More Universities Seek Industry Sponsors to Finance Transport Research, Experts Say

This story appears in the Oct. 1 print edition of Transport Topics.

With federal funding of transportation research facing political and budgetary pressures, many schools and research institutions are turning to industry to support research ranging from alternative fuels to electronic networks that connect vehicles and roadway infrastructure in ways that could lead to fewer and less severe crashes, according to industry experts and academic sources.

Trucking industry leaders say that there is a strong need for research to keep up with changes in the market and to reduce regulatory burdens.

“We’re going to have to figure out how to keep the nation’s freight moving safely and efficiently in the face of increasing congestion and crumbling infrastructure,” said Steve Williams, chairman and CEO of Maverick USA, a flatbed carrier in Little Rock, Ark., and chairman of the board of the American Transportation Research Institute. “We need objective analysis to inform our decisions on how we fund transportation infrastructure, protect the motoring public, minimize our environmental footprint and keep the economy moving forward.”

Maverick USA ranks No. 88 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian for-hire carriers.

ATRI is an affiliate of American Trucking Associations in Arlington, Va.

Robert Skinner Jr., executive director of the Transportation Research Board in Washington, D.C., said it is getting harder to secure public funding for transportation research.

“Research is a tough sell, and many public sector transportation agencies struggle to make the case for research and its funding,” Skinner said in a recent article for the Eno Foundation, Washington, D.C., an organization that provides training and development services for public transportation agencies and private transportation service providers.

“To justify most any public expenditure these days, budget analysts and public officials alike are increasingly asking for numbers — performance measures, benefit-cost comparisons, etc. — that demonstrate a reasonable rate of return. This approach tends to favor actions whose benefits can be relatively easily measured and monetized,” Skinner wrote.

In an interview with TT, Skinner noted that the transportation funding bill signed into law by President Obama in July will reduce overall spending on research and development. This is in part because fuel tax revenues that support the Highway Trust Fund are declining as people drive fewer miles and vehicles become more fuel efficient, and because of a shift from gas and diesel to fuels such as natural gas, which are not subject to federal or state fuel taxes.

The new highway bill, called Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century, or MAP-21, authorized $105 billion in spending on highways over the next two years and replaced a 2005 transportation spending measure that expired in 2009 but was extended nine times before Congress agreed on a replacement.

“Everything is based on what’s available,” Skinner said. “As a fraction of total spending, research is low.”

Bob Poole, director of transportation policy for the Reason Foundation, said he sees a shift in transportation research from traditional highway construction to new fields such as highway finance, the role of public-private partnerships in developing and managing urban expressway networks and ways of implementing congestion pricing.

“I’m concerned that federal funding of transportation research may be reduced in response to the government’s overall fiscal crisis and the coming need for major cutbacks in the federal budget,” Poole said. “Of all the things the federal government can do in transportation, research is one of the most critically important and best done at the national level due to economies of scale.”

The U.S. Department of Transportation is currently spending about $1.2 billion annually on transportation research programs. The money is spread over a half-dozen modal agencies with the Federal Aviation Administration getting the biggest share (see graphic, p. 1).

DOT’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration allocates $108 million annually to intelligent transportation systems and another $82 million to support 22 university transportation centers. RITA also funds the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Cambridge, Mass., an organization that employs 550 people, is responsible for basic systems research and is the repository for data on motor carrier safety compliance.

University research projects involve people from a variety of academic and career fields as well as participation by government and private carriers, said Teresa Adams, director of the National Center for Freight and Infrastructure Research and Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also is president of the Council of University Transportation Centers.

“What my center has done is organize a freight coalition,” Adams said in an interview with TT. “We’ve been able to identify some of [Wisconsin’s] freight corridors, and relate those to the economy of the region and what industries are supported by those corridors.”

Adams said while government agencies tend to focus on research that relates to infrastructure — along with vehicle research and human factors — private companies tend to focus on research related to driver training, safety and onboard information vehicle systems.

“Transportation has always been a multi-disciplinary field, and motor carrier operations are a great example,” said Denver Tolliver, director of the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at North Dakota State University in Fargo, N.D. “You have to have civil engineering to understand the structures and you have to have economics to understand motor carrier operations and the regulatory system. We can’t really solve these complex problems anymore by a compartmental analysis.”

The role of government, as Tolliver sees it, “is to fund the next generation of knowledge that industry can’t afford to do.”

Tolliver said, “When I say industry can’t afford to do that, I’m not talking that they don’t have the money. But they have to have an expected payoff for the results of that research very soon.”

One program at UGPTI — the Smart Roadside Initiative — offers an example of how multiple academic fields, government and the industry can come together to improve transportation, Tolliver said.

“When a truck is pulled off to the side of the road, we can use technology to tell whether a truck is in compliance with weight regulations and all of the information regarding the driver and the vehicle can be submitted electronically. A lot of these technologies are used now but are not coordinated,” he said.

“If we can expedite the process of inspection and weighing without having to pull every vehicle over, then we not only make our inspection more effective but we do not impede the flow of motor carriers,” Tolliver added.

As federal support for basic research dwindles, many academic researchers are turning their attention to applied research.

At Iowa State University, professors Bobby Martens and Yoshi Suzuki recently completed a research project for C.H. Robinson Worldwide in which they analyzed the benefits of soliciting frequent bids for transportation service.

The project had practical benefits for C.H. Robinson, a large brokerage firm that manages freight bids for shippers and ranks No. 6 on the Transport Topics Top 50 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian logistics companies. The project also advanced understanding of procurement issues that other organizations can use.

“We want to bridge the gap between theory and practice,” Suzuki said.

In a similar project a few years ago, Suzuki said he developed a forecasting tool for a large truckload carrier to help identify drivers likely to leave. Implementing the system helped to reduce the carrier’s turnover rate by 10%, he said.

At the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, research took the form of building an airship.

Barry Prentice, a professor of supply chain management and president of Buoyant Aircraft Systems International, said airships can provide an economical way to reach remote areas with heavy cargo.

“I have been researching the potential to use a modern generation of transport airships as a means to deal with the logistical challenges of northern Canada,” Prentice said during an unveiling of the finished airship in December 2011. “Because the lift is free, airships do not consume much fuel and the economic competitiveness of airships is growing.”

Prentice said he also wants to study the use of hydrogen to fill airships in place of helium, which is currently in short supply.

Research is critical to helping motor carriers understand the value and effectiveness of safety technologies, according to Maverick’s Williams.

Earlier this year, he said, ATRI published a study documenting the location of truck rollover incidents and another report evaluating the cost and effectiveness of two primary types of roll stability systems — examples of research that can help motor carriers make better decisions about investing in safety technology.

“To minimize crash involvement, we need to know when and where our trucks are most at risk and how we can address those crashes in the most cost-effective way,” Williams said.

“ATRI’s focus is on research that fills the knowledge gaps in the areas of motor carrier safety and productivity,” he added.

Editorial Assistant Kari Travis contributed to this article.