National Academies Press: OpenBook

Policy Options for Intermodal Freight Transportation: Special Report 252 (1998)

Chapter: Paper Author Biographical Information

« Previous: PART 2 Commissioned Papers
Suggested Citation:"Paper Author Biographical Information." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Policy Options for Intermodal Freight Transportation: Special Report 252. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11414.
×

Paper Author Biographical Information

Randall W. Eberts is executive director of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. His research interests include the linkage between highway infrastructure and economic development. He was a member of the National Research Council’s Committee on Measuring and Improving Infrastructure Performance. Dr. Eberts received a Ph.D. and an M.A. from Northwestern University and a B.A. from the University of California, San Diego. Before assuming the directorship of the Upjohn Institute in 1993, Dr. Eberts was an assistant vice president and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and a professor at the University of Oregon.


Jean Lauver is President of Prairie Manor, Inc., an English country manor style bed-and-breakfast in Goshen, Indiana. Ms. Lauver was a staff member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee from 1974 to 1996 and was the principal committee Republican staff person during consideration of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 and the National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 as well as the Surface Transportation Acts of 1978, 1982, and 1987. She has an M.A. from George Washington University and a B.A. from Goshen College.

Suggested Citation:"Paper Author Biographical Information." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Policy Options for Intermodal Freight Transportation: Special Report 252. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11414.
×

Barrie R. Nault is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Management, University of California, Irvine. He does research on ownership, incentives, membership, and investment in new organizational forms such as alliances and network and virtual organizations. His most recent work applies these concepts to advanced logistics, electronic markets for transport services, and supply-chain management. He has published in Information Systems Research, Management Science, Management Information Systems Quarterly, Marketing Science, and Organization Science, among others.


John E. Petersen is President of Government Finance Group, Inc. He has 30 years of experience in research and practice related to public finance. From 1977 to 1991 he was Senior Director of the Government Finance Research Center, Government Finance Officers Association. He is a former Fairfax, Virginia, City Council member and a former Director of the Washington Area Council of Governments. Dr. Petersen holds a B.A. from Northwestern University, an M.B.A. from the Wharton School, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.


Daniel Smith is a Partner in The Tioga Group, a freight transportation consulting firm. He has 17 years of experience in freight transportation strategy, policy, and planning, with particular emphasis on rail and marine intermodal transportation. His clients have included ports, railroads, shippers, leasing companies, industry associations, and government agencies.

Suggested Citation:"Paper Author Biographical Information." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Policy Options for Intermodal Freight Transportation: Special Report 252. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11414.
×
Page 314
Suggested Citation:"Paper Author Biographical Information." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Policy Options for Intermodal Freight Transportation: Special Report 252. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11414.
×
Page 315
Policy Options for Intermodal Freight Transportation: Special Report 252 Get This Book
×
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!

TRB Special Report 252 - Policy Options for Intermodal Freight Transportation recognizes that freight transportation is of critical importance to the United States and that intermodal freight transportation is one of the major technological and organizational trends affecting the performance of the sector.

During the last two decades, the importance of freight efficiency to the nation's economy has become more apparent to federal policy makers and has emerged as an increasingly important element of laws and regulations related to surface transportation. In the Intermodal Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA), Congress stated: "It is the Policy of the United States to develop a National Intermodal Transportation System that is economically efficient and environmentally sound, provides the foundation for the Nation to compete in the global economy, and will move people and goods in an energy efficient manner."

The term "intermodal" is usually interpreted as referring to places where the various modes connect for the purpose of transferring passengers or freight or to operations designed to move on more than one mode. ISTEA introduced provisions, carried over and extended in the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, that allowed taxes collected for the highway trust fund to be used for intermodal investments designed to facilitate more efficient connections between the modes. Highways and trucking are central to intermodalism because virtually all freight moves by truck at some point in its trip.

Intermodal transfer points include any terminals where freight is transferred from one mode to another. Intermodal connections are critically important to freight movement. Massive seagoing vessels deliver containerized cargo to ports, where the containers are either trucked to rail yards for placement on trains or offloaded directly onto rail cars at the port terminal. Containerization has introduced extraordinary efficiencies into freight movement, but the connection points remain sources of friction and lost efficiency.

The TRB committee that examined policy options for intermodal freight transportation concluded that public investment in freight facilities is complex. These types of facilities (rail yards, port terminals, and truck terminals) have usually been financed exclusively by the private sector. The committee concluded that introducing public funds into this mix could undermine the "user pays" principle that has been fundamental to highway finance, fuel interstate rivalries, and come to be demanded by private-sector firms as a substitute for formerly private investment.

Appropriate federal and state roles in such projects are not yet well established in practice; hence there are uncertainties about how to proceed and a risk of wasted resources. Before federal and state funds are invested in such facilities, the investments should be clearly justified. Such justification might include, for example, that the investment would reduce negative externalities and increase positive externalities, or that it is necessary for national defense. In defining an appropriate public role, government agencies should apply standard analysis tools to estimate costs and benefits and winners and losers. The public role in financing major facilities should also receive close scrutiny to ensure that public benefits justify the expenditure of public funds and that users pay to the extent that they benefit. The location of benefits also matters: when benefits are primarily local rather than national, local or state governments are the appropriate sources of funding.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!