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July 1997 (Portland, ME) - Meeting Minutes
Minutes of Summer 1997 Committee Meeting
A1A06: Transportation and Economic Development,
Portland, ME, Monday, 21 July, 1997, 3:00 PM
Minutes of all TRB meetings are regarded as privileged and not for public release without prior approval of the Executive Director
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The committee thanked Randy Eberts, David Forkenbrock and Ralph Erickson for representing the committee so well during the summer meeting program.
1. Attendance
The committee meeting was very well attended, with a total at one point of 23 members, friends and interested participants of the summer meeting. Of the committee members, the following were present:
Bahar B. Barami, Stewart E. Butler, Randall W. Eberts, Ralph Erickson, David Forkenbrock, Norman Foster, James Gillespie, Terry L. Gotts, Elizabeth A. Pinkston, Michael C. Sexton, Pim van Santen for Marion Toen-Gout, Glen Weisbrod, Jon Williams.
The attendance was very good and augers well for future Annual and Summer meetings of the committee.
2. Report by TRB staff
Jon Williams announced that the 1998 summer meeting of the Economics, Finance, and Planning committees will take place on 12-14 July at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Seattle, Washington. Boston, Massachusetts, is the tentative location for the 1999 summer meeting, and San Diego, California, is the tentative location for the 2000 summer meeting.
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On a related note, 400 rooms at the Shoream will NOT be available for the Annual Meeting (11 to 15 January, 1998). Please book your hotel early or it is very likely that the three main hotels will be full. You have been warned!
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3. January 1998 Conference Sessions
Several topics were submitted for consideration.
(a) Bahar Barami has talked with Jacqueline Llanos about a session devoted to "Economic Impacts of Advanced Technology in Global Transportation Systems." Such a session would look at a variety of innovations, from "fast" transatlantic cargo ships to double-stacked trains to electronic commerce, and examine the impact they are having on the economics of transport, especially freight transport.
(b) Norman Foster presented a proposal from Michael Bell for a session devoted to the meaning of "economic development". [A full version of this proposal is included in the agenda packet being sent to all members who were not able to be in Portland.]
(c) Norman Foster also presented a suggestion, originating in the summer meeting held a few hours earlier of Committee A1C01, that a session be devoted to presenting Mark de Lucchi's recent research reports on the social costs of motor transportation, 27 volumes in size. A1A06 could be a co-sponsor of such a session, with the lead being taken by A1C01.
(d) Beth Pinkston (with her A1C01 hat on) is liasing with a team to put together a session on "Innovative Finance", sponsored by A1D04 (Public Involvement).
(e) Terry Gotts and Teresa McMillan reported that Committee A1A03 hopes to organize a session on intergovernment relations. They emphasized that they were seeking not co-sponsorship, but rather suggestions of case studies or specific issues which the session could examine. Consideration of the proposals was deferred pending pending a scheduled discussion on the committee's focus and direction.
Discussion on these conference session ideas was held over until after item 5 (see below).
4. Committee activities for 1997/1998
Membership changes
Patricia Bass of TTI has been invited to join the committee. She is a program manager at TTI and has 17 years of experience in the management and technical development of studies dealing with land use, transportation and transit planning and environmental analysis. Please welcome Ms. Bass to the committee.
Andrew Isserman has moved to the West Coast into a new position as the Director of Research and Senior Fellow of the Public Policy Institute of California in San Francisco. In this new position, he may not be working on the same issues of interest to the committee. Norman Foster will check with him during the fall regarding his future membership.
Bob Owens, who has retired from his job with 3M, may be leaving the committee.
Paper reviews
To assist paper reviewers this year in completing their work by 15 October in order to accommodate TRB's plan to have all accepted papers available on a CDROM disk at the Annual Meeting in January, Norman Foster asked if an ad hoc group could develop some paper review guidelines ASAP. Dave Forkenbrock, Jim Gillespie, and Michael Sexton volunteered to do this. [Ideally, this guide should be ready by September 1 for posting to our web site for reviewers to use.]
Paper reviews will be sent out by TRB to committee members directly as was the case last year. If you will not be available for an extended period from late August to late September, please let Norman Foster know. You can expect to receive papers to review in that time period and the reviews must be returned (one to TRB, one to Norman Foster) by October 1 at the latest. If we get a large number of papers, which is unlikely, some lucky individuals may get two or more papers to review.
January meeting
Norman pointed out that very current research results, not yet ready for submission to TRB or another publisher, could nonetheless be very suitable for presentation at the committee's January meeting.
Pim van Santer noted that Marion Gout is preparing for the OECD a paper that might be of interest.
[UPDATE BY EMAIL FROM Pim: During the A1A06 session I mentioned the International Study on Intermodal Transport Marion Gout is working on at the moment, in respect with a possible paper presentation at the TRB Annual Meeting in January 1997. Marion is very willing to present that paper; it should be finished by then.]
Mike Sexton said that a Wilbur Smith project, evaluating NAFTA's impact in the southeastern United States, is a possibility.
Glen Weisbrod said he might be able to bring some findings from the NCHRP project on which he is working.
Norman Foster opined that A1A06 ought to have and maintain a mechanism for identifying, and keeping abreast of, research that pertains to transportation and economic development. Everyone agreed that this was a sensible idea, although no one conceived a concrete plan to implement it. [Will be added to January agenda.]
Jim Gillespie has agreed to serve as secretary to the committee, provided that the chairman continues to accept blame for all the committee's shortcomings.
