Illinois DOT Head: System Is Stuck in the Past

Jon Hilkevitch reports that Randy Blankenhorn, secretary of the Illinois Department of Transportation, "delivered a tough assessment of his agency's ability to solve problems ranging from traffic congestion to the sluggish movement of freight across Illinois…"

Blankenhorn gave a speech this week, which Hilkevitch describes as providing "numerous examples during a speech in downtown Chicago about how IDOT has suffered from tunnel vision that obsessed over the condition of state roads and bridges but failed to focus on the big picture of moving people and goods more efficiently."

Blankenhorn's prescription: think more like the tech sector in rethinking transportation and seeking out stronger public-private partnerships.

Jason Segedy picked up on news of the speech, noting how the policy prescriptions of Blankenhorn's speech are actually less progressive than they seem on the surface, despite its pronouncements about "yesterday's transportation system."

Those looking for an indication that the country might be ready to radically depart from the patterns of the last 40 years of transportation could still Paul Trombino, head of the Iowa Department of Transportation, who earlier this year argued that his state's transportation system should contract.