Speaker: Dr. David Lewis, Partner, Hickling Corporation Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Important new evidence shows how the right transportation infrastructure investments promote productivity and regional economic growths in ways that were previously overlooked by planners and decision makers. New findings also demonstrate a very high probability of success in efforts to ensure sustained environmental quality in transportation planning and investment. The risk that well structured transportation investments will fail to yield strong economic and social rates of return is thus quite low. Yet despite the high likelihood of improved living standards through transportation investment, MPO's and states often confront a citizenry whose perception of risk is quite the reverse.

Dr. David Lewis will address these three related topics on March 27th, 1992. First, he will discuss the relationship between transportation, productivity, living standards, and growth. We know that these impacts are more difficult to document and anticipate than traditionally conceived transportation benefits. Dr. Lewis' second topic is the way in which the conventional planning framework can be adapted to accommodate these newly emerging realities. He will discuss his Primer on Transportation, Productivity and Economic Growth (NCHRRP 342) and discuss how to apply the Primer.

In the third segment of his talk, Dr. Lewis will preset his seminal work in public consensus building for transportation planning. The use of Risk Analysis as a means of integrating whole communities into the consensus and decision process (including the perplexing goal of "environmental; sustainability") has proven to be highly effective in forecasting broadly accepted solutions in cases previously tied up in long periods of controversy.