for the availability and performance rather than the private partner collecting tolls, the state acquired a $3.38 billion Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loan combined with a $3.2 billion private-activity bond sale.
This led the Department of Transportation to go back to the drawing board and recalculate using a design-build-finance-operate-maintain (DBFOM) formula, which increases risk while reducing costs.
"We first tried to procure it as an availability payment model," Helen Pinkston-Pope, the P3 Commercial Advisory Administrator for the Georgia Department of Transportation, told The Bond Buyer. "I can look back now and say the risk allocation was misallocated. We went through a very lengthy procurement, and the procurement was not successful."
