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ITS Program Advisory Committee Meeting
U.S. Department of Transportation
November 27, 2007
Day 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Topic Page
Introduction
Report on Results of ITSPAC and Other Interviews
Future Vision for ITS Program
Summary of Outcomes
Next Steps in Strategic Planning Activities
Shelley Row: Let's go ahead and get started. It looks like we have pretty much everybody from yesterday, and we have one new person. Ken, would you mind to introduce yourself?
Ken Button: Sure, I'm Ken Button, I'm Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University.
Shelley Row: Welcome, Ken.
Well, we're going to pick up the discussion where we left off yesterday. As we mentioned yesterday, that day was all about getting smart on the history of the program and what the current program is composed of. Today, however, we want to really jump into that creativity and the thinking about what is the future program look like. So what we are hoping to get out of today, is where we left off in our discussion yesterday, what are the big ideas, those few big ideas about what the future of this program can and should be, that make it compelling and exciting and provide great leverage to improve our transportation environment.
So that's where we're going. We're going to do that through a series of discussions. We've provided you -- it was in your read-ahead material, but we've given you another copy of the agenda. What you will note is, is that we're going to start at a very high level with a broad-brush discussion of trends, and then we're going to gradually, over the course of the day, drill down from trends to what we see the vision for our community and our environment being, and then going into the opportunities and barriers that we are dealing with, and then work our way into, what are the implications for the program.
So we're going to get all the way through those discussions. I would say to you on the agenda, you will see all of those discussions on there, but we reserve the ability to move the breaks around, to be flexible with the time and the discussion based on your input and how our discussion is going.
You will also be glad to know that we have bottles of water that are cooling right now in the refrigerator, so those are available to you, and we'll also be having lunch brought in. So, we'll try to make that part of your day a little bit easier today.
On our discussions, I also wanted to mention to you, each one of those, kind of, four blocks of discussions will be preceded by a very short presentation. Basically on the input that we have from DOT staff on each of those four topics, trends, vision, opportunities and barriers, and then the implications for the program. We wanted to come in here with you today, to have something to throw on the table, but feel free to throw it completely out, to completely change it, but we wanted at least to have some of our thoughts to put out on the table for you as a starting point. But they are just that, they are just a straw starting point, and they are very brief, so most of the time will be for your discussion.
I also wanted to reintroduce Joyce Bader to you all. Joyce is a consultant who's been working with us on strategic planning, she is a strategic planning specialist, as well as organizational development. She just happens to be also helping us today in facilitating the discussion with you all. But she will be working with all of us in DOT, specifically in RITA, to take what we hear from you, take the input we hear from others as well, and taking it to the next step, which is more of a strategic document, strategic direction for the program. So, you'll see a lot of Joyce today, she'll be facilitating that discussion.
I think that's all the introductory, are there any -- anything else before we jump in? Again, we're looking for a lot of discussions, so please don't hold back.
Okay, with that, Andy, why don't you pull up the --. Now, just so I know, Andy, are you taking notes on one -- okay, okay. Okay, you can go on to the next slide.
Okay, this is what we were just talking about, that's kind of our agenda for the day, and we're going to start with our discussion of trends.
The other thing I wanted to mention to you, before I share with you some of the thoughts that came from the USDOT staff. We provided in your read-aheads, but then we also provided again to you today, these are the summary of the interviews that we did with all of you. Now we have, actually have right here, the full text version if you want to know what you said, or if you want to know what somebody else said. But these are the summaries of each of the questions that were asked of all of you. So you can scan through that pretty quickly, it's interesting reading.
The other thing that we provided to you was a distillation -- this is on this one-pager -- of some of the things that we thought we heard from you. I don't intend to walk through this, because I expect you know what you said, and I expect that to come out in our discussion with you all, but I wanted you to see, and have in front of you, a distillation of all those, the input that we received. It was very excellent.
Trends
Okay. All right. Let's talk about trends. Now, when we started the discussion of trends within DOT, there were so many issues that are going on in our world, that we felt a need to kind of clump them into big clumps. We chose these three. They seemed reasonable, but there's no -- nothing magic about this. What we expected was, that we were going to be looking for the place where the world trends, the technology trends, the transportation trends come together, and that's what we thought we were going to be looking for.
So, let's go ahead and -- here's some of the things that came out of our discussion. Trends that we see in the world, the changing customer base, the aging population, young tech savvy people -- they don't have to be young I would mention -- multilingual people. Those are our customers and they're changing.
I would also mention, I think it is important that as we have our conversation, this is a research program, the things we're doing are for the future and help us set the stage for the future. I do find it useful to think about the world that the 20-somethings and the teenagers are living in today. What are their expectations and what are their world trends, because they're the one's who will be reaping a lot of the benefits that we'll be discussing today.
Other world trends, technology explosion, there's information everywhere. Every Starbucks, you can have free Wi-Fi access. We're in a wireless world. Everyone probably sitting here has one of these or something like somewhere close by. Everything is online, it's virtual life, virtual work, virtual personal networks, and Presidential debates using You Tube, networking and having friends who are virtual friends.
The global economy, outsourcing, production in the world, markets that are worldwide, you know, we see that so much when we talk with the auto companies and others, who have worldwide markets. Financial markets are worldwide.
Another world trend, sustainable communities, we heard some of that yesterday as well. Communities that support lifestyle choice, whatever that lifestyle choice is, whether that be living in a rural area, living in suburbia, or living in a downtown city and not needing a car. All of those are lifestyle choices and people want to be able to make those choices and have their communities serve their needs.
Security issues -- you know, we seem to have to a growing tolerance for how our security issues disrupt our lives. I take a little plastic bag with me now, every time I fly, and I think that's -- I think that’s normal, maybe not normal, but it's what we do. We felt like that we see a growing acceptance of surveillance and monitoring technologies. There's so much of that and there are people who are concerned about it, but there are many more people who seem to accept it.
Environmental awareness, clearly we heard that yesterday all over the place, clearly an interest in being environmentally aware and the impact of our choices on the environment, and we see a consumer's willingness to pay for more environmentally-friendly options.
We see a growing market for transportation services, increasing world population we heard discussed yesterday. This is an interesting one. The use of performance measure in public policy. You see that across a broad spectrum of public policy. No Child Left Behind is based on performance measures. In the healthcare industry, we see the growth of performance measures. We see it also in transportation as well, in the use of performance measures in making decisions based on performance measures.
Okay. In terms of technology trends, probably not any shock here to anyone, wireless world, being connected anywhere, everywhere. A growing expectation for information, I think we expect today to be able to get whatever information we want, at our fingertips, whenever we want it.
Consolidation and increasing functionality into a single device, being able to use this device that has internet access, as a cell phone, it has all of my contacts on it, everything is consolidated into one device, and the device keeps getting smaller. Very rapid technology evolution, it's so fast it's hard to keep up with it, but it's clearly a trend that we're living with.
We're seeing a growth in the use of navigation technologies. I don't -- maybe someone here even knows what the numbers are, but clearly, there are more of these today than there were before. Exploding market for handheld wireless devices, that market has really just gone through the roof.
Technology in vehicles, my husband put himself through college with a set of socket wrenches, fixing cars. You can't fix cars anymore with a set of socket wrenches, high technology everywhere on the vehicle. The technology that's in our daily lives, how many of our household products are computerized and have to be programmed? My dishwasher is programmable, my microwave is programmable, the television, the TiVo, the VCR, all of those things. There's technology that is permeated into all aspects of our lives, into our vehicles, into the services, automated phone answering systems, for pretty much everything that we do.
And then transportation trends, we talked yesterday about growing congestion, the exponential growth in freight movement, a big impact on our transportation network. An aging infrastructure, it's a big deal. Increasingly strained finances in the public sector, everywhere we go, no matter who we talk to in the public sector, one of the clear trends that we see, is trying to do more with less money. There's just not enough financial resources to do the things that we need to do, even at the basic level, maintaining the existing system that we have.
We see a trend in monetizing transportation assets, toll roads, leasing of facilities, much of that driven by a need to find some creative ways to finance and to provide financing into our transportation network.
We see a growing role of the private sector in many of those areas. Looking to the private sector, the financial markets and ways to creatively engage with the private sector to help solve some of these financial problems.
We see growing trends at ridership, we see an increasing support for investment in transit. Transportation to support our lifestyle choice, and not as a detraction from it. People want to be able to use transportation to live their lives, not to be driven by transportation.
We're seeing more technology in transportation, real-time transit information, real-time transportation information, vehicle location navigation. We see more and more transportation management centers, they're migrating from the very large metropolitan areas into more midsized cities.
We see a growth of vehicle safety systems and they're marketable.
We see a concern for transportation's impact on the environment. How do we reduce the carbon footprint that transportation has on the environment and how do we reduce energy dependency?
Again, performance measures comes up. The use of performance measures and public sector decision making around transportation, there's a lot of interest in performance measures, a lot of research. TRB has all kinds of studies going on about performance measures. One of the big dilemmas with using performance measures is the lack of data to create them and to drive them.
Telework, telecommuting, much more of that today than when I started, certainly, in the workforce.
Those are some of the trends that we talked about, and we sat down, and we said, "Okay, how do they overlap?" And what we though were going to be those, kind of small overlapping circles, really began to converge with a lot of overlap. In fact, it was very difficult to pull them apart, and what we began to see. What we've got on this chart are just some of the summaries of some of those converging trends at a very high level, the connectivity of information, global economy, the rapid technology advances, the funding difficulties in the public-private roles, security, environmental sustainability, the growing congestion, and the marketability of safety.
That's how we summarized it, that's what we thought. I leave it there and turn it over to you all.
Joyce Bader: So, after absorbing a great deal of information, we're going to be iteratively going through our content discussion today and really pulling out the creativity of the group. I think it was Buzz Paaswell yesterday, on the panel said, "In order to address something like the JPO, ITS issue, it is informed vision," so this first piece is about what are the crucial trends that set the context for us as we begin to look at what will be the role of this program.
