Texas university to study freight transport for Congress

Texas university to study freight transport for Congress    The Congressional Research Service has commissioned the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas to study freight transportation bottlenecks and recommended possible solutions that Congress should adopt as part of a national transportation policy.
   Associate Dean Leigh Boske, who is leading the research project, asked shippers attending the National Industrial Transportation League’s Highway and Rail Committee meetings in Toledo, Ohio this week to forward suggestions on how to improve the efficiency of multimodal freight hubs and corridors.
   Lawmakers know what local officials and carriers want in terms of transportation planning “but we know damn little about what shippers want” to help manage growing demand for ports, highways and intermodal connectors, he said.
   The research arm of Congress hopes to develop a series of economically viable alternative strategies by better understanding how to assign costs and benefits between the public and private sector and how to determine the government’s appropriate share of the cost. Another key aspect of the research is developing a way to determine whether a project has significant national benefit compared to local benefits.
   The study will also try to identify ways to quantify congestion and its economic impact as well as regulatory barriers that cause inefficiency in the movement of goods.
   Boske can be reached at leighe.boske@mail.utexas.edu.