WASHINGTON — The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) is launching a Transportation Learning Network to directly engage governors and their staff in exploring new approaches and sharing lessons learned in the rapidly evolving world of transportation technology and policy. From autonomous vehicles and drones, to electrified transportation and new mobility solutions, to innovations in funding, financing, planning and construction, the movement of people and goods is changing faster now than at any other point in our lifetimes. Governors are looking to leverage the opportunities new technologies present to improve health, safety, environment, education and economic development outcomes for their states.
Through the Transportation Learning Network, the NGA Center will convene governors’ transportation policy advisors, alongside other state officials from departments of transportation, energy, environment, economic development, public health and insurance, to highlight how governors and those they govern can best deploy and utilize rapidly advancing transportation technologies. The effort is designed to foster silo-busting across agencies and encourage the sharing of best practices from across the U.S. and globally. It includes considerations of transit, freight, ports and aviation alongside passenger vehicles and on-demand services.
The NGA Center will host the inaugural event in Hartford, Connecticut, in late November, when they assemble the first of four regional workshops on transportation electrification. The workshop will gather representatives from governors’ offices, public utility commissions, energy offices and environmental and transportation departments, to explore better coordination within states as well as on a regional basis. Key issues will include strategies on electric vehicle charging locations and levels, approaches to equitable access and the role for utilities and utility rate payers and the opportunities and challenges surrounding around new e-mobility scenarios. Three additional regional workshops will follow in early-to-mid 2019.
Other activities will include a first-of-its-kind annual Transportation Policy Institute for governors’ transportation policy advisors, two regional workshops on advanced transportation technology, quarterly webinars, podcasts, policy tools and guidance and tailored technical assistance through retreats, learning labs and policy academies.
The Transportation Learning Network builds on topics from the 2017-2018 NGA Chair’s Initiative, Ahead of the Curve: Innovation Governors, and the subsequent state policy roadmaps on transportation innovation and energy innovation.
For more information on the Transportation Learning Network or the four regional transportation electrification workshops, please contact Garrett Eucalitto (geucalitto@nga.org) or Patricio Portillo (pportillo@nga.org).
