The Economist on private Value Capture funding subway construction in Shenzhen China: Chinese mass transit: On the right track

The builder is MTR Corporation of Hong Kong, the part-privatised company that runs the territory’s remarkably efficient and clean metro system (pictured). That MTR also owns a huge property portfolio is almost certainly a core issue in its involvement with Shenzhen.
Back in 2004, as part of a strategic effort to expand beyond Hong Kong, MTR commissioned a report from a local university on transit systems in many of the world’s largest cities, which observed that “railway investment is not financial viable on its own.” Not long after MTR’s founding in 1975, the parsimonious colonial administration which then ran the territory came to a similar conclusion, and decided to finance the construction of a subway system through simultaneous grants of adjacent property. It was, in essence, a trade of movement below for land above, a model that has been used successfully in Japan and, a century ago, in America as well.
The results have not been entirely successful. Some of the MTR projects reflect the worst of bleak government architecture but over time its portfolio has become a bit smarter; and these property holdings, along with the lease of advertising space, now account for more than 60% of MTR’s revenues and presumably all of its very healthy profits, as well as providing the financial strength to support its spotless metro service.

Value Capture needs to be used more in the US.