1st Upper Midwest Regional Freight Transportation Workshop
University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
April 4-5, 2002
Building Public and Private Partnerships
Workshop Proceedings, Released 10/1/02
For two days, over 70 transportation professionals from regional industries, governments and universities joined together to:
- Look at the perspectives of shippers, carriers and the public sector and how they relate to freight transportation in the region,
- Identify the critical freight issues confronting the region, and
- Take those issues and establish priorities for what needs to be done and how.
Where
we are…
The Upper Midwest Region is important for all types of freight being transported. We face, as a region, problems of capacity, congestion and aging infrastructure. This workshop was a first step in the process of solving these problems. We argue that the workshop met or achieved its stated goals of:
- Focusing on regional issues and needs. Efforts made to build upon conferences hosted by FHWA and other industry interests to minimize and/or avoid duplicating previous efforts.
- Facilitating communication between regional public and private freight transportation interests to gain a better understanding of current decision making processes.
- Initiating discussions of approaches toward regional efforts to address freight.
To meet these goals, the planning committee had the following stated objectives for the workshop and successfully implemented them during those two days in Chicago:
- Begin by gaining a better understanding from both the public and private sector of their interests, needs and decision-making processes;
- Discuss methods to address and integrate FHWA’s proposed reauthorization measures to address freight issues nationally, and regionally;
- Work to develop a regional perspective of freight movement, by exploring inter-state and intra-state opportunities to address freight transportation needs, and further facilitate the safe movement of people and goods using the existing infrastructure; and,
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Discuss the challenges facing both sectors, including identifying gaps in understanding, data availability and needs, and gaps in the current planning processes. These discussions will establish the basis for identifying potential action steps to move toward addressing them.
Where
we are going…
For us to stop at this workshop and do no more would be a failure to the region and its freight transportation stakeholders. The process must continue. Our tentative timeline for what is coming out of the workshop is:
Late-April: Published the main outcomes of the workshop, distributed to all participants and selected transportation organizations in the region. Electronic version available on this site.
Late-September: Full proceedings published, hard copy
distributed to all workshop participants. Electronic
version available to others, hard copy available by request.
Fall 2002: The Center works with stakeholders in the region on a freight transportation corridor study. More on the study can be found here.