In October 2002, approximately 350 people assembled in Chicago, Illinois, to participate in the Third National Conference on Transportation Finance. The conference brought together individuals from the transportation, finance, and public policy communities at national, state, and local levels and from both the public and the private sectors. The public sector was represented by federal, state, and local government officials and managers of transportation assets such as airports, seaports, and toll roads. Private-sector participants included investment bankers, financial advisors, design and construction professionals, attorneys, developers, credit analysts, journalists, and consultants in the transportation sector. As the third in a series of national transportation finance conferences sponsored jointly by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies and the Federal Highway Administration, the conference continued the dialogue on the challenges of financing the nation's transportation systems and provided a forum to exchange perspectives on what has worked, what has not, and what might be tested. Given the timing of the conference-as proposals were being developed to be part of reauthorization of the nation's surface transportation and aviation programs-special attention was paid to considering new approaches for the future.(Author/publisher)
Abstract