I would like to just open the floor to discussion, if these trends are the core trends to you, what you would emphasize or deemphasize. I will look for that, and then also, even the nature of them, if there's some level of thinking we're missing here. And so we'll just have an open discussion at this point about the trends, and I just invite you to jump in, and I will facilitate the discussion as we go along, and we'll be capturing them.
Okay, comments about the trends. Do these represent a good summary to you? Are they useful? Are there things you would emphasize more, or deemphasize? Yes, Bob?
Robert Denaro: First of all, I think it was good. Was this the result of a workshop, Shelley?
Shelley Row: We did it a couple of different ways. We had a couple of different meetings with the Joint Program Office staff, and we also did interviews, the same questions we asked you all, with our modal partners within the building.
Robert Denaro: So, first of all, a couple of comments. I would underscore the aging population and maybe I'm becoming a part of that, but I heard a comment a few years that said the baby-boomers are not aging gracefully. And what they were saying is, we're going to gyms, we retire and go climb Kilimanjaro, and so forth. I think the implication for transportation is, they're not going to get out of cars, they're not going to give up their cars, and yet, their skills are going to diminish, as every generation has. So, I just wanted to underscore that. And the baby-boomers, being such a big population, that's going to have an impact, I believe.
The young tech connected -- and you have it in here -- virtual personal network. I really want to underscore that. I've observed, in my case, there's this thing going on that I don't understand and I don't if the rest of you relate to it, but my kids don't have to know so much themselves, because they're in this network and they can always, at the click of a button, get the answer from somebody else. And it's just so natural and so different than the way I live and the rest of us live, and that expectation will be in the cars also. And in fact, that is an opportunity because it says how you can sell to these kind of people, how do you get them to adopt technology and so forth. So I would like to underscore that.
I didn't see an emphasis here on globalization, and what I mean by that -- there it is, the global economy, but I spent a lot of time in Europe and I see a lot happening in the automotive industry in Europe, and there are some stark differences in what's happening in this country. And what is important about that, is they will not stay in Europe, those differences, that will very quickly migrate to the U.S. and there will be more homogeneous treatment.
And we can talk more about that being a part, anyhow, a part of that is government support for safety and technology, how much they're working together with their auto manufacturers and systems suppliers and so forth. It's having an impact. It's surprising to me how it's having an impact, and that will have an impact over here.
And the last comment is, I didn't see anything explicitly about the price of oil, but I think between that and greening and the expectations, I think that will have an increasing impact on what's important to people and what the government's going to be expected to help with, and what we're overall going to be expected to implement.
Joyce Bader: Thank you.
Joseph Sussman: While the economy is certainly global, a number of things I've observed is, competition is more on a regional scale. You can go to Europe, but competition is on regionally-scaled industries and intellectual capital, recognizing the implications for ITS, is that gives us the possibility of managing transportation at that scale.
Joyce Bader: To be able to think about it in that way.
John Worthington: Somewhat similar to that, and I don't know if it's a trend or an impediment, would be the vertical nature of regulatory institutions.
Joyce Bader: Please say a little more.
John Worthington: Well, actually when we're talking about competition, a lot of times competition is regional because the regulations that we, as an industry, are building are vertical. They're dictated by a country. There isn't universality, for example, of spectrum usage for a particular application.
Joyce Bader: So in terms of trends, it's bigger than the public-private roles, it's how these things are segmented.
John Worthington: We want to look at, if you want to look at something at the highest level, you have to have institutional support at the highest level.
Scott Belcher: There's also cultural differences that create impediments. We have certain expectations in the United States that won't be imposed on us that other parts of the world don't face.
Ken Button: This is partly global and partly national. One thing that I think is an important trend right now, actually the mobility of factors. Just to cite what I mean, the United Kingdom allowed down barriers that brought in 500,000 workers, that is quite a large percentage, that imposed consumer strains on the transport cities where they moved to and so on and so forth.
In this country they have trends of migration coming in, but they also have a different form of migration, short-term migration. In the past we've seen the unitary family sort of split up and children leaving home early. So increasingly, I think in this country, getting husbands and wives or spouses and other spouses splitting, one working part-time in one place, one another. And one sees it around the Dulles Corridor area, where we have people coming in Monday morning, going back to their spouse in California and vice versa.
And so I think this is important when you look at the immigration statistics in this country, this is not simply for people moving to the job, it's also to visit their family, because people migrate for different periods. Forty percent of the air traffic in this country is actually carrying people to see their friends and families.
Now, as the population spreads out for work and other reasons, that is going to impose an interesting challenge on how they're going to move around in their destination positions. Are they going to have a car at both ends? What are they going to do? I mean, there's a lot of interesting movement of that type taking place.
Joseph Averkamp: The one trend that I would want some discussion is marketability of safety. It's not clear to me that it is truly marketable, and people have an expectation that the brakes will work. And so it seems like it's almost an inherent attribute that people expect of their transportation, so if we mean marketable, something represented as a value that is true, but I don't know about the charge, whether it has a price value.
Joyce Bader: What does the group think the trend is with safety then? Let flush that out a little bit.
John Worthington: I think there's more awareness of it.
Joyce Bader: More awareness of the safety?
John Worthington: For example, Volvo is trying to differentiate based on safety, but you don't need a premium pricing for it, the people are aware of it, they expect it. The expectation is that the vehicle is going to have airbags and ABS, and the automakers is going to continue to invest, but I don't think the public is going to pay for it.
Scott Belcher: A lot of automakers differentiate their high-end products through safety. If you look at some of the high-end Honda stuff that has been part of what makes the cut, is the safety attributes.
Tomiji Sugimoto: The industry has to lead for what is more suitable, but finally, we depend upon the cost or on the price itself, so how to trade-off the benefit and the payment.
Michael Replogle: I do think, certainly, the global context of public policy and transportation, there's a movement in the safety arena toward zero death as a goal. And I think it is one that certainly is an aspirational goal that we ought to be advancing. And I think people are showing a huge propensity to spend increasing shares of their income and affluence on health and quality of life, and safety is an aspect of that. And I think there is a question of translating that aspiration on the part of individuals into, how can they realize this through purchasing some of these technologies, or having the governments invest in public policies that help to yield those collectively.
The thing I'd really like to focus on beyond that, is the broader issue of health and environmental sustainability. And I think the presentation underplays the importance of that immerging issue. One of the international scientific panels looking at climate change just issued their latest report in this past month, which has quite the most alarming findings yet, in suggesting that all of the -- what we're seeing in real-world measurements of climate change is at the outer edges of what the scientists had feared. We might be needing to anticipate, and these changes are coming faster than the scientific world had previously anticipated.
The previous report said this latest one again confirmed that we need to be looking at 80 percent reductions from 1990 levels in CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 if we are to avoid the most catastrophic kinds of scenarios for climate change, which really take us out beyond the realm of what we can predict, and certainly plan and manage for. And getting 80 percent reductions in the transportation sector, and I note that the transportation sector, if you look at well to reel emissions from the transportation, it's about 43 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, come from transportation, if you count refining and the vehicle use and disposal of a part of that.
And the only way we will meet those 80 percent reduction numbers by 2050, is through a combination of three key areas. One is reducing the carbon content of fuels. The second is increasing vehicle fuel economy. And the third is reducing the amount of miles driven. And ITS has a major role to play, potentially in all three of these areas, by getting better information to consumers, to shippers, and businesses about the emission impacts.
Joyce Bader: So I hear that the emphasis on environmental sustainability is important, and health is an important thing to bear in mind. I want to get back -- hold that -- and go back to safety for a minute, because I think we were still in that flow, too.
Greer Woodruff: I wanted to give a perspective from the commercial motor vehicle perspective. I think we have a difference in consumer acceptance of safety and willingness to pay for safety versus a commercial motor vehicle willingness to pay for it, so I think we could see the commercial market for heavy vehicles being more accepting and place greater value on safety technologies. And that is, ultimately, going to come down to a cost-benefit analysis to justify that expense.
And one of the things we see as a challenge for an individual company using the cost-benefit model, is how do we incorporate into that model the societal benefits government looks at, the holistic view of it, and says, "Well, we're going to reduce this many deaths," and places a value on that. That does not typically find it's way into an individual company's cost-benefit model, and that's where government has to come in and have a policy, a tax policy or some type of incentive to drive those decisions.
And then I think we may see -- we may see some competing things in the consumer market. If a consumer is going to purchase a vehicle or have to pay for increasing transportation costs and I'm going to be environmentally sensitive and I'm concerned about safety. Am I going to make some trade-offs? Am I going to say, "Well, I'm more emotionally driven by environmental issues, therefore I'm not willing to pay for safety."
Or we might find the opposite, as the environmental issue seems to be taking a front seat, will that tend to push safety issues backward. And I think people do expect to have safety, but they're not always willing to pay for it. And that may be where we can get a mandate or some aspects of the safety features on vehicles, so that consumers don’t necessarily have that choice.
But a couple of observations on safety, generically, all of the evidence suggests as income rises, people are more concerned about safety. That's generic across any kind of safety, vehicle, car, transportation, gadgets in kitchens, whatever you're using. So I think as society's income rises, they simply start moving towards a zero tolerance of accidents and so on and so forth, and that becomes increasingly more difficult, because we tend to get more and more and transport all the time. So the safety standards, in fact, have to go up faster than the actual growth in transportation.
Secondly, there's two aspects, we've got the first aspect of what can I do about safety and what can society or equipment do to enhance safety? And there's a lot of evidence that societies have different approaches toward safety. For example, in my country where I come from, England, we put a lot of emphasis on driver training. We believe the individual driving the vehicle has a responsibility to drive safely, to avoid accidents.
