Components - Best Practices

Goal

To help the steering committee, if they were to take the next step in going beyond the regional study, by reviewing certain elements of other regional efforts as they have implemented a regional approach to freight (or other issues).

Report Structure (tentative)

Introduction

• Broad discussion of the topic of agency cooperation
  • This will be of the literature review with specific references and theory
• How freight is a regional issue

Case Studies

• About five case studies will be selected and introduced in this section. Selection will be done by using a set of weighted criteria to rank the case studies.
• Criteria (weights undetermined currently)
  • Involves state government
  • Involves multiple countries
  • Freight transportation issues
  • Current stage
  • Current status
  • Information available
• Work to begin immediately on gathering the potential case studies
  • Literature search
  • Mineta Institute report
  • TRB critique
  • Water compacts (Great Lakes)
  • Air Quality

Analysis

• Focus research on certain elements of the case studies. Tentative elements:
  • Funding for the work
  • Decision making process
  • Organization structure
  • Planning of the group’s work (agendas, staffing)
  • Catalyst for the cooperation
  • Research
• These elements will either be brought out in the case study introductions, or the elements will be introduced in this section with the contributions from the case studies.
• Other possible issues:
  • Have any regions actually gone beyond studying freight? Who’s actually in the implementation stage?
  • Can we learn any lessons from efforts that have failed?