5. Discussion on committee focus and direction
[A discussion on the committee's direction has taken place by email over the spring, thanks to contributions from Glen Weisbrod, Stew Butler, Sharon Megdal and others. The summer meeting allowed this discussion to continue. I would like to thank everyone who took part for their contributions and I think it ranks as one of the most interesting discussions we have had at a committee meeting in the 7 years I have been at TRB. For those not present, the following summary should give some feel for the different perspectives that were presented. We began with some background from Stew Butler and Glen Weisbrod and then broke into small discussion groups for 15 minutes and then reassembled for about 45 minutes of discussion. NSJF.]
Stew Butler kicked off the discussion by stressing that some economic issues are not economic development issues. He cited as an example a session on the economic development impacts of ISTEA reauthorization, which the committee had sponsored last January, and asked if that was not a bit of a stretch. He questioned whether innovative finance and intergovernmental relations, two of the session topics mentioned earlier, belonged in the purview of A1A06. Michael Sexton noted a recent court decision to reject the EIS of a proposed tollway extension in the Chicago area; intergovernmental relations, he mused, might be the key to understanding the link between land use and transportation.
Norman Foster read an excerpt from the "Scope" statement drafted in 1993 at the time of A1A06's reorientation from "Local Government Finance" to "Economic Development". He could see, with varying degrees of clarity, three headings under the heading of economic development: (1) national/ regional productivity; (2) local economic development, and (3) international "megatrends".
Glen Weisbrod suggested that we may be overly narrow in our view of "economic development." It seems like there has recently been a lot of focus on national level productivity measurement issues, and there is nothing wrong with that...but economic development can be much more and means quite different things to local decision-makers.
Jim Gillespie asserted that "economic development" calls to the average American's mind questions about public policy decisions and about redistributional equity. As economists have their own perspective on measurement and modeling of public choice and distributional impacts, he believed that there is a niche here, which the non-economics committees cannot fill, that the other economics committees are not filling. Bahar Barami asked whether the choice of analytical tools separated the work of A1A06 from the work of othercommittees such as A1C01. Ralph Erickson opined that productivity is a "bread and butter" issue for A1A06, and that local development is also. Terry Gotts asserted that the committee ought not to worry too much about overlap, as it is not possible for A1A06 to keep its interests "pure" from those of other committees. The relationship between transportation and economic development is not a simple causative relationship. Joint efforts with other disciplines are valuable. Brian Ketchum, seconding Terry's point, mentioned the problem of distinguishing transportation investment that accommodates growth from investment that stimulates growth.
Bill Crowell, also building on Terry's comments, cited the old question "Where does the railroad go?" as a symbol of one economic development paradigm.
Dave Forkenbrock, while convinced that interaction and cooperation with the Land Use and Government Relations committees is essential to studying the impact of expenditures on capital facilities, urged, "Let's be ourselves."
David TS? asserted that the committee's goal is to study the impact of investment using whatever tools necessary. Shirley Loveless suggested that interest in the economic circumstances of a region is a distinguishing characteristic of much economic development research.
Norman Foster expressed reluctance to define A1A06's purpose in terms either of simply analytical tools or politicians' notions as to what constitutes economic development. It is clear that committee members are all interested in working with other committees and other research oriented groups in transportation. An important part of our role is to help define what research is and to promote the measuring and testing of ideas. Our relationship with A1C01 and others will be close by necessity but we should continue to define our own role.
Randall Eberts questioned whether the same conflicts of interpretation that had marked this discussion on the committee's focus and direction would undermine the coherence of the session topic, proposed by Michael Bell, on the meaning(s) of economic development. Randy will convey this discussion to Michael Bell.
3. 1998 Conference Sessions, continued.
(a) It was agreed that Bahar Barami and Jacqueline Llanos will proceed with the preparation of a session on the impacts of advanced technology, with A1A06 sponsorship.
(b) It was agreed that Michael Bell would be asked to proceed with the preparation of a session on the meaning of economic devlopment, with A1A06 sponsorship. Randy Eberts will give Michael Bell suggestions based on the discussion that took place at the committee meeting.
(c) It was agreed that while de Lucchi's work on the social costs of transportation is important, it belongs mainly in the purview of Committee A1C01, who are taking the lead in setting up a session.
(d) It was agreed that Beth Pinkston's session effort already has the appropriate sponsors.
(e) It was agreed that A1A06 will co-sponsor with A1A03 the proposed session on intergovernmental relations. Terry Gotts will coordinate with A1A03.
Full details of all proposed sessions should be sent to Norman Foster by September 1. TRB is sticking to its deadlines so please get this information in on time.
6. TRB Triennial Committee Review
Every TRB committee must conduct a self-evaluation at three year intervals. A1A06 will conduct one two years hence. With the discussion of the committee's purpose fresh in everyone's mind, Norman Foster circulated copies of the five-page form that Group 1 has drafted to assist its committees with their self-evaluation process. [These materials are included with the printed agenda.]
7. Possible TRB conference on transportation data
Norman Foster announced that a meeting scheduled for 6 o'clock that evening would address the feasibility of a conference devoted to transportation data needs. [This meeting was attended by, it seemed, several thousand people. It was agreed that TRB/FHWA/BTS would proceed with preliminary planning for such a conference. A steering group will be assembled to continue this work and define the conference agenda more clearly as methods or data or some mix. Contact David Forkenbrock for further information.]
8. Mechanisms to promote communication and information sharing
Norman Foster plans in the near future to make the minutes of the committee's meetings available on the World Wide Web, with password protection to restrict access to committee members. [Done.]
Respectfully submitted,
Norman Foster
Chair
Recorder
James Gillespie
August 4, 1997
Note: This information is provided for the use of committee members and friends and is not endorsed by the Transportation Board TRB or the National Research Council.