If I might say, that's manifestly not the case in the United States, where one relies upon government control of equipment and the hardware, which is being provided. And so, there's a number of ways of trying to look at safety in terms of exactly who is responsible? Is it a State responsibility in the wider set or is it a personal responsibility, which may involve driving, and may also involve purchasing equipment. And this does also lead to the issue of insurance in these markets, whether insurance is provided by the State or privately.
Randall Iwasaki: In the area of safety, for California, we've done an analysis of the accidents on the State highway system and the interstate system in California, and about 90 percent of all the cause of accidents, when you look at a Venn diagram of three circles, one being infrastructure, one being driver, and one being the vehicle. About 12 percent attribute, the causes are attributed to the vehicle, about 34 percent to the infrastructure, about 92 percent to the driver behavior, yet when you look at all of the research that is being done, we spend a lot of money, about the $200, $300 million a year in California correcting the State highway system where we can.
We spend very, very little on driver behavior, and the vehicles are getting, there's nothing unsafe about a vehicle. I mean, so it is the driver, yet we're not focusing on the driver. And so, I think where Joe is headed, you look at marketability of safety, it is really not -- it is high on my radar screen, because I can get sued -- Cal Trans gets sued all the time, but it's really not a marketable kind of thing.
We have a goal that AASHTO has adopted of one fatal per 100 million vehicle miles. We're below that on the interstate system, it's the rural areas where we're above that, and so we focus in on that. But I'm not sure -- it would be nice to have a zero fatality throughout the United States, but if you look at the trends, they're actually starting to rise.
Joyce Bader: Does ITS, do you think that behavior is a key trend within the safety, hat understanding the role of that?
Randall Iwasaki: Absolutely. I think driver control, CICAS, the efforts we're doing, the crashes at intersections -- crashless intersections, that's all going to be coming down in the future, but you have to have the willpower to implement the CICAS technology.
Robert Denaro: I have some comments on safety also, and what's been said. First of all, I completely agree, people won't pay for safety as an option. We can't order that option, but simultaneously, there's an interesting trend that I haven't seen in past years, where the automakers and system vendors are investing in safety voluntarily, and they usually -- automakers don’t want to put anything in a car that's going to raise the cost of the car, for a very good reason, yet I'm seeing the opposite. Right now there's a great deal of investment there, so there's kind of an alignment between the government, what the government would want and what we should have in terms of safety, and what the automakers are doing. So that's a positive trend.
Secondly, I think we have to be careful about assumptions, about whether safety will stall or not. I think something is changing. It's my opinion, but I think technologies are coming along right now do have the promise of cars that can't crash or at least a lot less likely, and avoiding crashes. And I think it's going to make a difference. It's different than occupant protection, it's different than emergency call after a crash, that sort of thing. It's really avoiding that. And I think it is possible.
And the analogy I use and when I've given speeches on this subject is rumble strips. I found some statistics about rumble strips, where in New York and Pennsylvania, they saw a 70 percent reduction in cars running off the road accidents after they installed rumble strips. Delaware saw a 90 percent reduction in head-on accidents with the rumble strips. And you can put electronic rumble strips in cars right now.
Those kind -- if those kinds of statistics are real and those can happen -- by the way, on rural roads. If we have a particular model or line of automobile, that statistics come back, and we have metrics to measure the statistics, come back and say, "Gee, this particular has -- pick a number -- 55 percent fewer crashes than others of its class." That's going to be a huge change in the market perception of what's happening.
And I think that is a possibility. That is why I believe that DOT made this investment in electronic stability control. The numbers were real, and it is really having an impact. And we haven't yet seen those numbers, the overall trend head down, but I do believe that will happen and that will change the perception of the market about safety.
Steve Albert: One of the things I think we're seeing from a safety standpoint, from the real perspective is we are seeing safety problems solved in rural areas, but it may not have a good benefit-cost ratio because the solutions you want to put in there take more money because there is no communication and no power. And it is difficult to do it, given the low volume, so it's almost like some policy or incentive needs to be modified improve safety in rural areas, when it may not make sense from a benefit-cost standpoint.
Second, it seems that most of these solutions related to rural and safety have been predominantly infrastructure-based. And in fact, 90 percent of the problem is still driver behavior, but we're not putting enough emphasis on driver behavior. That then may help the benefit-cost ratio.
If I could make a comment on converging trends, one thing we're seeing also on converging trends, that I don't see up here, is the shrinking workforce. And generally, within administrative attitude, that when you have technology, you should be able to do more with less. In fact, what we're seeing is more technology with even less people. It seems to be pulling the workforce apart.
Thomas Lambert: I want to build off of that. From an operations perspective, it's not just the transportation workforce, but you're expanding the role of multiple disciplines participating and operating transportation systems. We talked yesterday about the capacity-building of transportation professionals. I think we're going to have to expand that to include changing the professional capacity of law enforcement, emergency responders, public safety. The best way to mess up a transportation network is to let a police officer get on the street.
So if you want to not let that happen with all of the advances in technology, they've got to understand the role they play in that. Quite frankly, how it meets their agenda and the role they're trying to play, from their personal priorities, their personal safety priorities. There's been a lot of good work on traffic instant management, and I think that's going to have to be expanded to include the arterial systems that have not historically been brought into an integrated approach.
I think as you see security expanding -- and I agree with the discussion -- we're finding more and more people are willing to accept camera systems, intelligent surveillance, and you're going to see more and more of that driving, I think at least in the public transit field. If you want to make people be comfortable in making a choice decision of leaving their automobile and going to a multi-modal, multi-person conveyance system, they've got to make sure that it's safe. If they don't perceive it to be safe, they're not going to make that choice or decision.
So I think it's going to drive that, and in driving that, there are many more players that have to participate. So the leveraging of the technology, the leveraging that ITS technology can bring, becomes more of a challenge, and how that leveraging impacts all of these players that have to participate in this process. So I think that's a growing trend, and that workforce is also having some impacts. I think Steve's right on target with that.
Ann Flemer: One other trend in metropolitan areas, is the move toward more compact development and walkable neighborhoods, and the trend toward pedestrian safety. I know the emphasis on this group is on technology and the vehicle, but I think what we're see too, is the need to be much smarter about how we impact the safety of pedestrians, bicycles, and others especially as land use patterns change and we bring more people in conflict with the vehicle potentially on our streets and roads. And certainly it is a metropolitan issue, but I would expect that this kind of thing and trend would occur nationwide.
Joyce Bader: The trend is toward the communities.
Ann Flemer: I didn't really see that pop out as a land use change. And policies are starting to be driven in that direction, and we need to keep up with that. A number of fatalities in California are related to pedestrians, not just vehicles.
Joyce Bader: Not just in sustainable communities, but safe sustainable communities.
Ann Flemer: That's right, because again, if they perceive them as safe, if there's technology built in to help them cross the road safely.
Joyce Bader: Okay. Just a question. I've been looking at this and we've touched on most of these, but some -- look at the ones we haven't touched on as much. We haven't emphasized the connectivity, the rapid technological advances. I'm just taking a quick glance, I'm just curious what you think.
Thomas Lambert: I'll give my reactions on rapid technological advances. Safety has to be a part of that. We tried to put together a regional traffic safety program. The public is really not -- kind of go back to a comment that Randy made -- doesn't jump to the plate to say safety is foremost in their mind, because I think they have a view that it's always somebody else's problem.
But when you talk about congestion, that is where they're at. What can you do to help me not be stuck in traffic? What can you do to help my vehicle get me there more quickly, more reliably?
And I think what the safety message has to be, it's got to be brought under that whole congestion issue, that if you reduce accidents, you improve congestion mitigation. So as you couch it, I think it is very important how we're communicating that.
Greer Woodruff: But statistically, I find that interesting because all the work I've seen says, the more congestion you have, the fewer pedestrian accidents you have because people are -- the vehicles are moving more slowly. I mean, your problem with incidents in this country, certainly around here if I may say so, is the fact that if you have an incident of some sort, it causes congestion because vehicles are left on the road. In most parts of the world, if there's an incident and the vehicle is movable, if you don't move it after the incident, you're in jail for obstructing the traffic flow.
Thomas Lambert: That's one of the institutional challenges we face in this country, but the pedestrian one is a serious one. Again, if I can refer back to the U.K. where there's a lot more urbanization, the rates of traffic accidents are gradually coming down, except for pedestrian accidents in cities which are going up. There's a major problem, and it's very difficult to tackle, and is one which clearly -- the experience is actually, the pedestrian is often to blame. If you put in crossing facilities, if you give them rights of way in certain circumstances, they tend to ignore them. And that is an educational issues, and again, I'm not quite sure how IT actually gets into that, other than providing some form of education for the user of the system.
Randall Iwasaki: I don't think he's talking just about pedestrians.
Ken Button: I was trying to tie the traffic in.
Thomas Lambert: But, I agree with you.
Joyce Bader: What you're saying is the congestion and safety need to converge?
Thomas Lambert: I think that they have to converge, because they go hand-in-hand.
Thomas Lambert: I just say you have to be careful about things. Only about 15 percent of traffic congestion is caused by accidents, the rest are called by bottle-neck events and sort of predictable things. So, I agree, it is a subset of it, but we shouldn't lose sight of the main problem, in most metropolitan areas it is congestion. It really is impacting and changing, kind of, the way that people live, and the commute times, and they're obviously stressed an a lot of other things.
So, when you think about what ITS is set up to address, congestion has to be, sort of, at the top of the list.
Michael Replogle: But there's a couple of countervailing considerations. One is that as the society has shifted, more of the traffic from slower speed urban grid network grids to higher speed motor ways, limited access roadways, it tends to result in much longer trip lengths, more vehicle miles of travel, more energy consumption, even though the rate of consumption per mile traveled goes down, the rate of accidents per mile traveled goes down, the number of miles traveled keeps going up at a faster pace, causing us to basically consume a lot more.
