NATIONAL ROUND TABLE:
INSTITUTIONS FOR IMPROVING FREIGHT MOVEMENT IN MULTI-STATE CORRIDORS

CONCLUSION

Before ending the day, meeting facilitator Frank Blechman posed the following two questions and provided an opportunity for every participant to be heard on them:

• What needs to be done next about this topic?
• Did you hear anything new today?

Highlights of the participants' concluding comments follow.

With respect to what needs to be done next, the key thoughts expressed were:

• Several participants belonged to organizations that had developed proposals for inclusion in the pending Surface Transportation reauthorization legislation. As expected, they were committed to working to get their positions reflected in the new legislation. They were all very concerned about finding a new sustainable financial foundation for the program. Other themes differed among the participants.
• Among the other comments made by individuals were:
  • More money is needed to support collaboration across political boundaries to "induce collaboration"
  • More planning should be done at a mega-region scale
  • Freight planning should be elevated to a larger scale than individual states (because most states are too small to encompass freight flows)
  • The powers and roles of Corridor Coalitions and how they should be designated and incorporated as more formal players need to be defined
  • Greater capacity to support freight analysis and planning should be built
  • More emphasis should be placed on mitigating environmental impacts and achieving positive environmental outcomes
  • Transportation decision-making should be moving more toward being based on performance measures and evidence and less on political prerogatives
  • U.S. DOT should be given a stronger leadership role, including a role for port and inland waterway planning within DOT
  • An office of intermodalism should be rebuilt within DOT

With respect to new insights heard today, the following were mentioned:

• "Induced collaboration" struck some as a new concept or a unique phrasing of an essential practice.
• The amount of consensus about what should be included in reauthorization seems to be greater this year than in previous reauthorizations. Partly this may be because of the two formal national commissions established by SAFETEA-LU to study the matter. These two official studies spawned several other studies by groups that felt impelled to contribute their own studies to the mix of advice prepared for Congress.
• The extent of the consensus that U.S. DOT should provide greater leadership was surprising to some, since this would reverse a generation-long trend in the other direction. It led to a warning to be careful about how this shift is referred to so it will not cause an unnecessary backlash against big government.
• On financial matters, there was a warning to expect some push back on federal spending in reaction to the stimulus package and other big-ticket spending bills being enacted in this Congress. The current surge in spending may create an unfavorable climate for transportation reauthorization. Couching transportation funding in "private style" terms, rather than in traditional public finance terms, may be wise.
• Although the case for urgent attention to freight corridor improvements is very strong, that message is not getting through. This case needs to be made more compellingly.

The meeting concluded with expressions of thanks to the participants by FHWA representatives.

previous | next