Transportation Policy Trends in the United States: Meeting the Challenge of Globalization and Bringing the Private Sector into Needed Transportation Infrastructure Solutions

This essay was written by the Under Secretary for Policy, at the United States Department of Transportation and he describes his views on the future, in which the private sector would play a much more prominent role in the construction, finance, and management of the nation’s transportation infrastructure. The deregulation of trucking, freight rail, and airlines has produced an enormous amount of welfare benefits for U.S. consumers. Vigorous competition in these industries has lowered prices and increased innovation. While each mode faces important long-run challenges, they remain unmatched in efficiency and productivity—particularly when compared to their more regulated international counterparts. The current state of the transportation sector must also be considered against a backdrop of surging demand for transportation services across all modes and a global economy in which businesses are ever more reliant on logistics to meet their cost-reduction targets. Global trade now accounts for nearly a third of the nation’s GDP, with goods coming in from Asia at a breathtaking pace. The fact is that transportation is embedded in the global economy in a new, fundamental, irreversible way. Transportation isn’t merely a service to manufacturers, it is an essential part of the manufacturing process and this essay describes the private sectors role in transportation.