Transport Industry Eyes Academic Research

Transportation professionals are urging the nation's universities to step up their research into freight movement issues and to develop strategies that ports, carriers and warehouse operators can implement.

Academia can provide a neutral, credible source of research to be used by regional planners, policy makers, local communities and the transportation industry to site, fund and develop goods movement infrastructure. The cost-benefit analyses and research studies that precede infrastructure development are an area ripe for development by universities with transportation and logistics programs.

"If the private sector funds a research project, it doesn't have the same credibility with policy makers," Pilar Hoyos, vice president of public affairs at the Watson Land Co., told the Metrans conference Thursday in Long Beach.

Soliciting more involvement by academia can be a double-edged sword. While university research studies tend to have more credibility, the rigors of academic research require a lengthy process of peer review. Therefore changes recommended by the studies may be based on an environment that is much different from what exists today.

This is especially true in Southern California. Research in the previous decade into pollution at ports, rail yards and inland warehouses does not take into account the rapid advances that have occurred due to programs such as the clean-truck plans in Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The ports' clean truck program, barely one year old, has resulted in the introduction of more than 5,000 low-polluting trucks into the harbor fleet. Harmful diesel emissions from harbor trucking have been reduced by 60 to 70 percent.

One of the hottest issues today in global transportation is climate change, and this area holds vast opportunities for university research, said Patty Senecal, California government affairs director for the International Warehouse Logistics Association.

Foreign trade zones, the impact of cross-border trucking on cities such as Laredo, Texas, producing sustainable warehouses that can actually produce more energy than they consume through the use of solar panels and the use of technology to reduce traffic congestion caused by goods movement are suggested as possible topics of research by universities.

Academic research that helps the transportation industry profit from its environmental stewardship policies can be a boon for all parties in the process, said Phil Ramsdale, founder and president of Transport Solutions LLC.

"Present research that is actionable. Making green pay will keep the funding coming," he said.