This past Tuesday at the D.C. Convention Center NRDC and the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security convened a roundtable conference on mobility choice. I opened up the forum along with my friend, fellow coalition-member and former Admiral Dennis McGinn, with our panel moderated by Anne Korin from IAGS.
Sessions covered obstacles to competition in transit, pricing of transportation, use of technology in transportation and local decision-making. I found the forum particularly interesting, and I hope others did too, because it brought together a remarkably diverse group of fifty or so participants from across the political spectrum. In fact, the keynote speech was given by none other than Mary Peters, the Secretary of Transportation under President Bush. Her talk focussed on the loss of confidence in the federal transportation program:
She also explained succinctly the fiscal crunch afflicting the transportation program, which relies increasingly on deficit spending to shore it up:
All in all, it was an interesting day in which we found room for common ground on transportation. For example, I think everyone endorsed road pricing and bus rapid transit as means to save fuel. We also learned about some fascinating fuel-saving innovations spearheaded by the transit agency in Salt Lake City and a professor working with private companies in Manhattan.
We'll continue our work to bridge the gap between left and right, and hope you'll track our work here and here.