A few months ago I wrote a column in praise of collaboration. I’m compelled to return to that theme today by the combined messages I’ve taken away from the CITT Town Hall meeting I wrote about in my last two posts, from the Faster Freight Cleaner Air conference that just concluded here in Long Beach, and the Long Beach “Pulse of the Ports” breakfast conference held on March 25.
Ever since my days at the Southern California Association of Governments, I’ve been involved in one effort or another to bring people with disparate goals together to talk about solutions to our regional goods-movement challenges. What I heard at these three recent conferences convinced me that these efforts are more timely, and more needed, than ever.
The key message, distilled from all these events, is that the economic slowdown presents a unique opportunity for the interests in this region to come together and do some serious planning for our future goods movement system.
I learned while getting my public policy degree that planning in times of crisis is inadvisable: we are likely to overreact, respond emotionally, and fail to develop far-seeing policy that will get us through less critical times. But I think this crisis is different, in that we are facing a unique set of economic circumstances that, for a change, don’t include over-stressed freight movement infrastructure. This is in contrast to the boom years of 2004, 2005, 2006, when container numbers seemed headed for the stratosphere and every terminal, rail yard, and freeway was about to burst at the seams. Now we have a breather – a time and space to plan when we are not up to our eyeballs in (insert your favorite metaphor here). (To be sure, the relief is relative; most people probably feel there are still too many trucks on the 710.)
Paul Bingham at the Town Hall reminded us that business is cyclical and that the economy will recover. We need to be ready for that, in every way. At the Pulse of the Ports, Dean Tracy, Director of International Transportation for Lowe’s, observed that the downturn is an opportunity to “reassess and combine our efforts” and that the San Pedro Bay Ports are “poised to remain outstanding.” Perhaps most noteworthy were comments by Tom Skancke at the Faster Freight session. Mr. Skancke was a member of the “Section 1909 Commission,” a nationwide blue-ribbon panel convened under federal law to study transportation policy and revenue sources. In a fit of impatience, he vehemently warned the audience that the stakeholders need to quit pointing fingers and start coming to the table with solutions, or our country will soon be third fiddle to China and India. He emphasized that environmental concerns are as much a part of this collaboration as anything, and observed that while China will build 50,000 miles of highways in the next eight years, it takes us that long just to create a plan.
Of course I realize that in accomplishing this feat, China is unlikely to observe the kinds of environmental and social protections we expect here. The point is not so much the nature or the quantity of China’s highways, but the commitment of its government to investing in the nation’s prosperity. Our (lengthy) processes for planning and deliberation about such investments are absolutely necessary. All the more reason to get started right away on true collaboration to outline our common goals and agree on creative, innovative, and environmentally acceptable ways to get there.