Mountain-Plains Consortium Creates Multi-level Opportunities
The math is simple. Take four universities dedicated to creating better transportation through combining expertise from multiple programs, add the numerous modes of transportation that serve the Mountain Plains Consortium geography and cap it with cooperation from Canada and Mexico and you multiply opportunity.
Members of the Mountain Plains Consortium - North Dakota State University, Colorado State University, the University of Utah and the University of Wyoming - bring various campus disciplines together to serve student educational needs and offer transportation research and learning opportunities.
The MPC is one of 10 competitively selected university transportation centers in 10 federal regions in the United States. MPC represents Region 8, which includes North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. The program is funded on a 50-50 matching basis by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The grant has been awarded each year since 1988.
With a theme highlighting rural and Intermodal transportation, the MPC looks at the spatial and economic character of the region and at the critical issues common in Region 8 and the broader geographic region. Seven focus areas define and guide the research selection process:
- Rural transportation safety
- Rural transit
- Low volume roads and bridges
- Intermodal freight transportation and logistics
- Environmental impacts
- Tourism and recreational travel
- International cross-border traffic
The five-year strategic plan the MPC developed was approved in September 1999. That plan will support the seven focus areas. The plan also opens itself to innovation and ideas as research continues, invaluable in a program with such energy and synergy.
Collectively the MPC universities coordinate and integrate concepts from many disciplines including engineering, planning, economics, business, geography, computer science and operations research. Resident and non-resident courses in both classroom and distance-learning programs support education and research. The research focus areas encompass the surface modes of highway, transit and railroad, as well as Intermodal freight movements.
Another dimension addresses multi-national transportation including educational and technology transfer activities. A major strategy is to engage universities in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. in broader partnerships.
MPC is a constantly growing program, accomplishing much along the way. In the last year alone, nine MPC project reports and a FRA (Federal Railroad Administration) report on railroad mergers were completed.
Through 1999, MPC produced a library of 114 research reports and 37 student theses or dissertations, all while attracting new faculty to the field of transportation. MPC, since 1988, funded 55 different principal investigators and developed or adapted 18 transportation graduate courses for delivery over the TEL8 distance learning network.
TEL8 is a particularly exciting regional telecommunications network. The system carries a two-way interactive audio and video signal to conferences and classrooms at respective sites. TEL8 greatly enhances and improves the cost-effectiveness of the MPC. The TEL8 network includes state transportation departments in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Utah.
MPC universities continued to teach most of their pre-existing transportation courses and exceeded the funding levels specified by the U.S. Department of Transportation. This helped leverage further funding from agencies such as state and local transportation departments, U.S. Department of Agricultural, Federal Transit Administration, Federal Railroad Administration and the American Association of Railroads.
Each segment connects to the whole, ensuring the MPC vision to be a regional and national leader in rural and intermodal transportation and a North American center for cooperative education and information exchange.
