REMARKS
PREPARED FOR DELIVERY
FORUM ON TRANSPORTATION EDUCATION AND TRAINING:
RESPONDING TO THE CHANGING NEEDS OF THE PROFESSION
DEPUTY SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION MORTIMER DOWNEY
TRB COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND TRAINING
WASHINGTON, DC
JANUARY 10, 1999
Thank you, Kelley. I’m impressed by the turnout and I’m happy to be here with you today to talk about transportation education and training, an area that is becoming ever more important in the complex world of transportation decision-making on the verge of the 21st century.
First, I would like to acknowledge several organizations that have been in the forefront of improved education and training. Their leadership has set the stage for today’s program.
The TRB Education and Training Committee and ITS America have all made great contributions, as have our sponsoring institutions, the University of Michigan, Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, and the University of Minnesota.
And I believe that DOT's emphasis on Professional Capacity Building has also advanced the cause. Finally, John Collura deserves our thanks for putting this event together.
It’s no coincidence that John and many other distinguished transportation educators here are associated with the Department’s University Transportation Centers Program. We strive for excellence, you consistently produce it.
Also, this week will mark the last TRB conference for Frank Francois as executive director of AASHTO. He has always helped us move forward on transportation education and research and we will miss his unique perspective.
As many of you may know, John Horsley will be leaving his position as Associate Deputy Secretary at DOT to take Frank’s place at AASHTO. If you don’t yet know John, I can tell you he will bring tremendous energy, enthusiasm and knowledge to the job. AASHTO could not have made a better choice.
As we talk about education and training today, it is important, first, to understand the nature of the transportation system we hope to have in the 21st century. We must ensure that our transportation professionals have the tools and capabilities that match the technologically advanced, intermodal and context-sensitive system we envision.
To be prepared for that future, we must first determine what we want in a transportation system and what it must accomplish. We must have a big picture vision of the transportation system of the 21st century because, as Yogi Berra said, "You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going because you might not get there."
Well, transportation is far more complex today than it was when Yogi traveled, largely by train, between eight American League cities, with none west of St. Louis, in the 1950s and 60s. In fact, it is far more complicated today than it was a only a decade ago and it is becoming more complex with each passing year.
In today’s world, we are attempting to achieve our transportation goals using established means as well as innovative methods that deal with new realities. To lead our nation and the world in this difficult task we must have people with broad vision and multi-disciplinary training.
At DOT, we have defined our strategic goals for the transportation system in performance terms relating to safety, mobility, economic growth and trade, human and natural environment and national security.
We are attempting to reach specific objectives in these areas in a world where the realities are an aging population, economic growth and globalization of commerce, increasing urbanization and motorization, uncertain safety and security for the global transportation system and growing environmental concerns. These are the realities that make life interesting for all of us.
But, we can achieve our goals if we work together in four key areas of transportation: better vehicles, better facilities, better management, and, perhaps most important for the 21st century, the increasing application of technology and information systems.
The transportation experts of the 21st century must know more than simply how to get from here to there. They must be prepared to not just build a transportation system but to operate it intermodally.
The straight line from point to point that once defined our transportation system has been displaced by the intricate spider web of the Internet.
People working in this environment must understand the uses of technology, the world of innovative finance, the sensitive issues of dealing with neighboring communities, the impact on environmental resources and the potential of alternative modes of transportation, among many other needs.
The transportation professional of the 21st century will be faced with the challenge of understanding the policy implications of the technology.
How do you train researchers and policy developers to recognize, let alone deal with, the policy options and issues? How do we get legislators to create policy in areas when there is very little understanding of the technical issues?
We must communicate the implications of technology policy to decision makers in a simple, straight forward way.
Once, we defined transportation experts only as engineers. Now, many other skills are required to complement sound engineering knowledge. Changes in transportation will be a major part of the information and communications revolution, coupled with the transition to a mission of management and operations.
We will need a body of knowledge to support the operation and management of our transportation system much like the body of knowledge that supports current business operations. That body of knowledge will involve a combination of systems engineering, traffic engineering, economics, political science and other subjects.
At a more basic level, we will need a much deeper understanding than we currently have of human behavior as it affects transportation.
Let’s look at two of DOT’s strategic goals for our transportation system. First, we have set safety as our number one priority. We work toward the elimination of transportation-related fatalities, injuries and property damage. Absolute reduction in these measures is our definition of success.