And we put the productivity gains in our transportation system into higher mobility, and I think as we shift into a world in which greenhouse gas emissions now, that equation is one that will end up playing an important role in decided -- is ITS helping to solve our big challenge on the environment, or is it going to be contributing to making the problem worse by spurring more mobility? If we use automated highway system technologies to double the capacity of our current interstate highway system without managing the increase in mobility that that would cause, by reducing the generalized cost of travel, we're in trouble on the greenhouse gas side.
And similarly, if we fail to use ITS technologies to manage the flow of traffic in urban networks, we could rob our communities of opportunities to walk and bike safely, so the likelihood of serious injury at 20 miles an hour is very low with a pedestrian car accident, but the likelihood of death or serious injury goes up ten-fold when you go 40 miles an hour, and it's even higher at higher levels.
These are tradeoffs that, I think, we need to make more explicit as we talk through what are the implications of different application pathways for ITS technology.
Randall Iwasaki: Maybe another trend is the movement of people from the interior to the coastlines, and the ability, then, to provide transportation to those people, because it takes a long time to build a road.
Steve Albert: You know, one of those things that we see in rural America, because of this migration is a whole different expectation by the population. And that when you see this migration happening, they're coming to areas where you think there is this connectivity where everything is connected, and in fact, we don't even have wireless coverage outside of an interstate to provide that connectivity. So, there's this huge imbalance between expectation levels over here, with urban dwellers coming to rural areas, and the communication coverage that allows them for that connectivity. I think that is a trend.
Joyce Bader: Where would you put this in here, as a freestanding thing?
Steve Albert: It's probably somewhere where you talk about customers and expectations.
Joyce Bader: Those are the changes in rural America. So, I'm curious about, are there any things here you would deemphasize or add?
Joseph Averkamp: I think with respect to connectivity, information everywhere and rapid technological advances, we are kind of takers there. That's going to happen, I think, if we're going to be able to impact that and reap the benefit of that.
If I were to add an area that I don't see represented, I think it's growing institutional distrust with the government, with big companies. If they get access to our data, they keep hearing about identity theft, will it be used for enforcement, as opposed to just through-put.
Having just launched the services on the phones, now we know where you are with your phone. There are all sorts of firewalls to prevent that from getting in the hands of the wrong people. I mean, growing institutional distrust may be a way to characterize it.
Ann Flemer: I think to marry that up with the next generation, I think there's far less distress as they move into kind of an expectation that their information is shared and is so open, that the protection of their own identity is an issue.
John Worthington: I would say I hope that's the case, but I agree with Joe. One of those things technology -- if anything -- we're held back by the distrust, we're held back by the public's distaste for their information, that somehow we're going to be able to track their E-ZPass. We sure as heck are going to have a very difficult time finding out whether or not you went over here or over there at 2:35 on the 18th -- it's not a technological issue, it's a public acceptance issue.
Joyce Bader: Just a last question -- security really hasn't come up, or it's come up much more in the vein of safety, or enhancing safety, as opposed to national security and the role ITS could play, in terms of facilitating transportation -- is that a key trend? Or you don't think it is a key trend?
Thomas Lambert: I think it's very much a key trend, you're looking at ITS as to how to evacuate communities is extremely important, and as the system continues to build-out, the opportunities to leverage off of the communications capabilities, the information-sharing capabilities -- there's a lot of opportunity there. And I think you're going to see how more and more people can use leveraged systems to save public dollars that are already very tight. So, I think you will see more and more of that.
I think you've got some additional players that are not playing right now, that have to come into that, and we'll ultimately see where that goes.
Greer Woodruff: I think there's a lot of security issues with regards to the movement of freight into the United States, particularly around the ports. And even outside of the United States, to have the technologies necessary to process all of the cargo coming in.
Ken Button: I think, it seems to me there's one overriding trench which is taking place, and that's public discussion about the role of the public and private sector and virtually everything these days, ranging through the role of information confidentiality, with the role that the public sector should play. The global economy, to what extent clearly, the macro-level we should have greater frequent trade, or lesser restrictions on freedom of trade, rapid technology advances, which ones are going to be in the public sector or the private sector.
My flight back from Manheim yesterday, I was just finishing Howard Greenspan's book, where he made the extremely pertinent observation that in India the cell phone is considered so trivial and unimportant, it was left to the private sector, therefore everyone's got it.
On the other hand, electricity was considered so important, it's such a national significance, it was given to state authorities. As a result, only half of the population have it, and then only intermittently. There's serious discussions about where the public and private sector come see and in terms of technology, financing, obviously, security, the role of -- quite clearly -- the State can't provide. And what the private sector does, what role markets play, oil prices go up, basically, size goes down, but mobility remains the same.
Environmental sustainability -- how much of the personal responsibility and how much is State responsibility? Congestion, ditto -- how much is private responsibility to gain information, the public sector control infrastructure provided. And finally, the marketability and safety, how much is it the responsibility of the insurance companies get these technologies in place? Because if they are, you can have good -- save accidents, it saves insurance costs, and insurance companies will give discounts, if they're available. And so, I think there is an issue, an overriding issue is really where the boundary lines, or the roles of those groups are.
Joyce Bader: Well, let's see where we are, a couple of flying contents, I could take a flying leap, but a summary and you could react to it, and that would be dangerous. But let me see, first, if there are final comments about -- have we pretty much gone over the territory?
Michael Replogle: Let me throw out one more trend, which is I think the increasing emphasis that we're likely to see in the next transportation bill on performance and making sure that funding and flows of money -- whether it's public funding or private remuneration under concession agreements, or other contractual arrangements, is tied to actually delivery performance for customers, for communities, for society.
Joyce Bader: Well, just to sort of put a bit of a summary out, and you tell me if I'm way off or help us summarize or pull it together -- there was some things that are already up here, that had a great deal of emphasis in the discussion, I think, and I'll highlight some of the things that we did emphasize.
Some of the things, like they are new, they should be here, and some that might be sort of super-ordinate.
The overemphasis seemed to settle in on the safety. There was quite a bit of discussion on that, and a lot of the points on the environmental sustainability and health and sustainable communities and safe communities. The emphasis of what the predictions of what could happen -- those were the areas that I heard having the most emphasis. Although some, perhaps, are just -- we're so accustomed to, such as growing congestion and technological advances, we didn't talk about them as much.
In terms of new, I heard quite a bit about the demographic shifts and a wide variety of them -- whether it was the aging population and its behavior, or the youth population and its behavior, the mobilization of the workforce, migration, settlement and how that affects things, the shrinking workforce, there were a lot of demographical shift elements that came up in the discussion.
There was also, in terms of new, the issue -- a few different slices of the regional competition, the verticality and the cultural diversity of the markets.
And another new one that came up is, I don't know how to quite put it, Tom, you brought it up -- at the professional capacity of the players, the human resource requirements, the need to leverage that.
And then there was some sort of super-ordinate things -- the public/private entities and their relationship to each other, across the board, the interplay of the trends with each other, and what that creates, and the performance measures, cutting across all -- those are some of the things I'd just try to pick up as a broad brush. I won't go through them and ask you, did I miss something or did we miss something.
Does that inform the discussion of the trends as we go further today?
Scott Belcher: I think super-ordinate, or some of the things we didn't talk about that we spent time talking about yesterday, that's the growing congestion. Ubiquitous technology is changing quickly, and it's everywhere. We didn't spend a lot of time talking about that today, but we spent a lot of time on it yesterday. It's kind of a given.
Robert Denaro: Just one thing, and I don't think it's a major trend, but I didn't hear it come up, and this may be related to the connectedness thing, but this whole idea about the open source and things like that, the fact that particularly, this next generation is creating their own networks, and own information sources, and so forth, and it's like they don't need anybody to do it for them -- it's kind of an open thing, and with the numbers and the statistics, it kind of works.
I'm not sure about the impact on that, but these markets will emerge, kind of on their own, and they don't need help, particularly I'm thinking now about the information trends and things like that.
Joyce Bader: Okay, great discussion. Thank you. Why don't we take a 20-minute break, and we'll start again at about 9:25.
(Recess.)
Vision: What Does Success Look Like?
Shelley Row: Let's go ahead and get started again.
Okay, well thanks for a good discussion on the trends, hopefully it's kind of gotten you into thinking about what is going on in the world, and how it potentially impacts on what we can and ought to be doing.
Now, we're going to move on to kind of flipping the trends discussion on its head and saying let's talk about the vision. And this is what would see in the world if ITS were wildly successful? So, I would ask you to think very broadly, very creatively, very optimistically about what we would see, what would the world look like with a fabulously successful ITS?
And I said yesterday, too, we want to "go wishing." So, we had a lot of fun doing this, I hope you'll find it as engaging and as energizing as we did.
But, again, I'm going to share with you some of the discussions that came out of the DOT staff, but please, this is just raw discussions, and we want to hear what you all have to say.
What we said with the staff was, okay, what would we see in the world, if ITS were wildly successful? And one of those things they said was that you would see everything you need to know about any trip you want to take -- that global connectivity, that wireless information everywhere, that no matter what kind of trip you wanted, what your lifestyle choice was, wherever you wanted to go, however you wanted to get there, you would have complete information about your entire trip -- about what the roadway looks like, about what the transit network looks like, about what parking is, about what the weather conditions are -- anything you wanted to know about your trip would be fully informed, and that we even had -- we had staff who said, "Well, you know, I live in a rural area, and I want to live in a rural area, thank you very much, so I want to know what is on my driving trip."
And we have other staff who live in the city who don't own vehicles, and they said, "Well that's my choice, and that's how I want to live, but I still want to know everything I need to know about how to get where I'm going, whenever I want to get there, through all mode choices." So, that's the first thing they went wishing for.
