This is the kind of collaborative project we really like to get involved with. It provides leverage for the kinds of fresh ideas and varieties of thinking and practice that need to be brought into the policy and decision stream. It is not for nothing that the Agenda is sub-titled "The Politics of Transportation". For details you are invited to consult the following:

To download latest "Messages for America",

Selected extracts (PDF)

To access discusssions in the National Journal

National Journal Transportation Expert Panel?

Immediately after the US elections in November, the National Journal in Washington, DC, created an expert blog in which they have invited a couple dozen "transportation insiders" (their words) in order to provide a diverse conversation and eventually counsel and decision guidelines to the transportation team of the incoming Obama administration. You can see all about it at http://transportation.nationaljournal.com.

The idea is that each week the editors ask an invited expert panel to respond to a specific and they believe timely question, in the hope that some interesting ideas will appear there and as a result possibly make their way into the discussions and considerations of the incoming team at the Department of Transportation, and anyone else who may be in a position to influence transportation policy and decision-making in Washington, or for that matter in any state, city, agency or group anywhere in the United States.

This website is intended to serve as a convenient means for accessing these conversations, while at the same time trying to put them into the strategic framework which we believe is appropriate for decision-making in the sector, our preferred candidate for which being the New Mobility Agenda. In this section, we introduce these questions in the order asked by the editors. For each you will find a one-click link to the discussions on the site.

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Panel composition

Once news got around Washington and interest spread, the panel has gradually expanded, to the point where today there are somewhat more than sixty panelists participating, representing a broad array of interests and approaches. It is in fact this variety which is among the outstanding characteristics of this group. That plus their technical and political competence.

To see the members of the panel, each of whom has a short bio note attached, click here, and look over to the right-most menu where each is identified by name.

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But where are the women?

When we were invited to participate and had a chance to have a good look at the panel's composition, the thing that struck us immediately was that the it consisted mainly of males, and not only that a certain kind of male: pretty well-educated, pretty well off, and more often than not a happy owner and driver of a car. To be perfectly frank, not a very diverse or representative group. That struck me as a rather limited base for representation of the American people and their transportation problems in day-to-day life. Hmm.

So I took contact with the organizers and suggested that we work together in order to bring in a strong quorum of talented female members. I also suggested that we would do well to use this push for additional panelists to bring in much-needed areas of competence which, while not necessarily "transportation" in the traditional definitions of the term, are increasingly important in decision-making in the field today (it turns out that transportation is not an island).

We then were kindly invited to propose a first dozen outstanding women leaders to round out the panel, most of whom have kindly as you will see if you go to the list. We are pushing to nominate yet more, since we are not at all satisfied with the balance thus far achieved, and as soon as the organizers are ready to get together with us on this, be sure we will do just that. Gender balance is not a matter of political correctness in our field. It is vital for informed and balanced policy.

To see our piece calling for much stronger female participation, click here.
           (You will note that it is under the unlikely title "infrastructure stimulus"              but sometimes you just have to work with what you have.)

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National Journal discussion topics to date

Click the indicated link in each case to go to the indicated discussion (appears in own window).

1. How To Write The Next Transportation Bill?

2. How Should The Infrastructure Stimulus Be Spent?

3. Has Mass Transit Finally Arrived?

4. What Are Ray LaHood's Biggest Challenges?

5. What Does $1.67 Gasoline Mean For The Future?

6. Does Earmark-Free Mean Pork-Free? Or Worthwhile?

7. How Would You Improve The Stimulus Bill?

8. What Can We Learn About Transportation From Beyond Our Borders?

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"Lessons for America from abroad"

There was the excellent question to which we mobilized a collaborative group response:

* Click here to go to panel contributions

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The New Mobility collaborative "Messages America"

Since they originally invited me to join this panel, I guess in part because they thought I had something to add from an international perspective, I have had a bit of a role in getting this particular question onto the agenda. As those of you who know me can well imagine, I think I have something to say on this . . . however as I started to ponder what I have to say for myself, it occurred to me that I had the possibility of doing something far more interesting and useful.

Thus was born the idea of handling this as a group project providing a bully pulpit my colleagues around the world who have been working on these issues after day, year after year, and from many different angles. What could be better for the US reader looking for ideas from beyond the borders?

The procedure was simple enough. I contacted a number of my international colleagues, inviting them to share with us a brief statement on a specific project, policy, concept, program, whatever, that in their view US colleagues should know more about. Within a very short period of time we had more than 50 submittals which have now been brought together in a single document which is being shared with the National Journal team and anyone else who might share our interests and concerns.

* Click here to access the latest copy of group message (PDF 750 Mo.).

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Only in America?

It all started with the Australians. As we were working through earlier drafts of the messages, a number of our Australian colleagues (noisy lot) made the point that bad as things may be in some of these respects in the United States, in their view Australia is hardly doing any better, and in places worse since by and large developments there tend to lag behind the long-dominant US transportation model.

Which led to quickly to similar observations by our English, Latin American, Indian and other colleagues, who made the point that these are lessons not just for one country but for the world. It is not that the United States is uniquely in need of a new model and deep transportation reform in many respects, that is the case in many other parts of the world as well.

Well what can I do but to invite you to read the messages and come to your own conclusions about that.

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