Montana’s Transportation Challenges the Focus of Wheeler Center Forum

By Lucia Stewart, 9-29-08

As transportation becomes a looming question affecting Montana’s economic future with its large and rural expanse, the Burton K. Wheeler Center is hosting a timely discourse on this critical issue.

“This industry of transportation has opportunities and challenges, such as additional train service across the state and the future of air service in Eastern Montana,” said Julie Hitchcock, Associate Director for the Wheeler Center. What service will continue and new developments may happen in our rural and urban areas?

The Wheeler Center is the state’s oldest public policy forum, and is host to the upcoming conference “The High Cost of Fuel: What’s Down the Road for Montanans?” with efforts to create a non-partisan dialogue based around statewide difficult topics, on October 1st and 2nd in Billings, Montana.

“There are ramifications that are occurring due to our high fuel prices and transportation costs,” said Hitchcock. “There was a 14 percent increase in the grocery stores in June alone. Montana is highly influenced by this with our agricultural and tourism-related industries.”

How is it benefiting us? How is it cutting into our economy? What policies could be introduced to decrease the impact or redirect the impact of decreased federal funding? These are all topics that will be discussed at the upcoming conference.

“The Wheeler Center is focused on creating a platform where we allow different viewpoints to discuss, which then allows us move forward to the next step,” said Ralph Johnson, the new Executive Director of the Wheeler Center. “The goal is to be the forum and not the advocate.”

A highly regarded focus of the discussion is to create a “fair and balanced program,” said Hitchcock. “We spend a lot of time and energy to make sure we have a diverse gender, geography, political stance. We want to be inclusive.”

Some of the discussion points at the conference will be on multi-modal systems, the viability of a regional bus system and the conundrum of less fuel consumption equating to a decrease in fuel tax revenue forcing a change in the budget for the whole country. How is this going to affect Montana, our rural nature and our transportation systems?

The format of the conference is focused on roundtable discussions following presentations in order to allow attendees to comment and talk about what’s on their mind.

“We need to discuss how public policy affects the communities of Montana,” said Hitchcock. “It is a public and institutional responsibility to have discourse on these challenging topics.”

This is embedded in the history of the Wheeler Center — to serve as a stagecoach for information and communication throughout the state.

“Most policy is driven by the federal government, and tends to be driven by urban populations,” said Hitchcock. “But Montana is uniquely rural, in fact predominantly rural, so we focus on transferring issues from the national to the rural.

In the fall of 2007, the Montana legislation had a rancorous session, and in response the Wheeler Center hosted a legislative leadership session where they “tried to make good of it,” said Hitchcock. “They came to a better understanding of each others perspectives and understood the mistakes that they hope won’t happen again.”

“We are a small enough state, where our population is small enough that you can share what’s on your mind and meet with legislatures,” said Johnson.

Johnson recently took over the Executive Director position at the Wheeler Center, while simultaneously continuing to teach at Montana State University School of Architecture, with a focus in planning.

“Public policy has a history based in planning,” said Johnson, and therefore feels that it’s a natural fit in his new position.

Some of the highlights of this years conference will be Jim Lynch, Director, Montana Department of Transportation discussing priorities of MDOT; a panel discussion on “Looking Forward: What Can Montana Do?”; and Stephen Albert, Director, Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University speaking on the role of innovation, institutions, policy and new technologies in addressing transportation needs and issues.

“We are seeking balance by discussion what is the impact on the farmer or rancher in rural Montana, along with a breath into the democratic process,” Hitchcock said.

For more information about the Wheeler Center, click here. For details relating to the upcoming 2008 Burton K. Wheeler Fall Forum on The High Cost of Fuel, click here.