BORRONE CALLS
FOR FREIGHT TRANSPORTATION SOLUTIONS
In her February 1 keynote address to transportation leaders gathered at the 2006 National Urban Freight Conference, Eno Foundation Board of Directors Chairman Lillian Borrone cited the critical need for strategic investments in port capacity and infrastructure, and for better integrated public-public and public-private sector planning, as she called for 'dangerously good' solutions to domestic freight transportation challenges.
Assessing the freight transportation system's mix of primarily government-owned services, such as transit and highways, and those owned by private entities (e.g., rail, truck, maritime), Borrone said that new partnerships between political jurisdictions and public and private sector organizations are essential.
Partnerships would help the country to successfully address the twin pressures posed by shifts toward global distribution patterns and a diminishing ability to efficiently move growing freight volume. More importantly, according to Borrone, they could also lead to better coordinated planning and investment to provide new capacity at key nodes within the system.
Borrone
indicated that partnerships could be the key to finding, in economist
John Maynard Keynes's words, dangerously good solutions to freight transportation's
challenges. In the area of research, for example, she suggested forming a consortium of industry associations, universities, and governments to track the outputs of freight transportation research investments worldwide to ensure that we do not "duplicate our efforts and worse, miss the opportunities to leverage our learning."
She also urged her colleagues to speak out against congressional earmarks. Borrone noted that although the thousands of earmarked transportation projects over the years have likely included many worthy improvements, "it would be hard to discern, in that long list, an advancement of systemic improvements to strengthen the beleaguered surface system as a whole."
The Eno Foundation, in cooperation with the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), the Federal Highway Administration, and the Secretary's Policy Office at the U.S. Department of Transportation, will convene a special policy forum in June to examine logistics education requirements for transportation officials.
The June 25-27 event will bring together approximately 40 leaders from industry, government, and academia to identify the
training needs of state transportation and metropolitan planning organization (MPO) managers and suggest elements of a curriculum that would equip these professionals with the skills to meet the serious challenges that lie ahead related to goods movement.
"Our aim is
to define a new framework for education in logistics and, in doing so,
set an agenda for expanding the nation's goods movement capacities through
improved management," says Eno Foundation President and CEO Tom
Downs. "It fits squarely with the Foundation's mission to further
the professional development of transportation leaders."
State and MPO professionals are facing tremendous responsibilities in the areas of goods movement, intermodal demand, and clean air. SAFETEA-LU recognized the need for research and training in the goods movement arena by establishing both a freight cooperative research program and an executive development program for goods movement managers.
The three-day program will be held at the Georgia Tech Global Learning and Conference Center in Atlanta. Dr. Michael Meyer, Georgia Tech professor of civil engineering and chairman of the Transportation Research Board, will facilitate the forum sessions.
Forum participants will review and discuss topics including: the economic consequences of maintaining today's logistics system, current offerings in logistics education, and logistics challenges facing public authorities and related training needs.
Confirmed speakers
include Eno Foundation Chairman Lillian Borrone and Georgia Department
of Transportation Commissioner and American Association of State Highway
and Transportation Officials President Harold Linnenkohl.