The other thing is, we wanted to have a transportation network that was managed for optimal performance, the whole network -- all the modes, all inter-modally, everything was managed for optimal performance, not just a freeway network. We wanted, we saw in our wildly successful world, performance measures that support outcome-based decision making.
So, for example, we would have complete information about the transportation network, again, all modes of it, all aspects of it, from which we could make better-informed decisions about infrastructure investments, about land use, that actually didn't make it on this slide -- it is supposed to be there, I just missed it -- about where the maintenance needs to be, about how the performance of the network is. But we could make truly informed decisions, because we had complete information. We would have seamless collection and dissemination of transportation-related information.
Other things that we would see in the world is that everyone would have technology-enabled safety in their vehicles -- not just people who could buy high-end vehicles -- but everyone would enjoy the benefits of technology-enabled safety in their vehicles. That vehicles would be situationally aware, that they would know what was going on around them -- whether it was an infrastructure issue, whether it was another vehicle, whether it was a pedestrian, that the vehicle would be situationally aware, so, wrapped in information, so to speak, and then also be able to communicate that information in an appropriate way with the driver.
In our perfect world -- or maybe not perfect, but just our wildly successful world -- we would have end-to-end freight movement that's seamless and secure through technology-enabled activity, and that as we've talked about here already, the technology in transportation would reduce the negative impact of transportation on the environment, by improving system performance, by improving driver decision making, and there's any number of ways that technology can improve and reduce the negative impact on the environment.
So, there were a lot of other things we wished for, but those were some of the ones that kind of rose to the surface in our wish list. I offer them to you, just simply to start your discussion and your wish list.
Joyce Bader: Okay, we're going to try to put both slides up in a minute so you can see them as we talk. This was the result of a process with the DOT staff that really generated a brainstormed large vision, and then was collapsed into some of these key items -- it is a work in progress, so you're now entering into it as a part of that process.
I'd be curious, before we start, maybe reacting to the specifics that Shelley said, for you to think in visionary terms, and I'm sure that all of you do that for your organizations at some point, and the work you're doing goes to some direction, so I'd like to hear from that perspective, the kind of visions you have.
Joseph Sussman: I'm struck by the fact that many of these are quite good -- I was struck by the fact, though, that they all deal directly with the transportation system, as opposed to thinking about societal changes enabled by the transportation improvements.
So, going to the next layer out, and saying, how is the world changed as a result of the success in ITS? I'm an educator, I would think in terms of how might this change, this ITS change higher education and transportation and engineering.
Joyce Bader: So what would you say?
Joseph Sussman: Well, I think we're already seeing it, of course, that the kind of requirements that one has for students forces us to think more inter-modally, more technology in what we teach -- teaching about institutional change as far as transformation. So, we are already beginning to see those kinds of changes, the educational institutions, but it would be interesting to hear people from the public and private sector opine about how change are being forced, or enabled by a potential success in ITS?
Robert Denaro: Just an overall comment. I think this is a good start to see the process, how it boiled down to this. But, with all due respect, I'm not inspired by this list. And when you have a vision statement, I would like to, in fact, I would challenge us to come up with some things that are more inspirational.
And, when I've been interviewed, one of the comments I made was, I just heard recently, talking to a friend at Volvo car, they have a 25-year vision, which first of all, is really cool. Not many people risk a 25-year vision, and in 25-year vision was, no one will be killed in or by a Volvo car. That just gave me chills. That was really a neat inspirational statement. And so, I would challenge us to kind of think in that direction.
Joyce Bader: So breaking through this, to the out of the box thinking and the optimistic possibilities where we constantly talk about the challenges we're facing?
Joseph Sussman: That's exactly right. One ought to think about the societal implications, and not simply transportation implications.
Joyce Bader: So, let's go for that, let's talk about societal implications as you work in each of your organizations -- what are the kind of end-states you've imagined that you contribute to? That you're all in this industry at some point, what would some of your thoughts be?
Robert Denaro: Kind of a strange term, but the concept of loss goes out of our vocabulary. There's just not possible to have loss. To get lost.
[Laughter.]
Michael Replogle: I think this certainly opens up, and I would agree with the comment, that I think these are sort of one level down from the vision or the consumer vision, and I think a big challenge for government, though, is to think about the implications of this question for how we govern and operate transportation networks and services. And I think we end up evolving, really, towards, say, managed public utility approach, where we have a network of networks, and mobility service providers, who operated and manage the system for performance. And where the role of government in and public sector agencies is transformed from that of the operator of the system to that of the system regulator.
And then sort of the high-level entity that sets the performance goals for the operations of the networks and the services, and helps to give voice to the collective aspiration of the customers, who will also give voice to that through the marketplace.
The performance outcomes, then, that it enables are safety, radical reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, very sharp reduction in air pollution hot spots that cause a lot of adverse public health problems. A much wider array of travel choices for customers. And I think one of those things that I think right now inhibits travel choice, is this idea of a much more seamless information flow.
When I travel to some city on business, right now I end up renting a car, because I know my chain of travel won't be broken that way. Whereas, if I have to take public transport, just one missing link of information about how I can make that journey reliably, breaks the whole chain, and forces me into car dependence. ITS could help break that, or make the chain work.
Joyce Bader: Okay, and as you do this, think about end-states, societal visions that are inspiring. So, government would be at this level because you want voice to the collective aspirations, or what would be even a further end-state of that. What would be the change that would really be essential?
Michael Replogle: A government that actually managed and takes a role in the transportation system, that actually gets to deliver good performance rather than just sort of running a bunch of streets and a bunch of transit networks that deliver, often, substandard performance.
John Worthington: I would characterize it as our transportation system as a whole system, as recognized as a national asset, a strategic differentiator in the world. It's the most secure, it is the safest, and it is the most efficient in the world.
Joyce Bader: Are you saying it's become that? Or it already is?
John Worthington: No, it needs to be that, and in order to do that, you have to view it as not secondary. You invest in it. And not on a piecemeal basis.
Joyce Bader: Say more about that, "not on a piecemeal basis."
John Worthington: Well, I think it is a comment on the way we fund ITS. More and more earmarks, we don't have a national policy, we have a bunch of pork-barrel spending in transportation.
Joyce Bader: So, the good side of that is we do have a national policy.
Thomas Lambert: I was going to say, a lot of these things, whether it be safety, it's all about better quality of life, it's less time spent in congestion, it's getting to where you want to go, more time with family, less stress -- a lot of these just boil down to a better quality of life.
Ken Button: I haven't got a clue what society is going to want in 25 or 30 years time. I look back 25 or 30 years and certainly I can't envisage what we have now. it seems to me, what you have to ask yourself in transport is, basically, transport is essentially an impediment for doing things we want to do. We want to go to the theater, getting there is transport, therefore transport is an impediment to the system.
So, my vision would be that ITS contributes to transportation, less of an impediment for society realizing the things that it really wants to do.
John Worthington: I have to respond to that. I think it is a facilitator for what we want to do.
Ken Button: But, as a facilitator, we want to minimize the actual facilitation, the fact that you have to facilitate is an impediment itself.
Randall Iwasaki: We could always bring the play to you, if you have the money.
Michael Replogle: To the degree that that mobility has externality costs that we're not bringing to bear, it is also spinning off a lot of ill effects, so that, incorporating those costs more fully into consumption of mobility, drive different changes in society where you don't have to travel as much to accomplish what we need and want in life.
Steve Albert: The vision statement is very much geared toward operations, so far, and I know in many of the rural ITS outreach workshops that I've done across the country, what we hear from the rural community is that really, transportation is the hook to kind of bring people together, it is kind of a means to an end. There's a lot of ancillary things that transportation brings, which is economic -- economic development, jobs, et cetera, but it seems to me as part of a vision statement, we should have something about the economy, and not just predominantly about operations.
Joyce Bader: You want to go beyond efficiency and productivity, because that did show up in various things. What would it be? What's the picture, really, of the economy?
Steve Albert: And that kind of sparks what John was saying, is that transportation is really a national asset.
Ann Flemer: We're embarking, in our region, on a 25-year plan, and you have to have a vision first, and so there were basically three main categories for us -- one was the environment, driving down greenhouse gas emissions X percent below 1990 levels, whatever, fill in the blank.
Joyce Bader: How much was it?
Ann Flemer: In our case, it was 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2035.
Second had to do with the economy, and that was vehicle hours of delay -- how much time people are spending in congestion today, and we drive that down by X percent. And I won't say the amount, or where we landed on that.
And the third was on the issue of equity and affordability, and the issue there was driving down the percent of household income spend on transportation and housing, because the two are so linked by keeping it below 20 or 25 percent of household income. So irrespective of how much you earn, the percentage that you have to spend on transportation and housing would be limited.
Now, what was interesting about that analysis is the transportation solutions only got you so far to those targets, whether they're high technology or not, we operated the system better -- it only gets us a certain percent toward our goal.
So, what I think we need to think about in this vision statement is the role of transportation and the role of ITS relative to the larger societal goals, and that it isn't only a transportation solution, but the integration of transportation technology and transportation policy to environmental policy and land use policy has to be a part of the solution. And the stovepiping of ITS and transportation away from impeding the integration into the other policies, and funding programs, I think, is one of our biggest non-visionary situations we're in today.
Joyce Bader: So, does part of the vision include integrating these things into other policy decisions?
Ann Flemer: Yes.
Shelley Row: Joyce, could I make a comment, too? I'm observing the discussion, and I wanted to just offer a thought for you all, because this is not clear to me which way we need to go.
The discussion that we had with the staff, and that we have started with you, was not about what was the vision statement. It was about, what does success look like, what do you see in the world? That indicates that we've achieved the vision. It sounds, maybe, like it's the same thing, but it really isn't.
