Speakers urge comprehensive transport planning

Speakers urge comprehensive transport planning The nation should look beyond just simple renewal of federal transportation funding next fall and try to come up with a more comprehensive plan for the movement of freight and passengers, a group of planners and industry leaders said Thursday.
   During a panel discussion organized by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, Cameron Moore, executive director of the National Association of Regional Councils, said reauthorization “gives us an opportunity to step back and look at transportation on a
national scale as we haven’t since the 1950s” when President Eisenhower “pushed through the Interstate Highway System.”
   Moore expressed doubt that reauthorization could be accomplished by next fall, in part because the nation’s attention will be focused on the presidential election, and he said that some sort of temporary funding mechanism may have to be worked out.
   But he called for a national transportation debate to “look at what is in our national interest. All the modes of transportation are important and contribute to quality of life and economic growth.”
   New York, he said, is unusual because it has many different modes of transportation coming together and its infrastructure is relied upon not just by residents of the region, but nationally “particularly for freight and goods movement.”
   He warned most ports and airports are at capacity and said investment should be made “in each mode so that it leverages investment in the other modes or transportation. How do we create a system that is linked together?”
   “We have to pay more attention to freight and goods movement in this country. If we lose our ability to efficiently move raw materials or products in or out of our country we are going to be at an economic disadvantage.”
   Lillian C. Borrone, chairman of the ENO Transportation Foundation and a former director of the port department at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said she believes the country is at a “tipping point” on transportation policy.
   She said there was “a disconnect between the domestically focused surface transportation systems and the global economy which is built on import traffic.”
   She and other speakers said there was a need to look more at transportation on a “mega region” basis — a challenge since most transportation funding is appropriated to and controlled by states or other smaller entities.