Without question, movement toward this goal is a tremendous challenge in a world of greater congestion, higher speeds, larger vehicles on land and in the air, high-pressure economic competition on a global scale, the aging population, increasing leisure travel and more trips per household.
There is no more important challenge than saving lives. But the transportation safety expert will also have to understand operator performance, technology and information systems, community relations, public awareness campaigns, and business trends. Are the transportation experts of the future being trained to appreciate all these important tasks?
Another of our strategic goals which receives less attention than some of the others is national security. We must see to it that the transportation system is secure and available for defense mobility and that our borders and our computer systems are safe from illegal intrusion.
The President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection found the nation’s transportation system to be robust but new information-based systems are creating new vulnerabilities that we don’t yet fully understand.
We have experience with responding to natural disasters and other threats while keeping our transportation system running but, for the most part, little consideration has been given to the growing vulnerability of our information-based systems.
The challenge is how to protect our transportation system during a national emergency. Now, instead of a bomb in a truck, we must deal with time bombs in our computer systems capable of crippling corporations, whole industries, and major portions of our economy.
The most frightening aspect is that the threat is largely unknown and undefined in the traditional sense. We have no idea of how extensive a problem we might have.
To accomplish our National Security goal, we must implement systems that protect the transportation system from outside threats and maintain a transportation and information network that is always ready to move personnel and material at times of national emergency.
We will require new applications of technology and information along with sensitivity to defense-related infrastructure needs, geo-political trends, greater security awareness and enhanced security training. Do we have the transportation security expertise to take on these challenges?
What we have to do is create the transportation environment that will attract high-quality, forward-looking people to the field -- people who want to take on these complex challenges, whether they are management, political, environmental or financial. We want people who can approach problems from new perspectives, who can break out of the box.
The transportation professional of the future must understand the scope of the challenge to deal with the many issues that relate to transportation. We want contributors who play a broad-scale role founded on their skills in particular areas. To do that requires a broad-scale education and that education must continue for a lifetime -- a lifetime of continuous change.
As many of you may know, President Clinton’s highest priority for his second term is education. Under his leadership and that of Vice President Gore, Secretary Slater has initiated the Garrett A. Morgan Technology and Transportation Futures Program to help America’s young people with the skills they will need to become the transportation workforce of the 21st century.
By helping students become literate in math, science and technology, we can ensure a future workforce with the necessary basic skills. At the same time, we can offer them a taste of the many great opportunities in the transportation field.
As these students become acquainted with transportation issues during their pre-college years and acquire some of the necessary skills, they will then continue with transportation-related courses in college and graduate school.
Through that process, we will get the transportation leaders of the 21st century -- people who understand the information and technology issues, people who will be able to look at system solutions.
We need people who can ask the right questions. It’s not necessary for them to come out of graduate school knowing everything and having all the answers. In fact, I think most of us are suspicious when they think they do.
But what is important is that they are able to ask the right questions. They have to understand the dynamics of transportation and see the trade-offs. To get to the good transportation solutions that people want, our future professionals must be able to look at problems from different viewpoints.
The transportation professional of the 21st century will require a broad vision with the ability to understand the different modes and solve a variety of problems involving the application of information technology.
These are the questions for the university leaders:
Have you created the linkages within your own institutions that will produce students with the necessary broad-scale vision?
Do your students have the chance to develop career linkages through: internships with public or private sector transportation organizations; involvement in research projects; and participation in teams involving multiple fields and disciplines?
Will they understand the need to develop new partnerships outside the transportation field to solve the complex problems they will face?
Do they understand the importance of looking for cross-cuts -- the contributions and insights that can come from different disciplines -- to help us confront the major issues?
Most important, are we developing students with a strategic vision?
Do they understand the need to establish strategic goals for a transportation system and then to develop a system to reach those goals?
Will they be ready to help us reach strategic goals of safety, mobility, economic growth and trade, human and natural environment and national security?
As we begin 1999 with this forum on education and training, these questions should be addressed by the transportation and education communities. I urge you to think about what we are doing right -- because we are doing a lot right -- where we can improve, and how we get from here to there.
In closing, let me emphasize that the global transportation system is changing continually and rapidly. The transportation professionals of the next century will have an opportunity to make their mark on a changing world -- if they have the tools and the skills.
It is up to us to create the transportation environment and the educational programs to provide them with those tools and skills. Thank you.
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