I find, to get these big statements that are so general, that it's very difficult to have anything tangible behind it, and that's why we changed the question from, what is the vision statement, to what does success look like, specifically, what are you seeing in the world that is different and what are you seeing in the world that indicates that we are successful? And that, at least we found that to be kind of an insightful way to help us drive more specificity and a deeper level of understanding. So, I offer that for your consideration.
Ann Flemer: That's exactly why we establish targets, because unless you can articulate that jointly as a region or a nation, you don't really know what you're shooting for.
Joyce Bader: I see one thing going on -- this is more a transportation vision than this is the societal vision. And with some looking at how it's a societal vision in relation to transportation, the group seemed to jump right to here. That is what I heard at the beginning. So one thing we could do is attempt to relate this -- I'm not sure, Shelley, if you would go there.
Shelley Row: I'm not suggesting that. My concern is that if we came out of the discussion and said, "We have the best transportation system in the world," I find very little usefulness in that statement, to actually then, drive us to the next level. That, quite frankly, would be my concern.
Joyce Bader: It sort of helps you to step into what it looks like, transportation-wise.
Shelley Row: It doesn't have to be what transportation looks like -- what society looks like. What do our consumers see? What do our travelers see? What do we see as we're living our lives? What do we see if we're wildly successful?
Ken Button: The problem with this is it's a moving target. Aspirations are really what we're talking about, whether you're achieving aspirations, those aspirations in society change quite significantly over time. We know what a -- aspire to have a laptop computer 20 years ago, we all aspire to have one, the question is, what are we actually aspiring to, to have a laptop computer? If you're in the telecommunications industry, we could have some target of penetration -- are we talking about access to the communications information world? Is the aspiration one or the other? There's always a strategic/operational division in that.
We have aspirations, also, very quite considerably of groups within society. We talked about America having the best transport system in the world, I can point to large parts of the world where the bike transportation system is far, far better. Someplace like Melbourne totally swamps the transportation system in U.S. cities, and ITS is infinitely better. So, at the micro-level there are instances, so it's very, very difficult to judge.
And I think if you're going to judge, you have to think in terms of short term -- sort of what society, what we think are the current social aspirations and how they're likely to be attained or achieved or not, over the 15 years. And try to think forward about longer-term trends in society -- it's quite clear there are longer-term trends in society -- the so-called embedded institutional economics where people want their freedom. At the same time, they also want a greater degree of integration between individuals. Those are conflicting goals, so I think one has to have sort of a rolling set of visions, not simply one for 25 years, and not necessarily one for a particular group.
Because as you pointed out earlier, several times, different people in society have got different aspirations and different goals. So, it's extremely difficult to do.
Alfred Foxx: I think it's how you word the statement, and I go back to what Mr. Denaro said when he heard the vision statement on the companies that said, "We're going to do this," and I'll just use "We're going to eliminate accidents in the United States." That is a vision statement, now, how do you go about doing that? You set yourself some targets, and that is, most of the places, organizations I've participated in, that have had vision statements, they were going to reduce accidents by 15 percent, and I think that just focused them, just particularly on accidents. And, as everything is focused on that.
But, a vision statement ought to be broad enough -- I won't say broad enough -- but be broad, so that you can bring in the social/economic side, you can bring in the transportation side, and try to establish goals and objectives to achieve that vision.
But, you know when you achieve that vision, why we're going to eliminate over 20, 30 years, so what's the measure of success? You either eliminated it or you didn't. And I think it's how you word your vision statement, is to outline whether or not you're going to achieve success, goals and objectives help you get there.
Joyce Bader: I think there's a couple of things that I would see going on that might help us.
One is, to talk a bit about the time span we're talking about, as well. Because, we can be very aspirational, and as Ken is saying, maybe very out of touch if we look too far forward, but to short, kind of, keeps you bound to what you presently know.
And I think that, Shelley, do you have a sense of the timetable we would want to address in this?
Shelley Row: Well, when we were doing our internal thinking, we were thinking in terms of the span over the next, of course, it is the Federal government, we do reauthorizations, and authorizations, we were thinking in terms of the span over 1 to 2 cycles of legislation, so that is 6, 12, 15 years, all up in that time period.
Michael Replogle: I think that kind of timeframe commends itself to looking at the kind of question that Ken just raised, looking at other cities and countries around the world who are sort of at the cutting edge of using these technologies, and are well more advanced than the United States and what are the aspects that we see in some of these best practices around the world that we ought to be seeking to adapt and incorporate as a part of our aspiration and vision for where we could go with this.
And I would toss out, for example, Singapore as a city that, to my mind, is one city that is doing this better than any in the world, that is probably Singapore, which is bringing together a whole host of different kinds of technologies and pricing incentive structures that apply to every stage of motor vehicle, operation and use, in order to make a system that works well. They use tolled transponder toll rates by hour of the week, every three months, based upon whether the arterial roads and the motorways and the areas of the city are operating above or below their peak performance, productivity and speed targets. The decision is out of the public process, and more of technocratic, how do you manage the system for peak productivity question. And it delivers results, and delivers a lot of revenue which goes into the general fund, and helps not just the public transport and system, but also social housing investments. So, you don't see slum housing with a lot of decayed infrastructure in Singapore, you see a city system that works very effectively and efficiently.
There are certainly not every aspect that that would want to be incorporated into the U.S., but if there were certain things we've learned from those models, adapting and saying how could we make our cities work more effectively, how could we deliver better mobility with a smaller carbon and environmental footprint.
Joseph Sussman: Let me try a few things, pulling together some ideas, and perhaps adding some, again, trying to draw the boundary line further out, but nonetheless in response to what Shelley is saying, trying to relate it to the kinds of things that we can work, perhaps more effectively measure.
I came up with several, one would be a more reasonable and effective balance between transportation operations and capital expenditures. The balance would be addressed with operations getting more of the pie, or a bigger piece of the pie.
Second would be a more effective set of institutional structures, public partnerships, that is the relationships between the Feds, the States and localities, and PQ, of public/private partnerships, that we've established a more effective partnership, if you will, between the public and private sector in transportation.
I would say a steady flow of excellent transportation professionals from our academic institutions, replenishing the intellectual capital power of the transportation enterprise, and a final one I would have is to, in a sense, put ourselves out of business. That, to me, a sign of success would be, if we don't explicitly talk about ITS that ITS is so inherently part of the transportation field that we don't feel the need to separate it out and protect it, and encapsulate it, it's inherently what we do. So, I put those on the table as several things that, 20 years from now, if those were true, I would say we have been successful.
Joyce Bader: Interestingly, these are operationally based.
Joseph Sussman: We know if it's happening.
Joyce Bader: Other comments?
Robert Denaro: I was struggling with Shelley's comment earlier about what is success? So, the vision I have, related to the safety thing was that cars that can't crash, there's a measurable outcome over time that says what we see is a significant, whatever that is, 10 percent reduction in fatalities and injury rates, uninterrupted, year after year and so forth. So, I'm struggling with something around that area or that concept.
Joseph Averkamp: I actually liked the way Ann described it about improving the quality of life and then focusing on three areas, which are how much money you're spending, how much time you're spending and the impact on the environment. The only thing that I would maybe add to that is you really need to consider what Bob is talking about, which is death and injury and damage to property. This may be a fourth category I would consider, in addition to those three, improving our performance in those categories.
Joyce Bader: So, you would say that that improves the vision, with those benchmarks?
Joseph Averkamp: Yes.
Joseph Sussman: This is the classic definition of sustainability and the balance of economic development, which brought -- minimizing environmental impact, and achieving social equity. So, that fits in with the rhetoric, but in a very effective way.
Joyce Bader: I'm curious about process here, go ahead.
Ken Button: If I could just say something -- if you actually go to have some method of assessment, you've also got to put in, economy is the dismal side, but you also have to put in constraints, we can put all the resources in the world in, and have an absolutely safe car, but there's a cost endured elsewhere, not just in transportation, but in other parts of the economy and social structure. So, when you have a vision statement, or an assessment procedure, which is what you're really talking about, the assessment is, are we doing this, given the constraints that are confronting us? I think it's very nice to these things like the large number of transport professionals, but having a nuclear physicist and how many nurses are you not training? I mean, those are constraint issues here -- any sort of an assessment procedure must be, we want to attain this, and it's subject to these constraints.
I think it is important to build that into the discussion, because otherwise we're really assuming this is a sort of boundless world, and it's not.
Joseph Averkamp: Maybe that's where the discussion goes next, this has all been blue sky, so far.
Joyce Bader: The next piece is the opportunities that the situation presents, and the barriers. So just -- and I'm curious to try something in terms of blue sky, because we've had lots of different perspectives and points of views, and like Shelley said, the staff did this, and sort of go wishing, what you would wish to see in 15 years that would be distinctively different, and I'm wondering if it wouldn't help, rather than to continue to discuss, as a large group, to have each person really do some of what Joe was just doing -- here's his four bullets, this is done, you've achieved the vision, I'm curious from each of your perspectives what that is, and if you're willing to take a few minutes and note those three or four bullets that, from your perspective, are the vision that would represent success for the society in relation to this topic area.
And then we'll listen to each of you, and see if we have a better sense of, do we have some kind of aggregate blue sky where we can move into the real world of constraints and opportunities from that, so are people willing to do that? We've been hearing these things fly around, what represents to you the three or four top bullet points on the vision, and we will record those and then have a sense of the group.
Okay, why don't you take a few minutes and you can stretch, even while you do it, the room is so small, stretch and in about five minutes we'll come back and listen to everyone in the room on that, how is that?
Michael Replogle: And our timetable for this vision is the 12 to 15 years?
Joyce Bader: Is the group willing to accept that? I think we're not flying quite out to 25.
Ken Button: I was doing what Shelley was talking about, in other words, methods and assessing things -- obviously setting things we would like, more transport professionals, I'm not sure which of the two. What you were saying was more like the first, rather than the second point.
