2026: A Transferable Tool for Multi-Stakeholder Infrastructure Cost-Sharing with an Application to Local Transit (Momentum Fund) (TCAT)
Regional infrastructure systems increasingly rely on partnerships because individual governments or institutions often cannot sustain services on their own. Shared transit, water, and energy systems benefit from economies of scale, but they also face ongoing challenges in determining how operating costs and deficits should be distributed among partners with different levels of use, resources, and benefits. Traditional funding formulas, such as equal-cost sharing or usage-based contributions, often overlook each partner’s alternative cost of providing the service independently, creating concerns about fairness and long-term stability. Using the Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (TCAT) partnership as a case study, this project aims to advance a prototype cost-sharing framework into a practical negotiation tool. The research will support fairer, more transparent funding decisions while producing a reusable model and playbook for other multi-party infrastructure partnerships.
Cornell: Samitha Samaranayake (Cornell Duffield Engineering / Civil and Environmental Engineering), Nicholas Klein (Cornell AAP / City and Regional Planning)
Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (TCAT): Nicholas Klein (Board of Directors)