On June 13, the Minnesota Department of Transportation hosted the Future Freight Scenario planning workshop, sponsored by the MnDOT Office of Freight and Commercial Vehicle Operations (OFCVO). More than 60 attendees from both private industry and the public sector discussed strategies to better prepare, adapt, and respond to a range of potential futures.
Small groups examined a series of scenarios–Global Marketplace, Millions of Markets, One World Order, and Naftaisque–characterized by differences in population, industry, energy, governance structures, trade, and other conditions. Each group focused it’s brainstorming on the same basic question: What could we have done to prepare ourselves for the world we are in?
“The themes of flexible and responsive multi-modal freight transportation, energy efficiency and responsiveness to community and customer needs were clearly more effective over a wide range of outcomes than trying to pick a preferred mode, or investing in an expected narrow world outcome,” said John Tompkins, OFCVO project manager.
In addition to these breakout sessions, MnDOT Commissioner Charlie Zelle and former Congressman James Oberstar provided their perspectives on Minnesota’s transportation system. Zelle talked about the need for all transportation modes to be interconnected. Oberstar called for continued investment in a variety of transportation modes.
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