Joseph Sussman: Shelley talked about a wishing.
Shelley Row: What do you wish to see in the world if we were wildly successful?
Michael Replogle: Are we talking about specific performance outcomes that might be, in fact, measured?
Shelley Row: Could be, I wouldn't put a constraint on yourself that it has to be a measurable thing. I would think if you or your kids, what do you want to see in your world that would be great and wonderful when they're our age?
Joyce Bader: It's sort of like, before we face reality, let's go to the constrainless world, where cars don't crash, then we'll narrow it down. Does that make sense to you, Shelley?
Shelley Row: Yes. Does that help at all, Ken?
Ken Button: Not really.
[Laughter.]
Shelley Row: I love honesty.
Joyce Bader: All right. Greer, would like to begin?
Greer Woodruff: Yes, I started out with the distinction between the optimization of the transportation network for the movement of freight versus the movement of people, and would encourage use to think about multi-modal optimization of steam, ship, rail and truck, moving more freight with the existing resources we have for, or minimal additional resources, and then the reduced congestion by optimization for the people transportation network, which is separate from freight transportation, but they're overlapping. And then reduced motor vehicle accidents, injury, loss of life, contribution to congestion. And then lastly, the reduced reliance on foreign oil or environmentally-friendly energy sources, and include improved environment.
Joyce Bader: Just for clarity, any person can ask any question for clarity, so you have that person's point of view. The second one was motor vehicle accidents, and say that again, reduced -- ?
Greer Woodruff: Reduced motor vehicle accidents, loss of life, and contribution to congestion.
Joyce Bader: That is all one?
Greer Woodruff: That's one.
Joyce Bader: And so contribution to congestion is a subset of reduced motor vehicle accidents?
Greer Woodruff: Right.
Joyce Bader: Other questions for Greer, to help you understand him? Or anything you want to ask of him in terms of that? Okay, Steve?
Steve Albert: Six bullets, more geared toward ITS, but with the overarching need to have a positive transportation experience. System, a system that protects the environment, two, assures safe movement and access, is flexible to react to demographic changes, provides for equitable distribution of funding, a system that pushes versus pulls information and enables effective operation strategies.
Joyce Bader: Okay, questions for Steve to clarify?
Shelley Row: What do mean by positive transportation experience?
Steve Albert: When's the last time you heard anyone say anything positive about driving to work? Or transportation isn't an impediment, it is not an enabler. I think transportation needs to be an enabler in the future and ITS needs to be a big part of that.
Joyce Bader: That was overarching.
Steve Albert: It was one of the bullets, but basically it's overarching.
Joyce Bader: Other questions for Steve? Okay, Joe?
Joseph Averkamp: Well, since I already kind of sensed, since I was encapsulating earlier, to me it's a given that transportation is essential in order to transact commerce, to move goods and people, and also for us to engage in leisure. We should seek to improve quality of life by reducing the dollars spent on transportation as a percent of total revenue, reduce the amount of unwanted delay, since occasionally Ken wants to be delayed, and gets lost, but reduce the amount of unwanted delay, reduce the impacts to the environment, and reduce death, injury and damage to property.
Joyce Bader: Questions for Joe? Okay, everyone's clear. Okay, your turn to go again.
Ken Button: I have one with subheadings, and it's not frivolous. I would like to close down institutions like the DOT. Let me explain, this is not frivolous, I think we've moved to an era of sustainable development, as Joe pointed out, that involves sustainable political structures, societal structures, sustainable economic development and sustainable environment.
I think the stovepiping of decision making and policy making in things like transportation, energy, telecommunications and so on and so forth is totally counterproductive. At the micro level, we've actually already seen this, because you've seen, for instance, Joe brought up the idea of training transport professionals. These days, the biggest area of advancement in transportation has been logistics, which is not simply transportation, there's all sorts of other aspects.
Thus, as a way forward, I think we have to do that, and if we're going to get an intelligent transportation system, I have one simple objective, basically to restructure the way we make decisions about policy in general.
Joyce Bader: Any questions for Ken?
Ann Flemer: That's a good segue way to mind. I think we have the political courage to set very specific targets for improvement to the environment, equity, the economy, safety that we are held accountable to at the public level, and also as a private society, that we need to be able to change policies and financing to achieve those and the courage to do that and to employ cost-effective technologies to implement those changes.
Joyce Bader: Say the last one again?
Ann Flemer: Whether technology is always the solution, I guessed I would question that we have to have an assessment of where technology can help us achieve those targets.
Joyce Bader: Okay, questions for Ann?
So, I have a question for you, so if you put Ken's and Ann's together, would you say that if we do what Ken -- and I'm asking you first if we were to completely revamp our policy and decision making structure, would we be more readily able to obtain the targets?
Ken Button: I don't know. I think if you're going to have my vision of sustainable transport system, does require a somewhat different structure, once you've got that, you clearly have to operationalize it. There is a target, goals, and so one -- whatever you're talking about earlier in place, but I do think that the thing I would like is actually to sit down and ask ourselves how, have we got an institutional structure here which is really geared up to an entirely different generation.
The problem is, I think one could maybe incorporate yours and others up to a level, but I just think we need a mechanism which would put these things into play and would effectively deal with communications issues, health issues, more generally, the whole lot -- we haven't even considered the role of more transportation of moving all these diseases everywhere. I mean, there's a whole lot of issues that overlap, we can't just micro-focus on transportation.
Joyce Bader: Okay, thank you. Bob?
Robert Denaro: I have five, and since you're going to unreasonably restrict me, it's difficult to get lost.
Shelley Row: You can say impossible.
Robert Denaro: Cars seldomly crash, 15 years is a little short. The third one would be expanded choices in decisions about travel. The fourth one would be stress-free travel, and what I'm getting at there is, yeah, congestion mitigation is possible, but also my safety and trip information can make it stress-free. And the fifth one would be environmental impact and oil use turning down.
Joyce Bader: Okay, questions for Bob? Okay, Al?
Alfred Foxx: Coming from a State and working there for the past six years. I tend to think my long-range thinking is about four years, every election. All the money is focused on that four years. So, it was quite a stretch for me to look beyond four years, but I tried. And to do some of the real world things, things that are facing me each and every day.
And so, what I would like to see is, and this is pie in the sky for me, believe me, to eliminate the vehicle and pedestrian accidents through the use of technology -- I always like to say take out -- eliminate the human error element because we have -- if I did that, then I can at least reduce congestion, because that is what is causing an accident and cause congestion backups and I get phone calls in the middle of the night asking me why it is backed up.
The second one is, the other cost of congestion in the city is, when you do have an accident, people do not know the most efficient and safe route to get to where they're going. And so there's a lot of confusion.
So, I said, through technology, provide a safe, provide safe and efficient movement of people and goods from their origination to destination. And then, another one that bothers me because we have a lot of developers come in and they want to build all of these great monuments to themselves and it seems like the transportation network is an afterthought, and so you spending a lot of time trying to catch up, and support, because all of the big cities want the business, they want the new tax base.
So, my third bullet would be the seamless integration of the transportation network into the economic development scheme, or process.
Joyce Bader: Is that of a metropolitan area? Or any area?
Alfred Foxx: Of a metropolitan area, because you had someone that was talking about the suburban area, and a suburban area, I think that's heaven -- when I drive down the roads and I see shoulders on the side of the road, and I can pull over -- in the city, if I pull over, I'm on the sidewalk and running into a building.
But, the management of traffic -- and again, in my interview, I said that was a big issue with me, the management of traffic in and out of the city is very difficult and I said that ITS -- what I'm looking for on a day-to-day basis to help me manage that, so that I can reduce the congestion, and reduce the accidents, but those three bullets are things that I need in the course of my background.
Joyce Bader: Thank you very much. Any questions? All right.
Thomas Lambert: I'm going to follow something Al started, I think a lot he said, I agree with. I want to give credit, though, to John English. John English keeps saying we ought to be focusing on people movement, not vehicle movement. And so, I think the one -- and I'm coming from a perspective of probably shorter than the 15 years. If you really want to demonstrate technology applications, I think you've got to go to those systems that have fleet, so you can get them in there and move them quicker.
I think we look at transit, look at freight, we look at rail, if you look at the incremental cost of doing some of these things based upon unit cost today, it is not significantly higher with some of the technologies that are out there now, but you've got to demonstrate that the technology is allowing people to get to where they need to go safer, more reliable, more time friendly -- and all of that has impact to the environment -- safe, sustainable communities, walking, multi-modal, all of these. So, I think looking at that from the model, multi-modalism but looking at things where you can really get some things demonstrated quicker, and get operational quicker, I think is very important to include traffic signal systems.
Equipping transit vehicles where you can bypass intersections because you're getting priority because that bus can communicate with an intersection. That allows travel time savings, demonstrates to the public you're going to get some value for these investments, in my view. So, I think it gets back to managing traffic, managing people, and helping communities where people have options of choice.
The other issue is congestion pricing. I think congestion pricing is very important, but it has got to value people that's used to ride in multiple passenger vehicles. So, the technology has got to help us enforce that, regulate that, because I'm not aware of technology today that does that carpooling and all of that, how do you know, I think, to do it. Toll tags are a great way to go from an enforcement standpoint, as well, but how do you give credit to someone that is carpooling, if you're going to value that, so I think there's got to be some more work done on that, and I think we've got to look at that in the shorter term, versus the longer term.
The last thing I would say is it's the whole issue of how technology is being used in instant management, whether it's freeways, arterials, how are you getting information in the hands of those folks that have to operate that system to make better real-time and informed decisions. And it gets back to this issue of leveraging partnerships, and I think we've got to do more of that.
