Calendar of Events

Historically transportation policy has been among the least partisan realms of federal policy-making.  And indeed, the new surface transportation bill signed into law by President Obama last year was a legislative success in a Congress marred by deep partisan rifts in many other areas of public policy.  In this panel we will hear from two knowledgeable and respected federal transportation policy experts who have in recent years led a concerted effort to effect meaningful transportation policy change and find common ground across increasingly sharply drawn political lines in Washington.  In their presentations and moderated discussion to follow, Mr. Frankel and Dr. Schank will consider both (1) how federal transportation policy-making has evolved in recent years and how it is likely to change further, and (2) what lessons we might draw from the case of transportation regarding the prospects for bipartisanship in policy-making more broadly in the years to come.RSVP Now! Speaker BiosEmil Frankel, Visiting Scholar, Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) Prior to his current role at the BPC, Mr. Frankel served as ’the BPC director of transportation policy. Mr. Frankel was Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy of the U.S. Department of Transportation from 2002 to 2005. He also served as Principal Consultant of Parsons Brinckerhoff, the international engineering and consulting firm and Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Transportation.  Joshua Schank, President and CEO, Eno Center for TransportationBefore joining Eno, Mr. Schank directed the National Transportation Policy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. He was Transportation Policy Advisor to Senator Hillary Clinton during the development of the last surface transportation authorization bill (SAFETEA-LU). He has worked as a Senior Associate at ICF International, as well as positions at the Office of the Inspector General’s in the U.S. Department of Transportation, and with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City.  Moderator:Martin Wachs, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, UCLA Department of Urban PlanningMartin Wachs was a professor of civil and environmental engineering and professor of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also served as director of the Institute of Transportation Studies. Prior to this, he spent 25 years at UCLA, where he served three terms as chairman of the Department of Urban Planning. He retired as senior principal researcher and director of the Transportation, Space and Technology Program at the RAND Corporation.