So, I think that I agree a lot with what Al has said, but I want to give John English credit because he's not here, and I think the challenge we've got is we've got to decide, incrementally, how are we focusing ITS technologies? I mean, should we be taking an approach that says we can do all things for all people? Or should we say we ought to come at this incrementally, as incrementally, we think we can start here and move along these lines. That's a challenge we've all got, and that is not very visionary.
So, I'm coming more from the operational day-to-day perspective and we've been taught in the public sector now that we've got to be more aligned with the private sector in doing our work, so when we look at things we look at smart objectives that are specific, they're measurable, they're attainable, they're realistic and they're time bound. So, if we're going to do those kind of things, we've got to -- it's great having the great vision, but we ought to come back and say the practical reality is this is what we think we could do right now, and show some proof in that that leads to further opportunities.
Joyce Bader: Okay, any questions for Tom, or comments as we go? Great, Randy?
Randall Iwasaki: Okay, I have five measures to take, to look at. Environmental improvement is one, I'm from California, and we're a green State and everything we do is now based on greenhouse gas reductions, all of our projects, everything we do.
One of the things we measure is reliable transportation, so efficient and reliable transportation would be a benefit. Seamless information, transfer both from the vehicle to the infrastructure and then vice versa, back from the infrastructure back to the vehicle. A safer transportation system -- safer and securer transportation system, and an economic benefit to, if you spend all of this money, you have to benefit society somehow.
Joyce Bader: Okay, questions for Randy? Okay, Bryan?
Thomas Lambert: My transportation system's not seen as a hindrance to economic development, population growth or quality of life, so basically building off of Kenneth's point. Transportation is about getting people from point A to point B which means economic development, quality of life, and obviously we had to deal with population.
Joyce Bader: Any questions for Bryan? Okay.
Michael Replogle: I guess my headline is improved mobility while reducing its environmental footprint, and the key focal point would be to have ITS play a key role in achieving the 20 percent reduction in transportation-deemed greenhouse gases below today's levels, through four key outcomes.
One is reducing VMT per capita back to 1990 levels through a combination of VMTs fees, driving insurance incentives and better travel choices.
Two, reducing congestion delays which spur greenhouse emissions, and three, spur faster replacement of old, dirty, inefficient vehicles with newer, cleaner, more fuel efficient and lower carbon vehicles through things like emission-based fees.
And then fourth, sharply increase the share of trips by walking, cycling, public transport, shared ride, and efficient inter-modal freight transport, by improving the safety, attractiveness and utility of these carbon mobility options in more places.
And then a separate vision goal from the greenhouse and environment is to simply cut accident and traffic deaths by 75 percent from today's levels, particularly focusing on safety, compliance, technology, support, taking things like Trip Sense technology that Progressive Insurance is working with to give instant feedback to drivers, and are they driving calmly or are they driving aggressively and giving some people some market incentives for that, and going beyond that in the VII program to actually support speed limit compliance, red light compliance, stop sign compliance, and such things as that, to basically give communities a new capacity to foster support, the compliance with local traffic safety laws which then make it much safer to drive and to walk and to bike.
Joyce Bader: Okay, any questions?
Joseph Averkamp: A question I would have for Michael is just following your discussion, it seems to me there's kind of two threats for a lot of these, and part of what ITS is information only, and part of it is for creating incentives. So, are you more focused on providing people information to make better choices or imposing sentence?
Michael Replogle: I think it is both. I think incentives and prices are a form of information. And so I think we need both of these things, and people need -- people need better information about the cost of making different consumption choices, and people also need more options, more choices that are in a viable choice set -- whether they're a shipper or whether they try to get to work, or figure out how to travel to another city.
Information plays a key role in both expanding the choice set, and in helping people to understand the full implications of those choices.
So, a big part of the question is how do we better internalize externality costs that don't get built into information that we give to people when they decide how to travel and where to travel, or how much to travel.
Joyce Bader: Thank you, Tom.
Tomiji Sugimoto: It is hard for me to describe my thoughts, because the creative concept in my job is confidential.
[Laughter.]
Tomiji Sugimoto: I have been working on improving safety for a long time because -- not because I don't like my customers to die by our car, of course. I am trying to compete, but it is very, very hard for the customer to know how much it is effective.
But the technology is just a means, so therefore, we continue, always to improve the assumptions. Right now, I'm thinking to sort of ITS is the discussion about ITS is how to implement the infrastructure and how much we can utilize that infrastructure, but we depend upon, again, an improved campaign for the customer or the government, or I don't know, but it is providing these things, so that is a reason why we are here to discuss these issues.
But anyway, my individual perspective is coming through for safety driving, that is my simple concept.
Joyce Bader: Questions? Okay.
Joseph Sussman: Just turning to the question of some idea of what we think success would look like and maybe some earlier ones, just to briefly reiterate about sustainability and economic environmental equity, balancing transportation investment between operations and capital for effective institutional structures, both intragovernmentally and among levels of government and partnerships I talked about, the promotion of the steady flow of excellent transportation professionals, that do transportation professionally, which can sort of, integrates both the logistics and transportation.
And we don't think separately about ITS, it's sort of inculcated in our thinking. So, don't have a need for that program.
I would add a couple. One would be, how do we know we were successful if public transportation becomes a more viable player in urban areas and suburban areas and in rural areas. By ITS concepts, the idea of routinely integrated the idea that the notion of supply chain management and regional transportation plans. This isn't a special case of the public/private partnership. Regional planning is typically dominated by the public sector side, supply chain management is typically dominated by the private sector side, how do we produce an integrated process? I would argue that would be a success factor.
And then another one, looking at it in a U.S.-centric perspective. The United States, as a world leader in providing ITS within the developing world, which is an enormous problem, that would be to me a success if it were able to be acted on, and the most effective for the marketplace -- places like Malaysia and Thailand, I should say.
Joyce Bader: Questions for Joe? Okay, thank you, John, for being so patient.
John Worthington: Well, I'm going to reiterate what was, where previously I got an apple pie statement that the transportation was a national asset. I think that what we need is a 21st Century version of the interstate highway system, that really rocketed us economically.
I will add some specifics -- two to three points I made before, which are statements. The safest would be, reduce death, fewest deaths per capita, the measurement would be per capita relative to industrialized countries. Second, and most secure, we would have an inviolate chain of custody where every bit of freight that enters this country most efficient, and there were three subparts to that. And you can certain add -- we've had the least cost per mile to transport freight. And again, that would be relative to per capita.
We would have the least time spent in congestion in urbanized areas, and lastly we would have the lowest hydrocarbon emissions per capita.
Joyce Bader: Those are some pretty big leaps in the process. Any comments overall on what you're hearing?
Shelley Row: Can I throw one into the mix? Just to give everyone a chance to talk, I'm going to kind of piggyback on what Bob said earlier, and not only in my future world am I not ever going to get lost, and not, ever going to not have a crash, but I'm never going to be left wanted for information about how transportation fulfills my life. I'm not every going to get to the train station and not have parking, because I didn't know I didn't have parking. I'm not ever get to the train station and not know it was late. I'm not ever going to get in my car and discover that there was a crash on the roadway network that I didn't know about, and I'm going to have complete information, no matter however I choose to travel, whenever I choose to travel, and I'm going to have it every time I want it, no matter where I am.
That's what I'm going to have, and I'm going to have one other thing, I'm going to have a world where people like Randy and Ann have all of the information and all of the tools they need to do the job of managing and operating the network, and they're not bound and worried about how they're going to migrate to the next technology and how they're going to deal with technology evolution, and how they're going to pay for the next software upgrade, because they're smart people in the world to know how to do that in the private sector.
And all of the Randy's and the Ann's of the world are able -- and the Tom's of the world are able to just go about doing their business the best way they know how to do it, because they already have those tools, and people know how to provide the tools.
Joyce Bader: Okay, I think the contributions were wonderful, I think we have the elements of knitting together a true 15-year vision. But, I just would ask you momentarily to look back at the beginning. And I don't know if it is possible, we have so many systems going, but if we can see both slides -- very good, that's amazing.
This was the beginning of the presentation. Just take a look at it and see how, as we listen to the gestalt of what we heard, how we have shifted -- what are the major differences between what we put up and what we've been talking about? Just, let's summarize briefly.
Any overall comments or things that you want APO to know?
Greer Woodruff: I think a couple of us recognize there's a difference in the optimization of freight movement versus the optimization of people movement. And different strategies will be required.
Shelley Row: You know, it might be easy to throw a monkey wrench into the stuff we may be able to get you guys on a roll.
The biggest thing that I think I heard from the conversation that went around the room that is not very different, but it is different from what we started with. And then I heard this very strong, this very strong voice about the need for a positive transportation experience. And Steve, I think you started that, and then it came out all over the place, and then I heard it reflected in transportation supporting quality of life, supporting choices, supporting safe and secure travel, supporting environmental goals, but it was all about that positive experience of transportation in our society, and that is certainly super-ordinate to anything that's on these pages.
Ken Button: I just don't know how you measure positive experience. People complain about the airline industry, and they fly more and more. How do you measure positive experience? People complain, because human nature is always -- there's something better, and you can never actually provide a positive experience, you can only provide improved experience. Because, I think ultimately, aspirations are what they are, and I think that is an important thing here. It's contextual at the moment, that's simply the way it goes.
One thing I would like to see and what I said about the U.S. DOT, the whole process should be much more effective to take into account changes in the world to adjust to environmental issues. One measure of success is, in fact, the effects through time, across different elements of the policy building process. And I think, in a sense, some of these come into play, but this is kind of an aggregation itself.
I mean, maybe this is what manufacturing and industry wants, maybe it's what the Chinese importers want and the American industry doesn't want. I don't know that sort of detail. But, I think we have to very careful in terms of going down into detail. Moving freight transport is great. That's why I say, the integration of industrial policy, social policy, transportation policy.
Randall Iwasaki: One of the problems we face as t |
