Public/Private Partnerships
Engines for Innovation in Transportation
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"Partnerships between the public and private sectors are one of the keys to leadership in the global marketplace. The private sector plays a vital role in identifying, developing, and applying technology for commercial products and processes. Throughout the development process, the federal government best serves as a catalyst to ensure that the value of America's investment in science and technology, especially in times of fiscal restraint, is maximized." 13
II. Examples of Public/Private Partnerships in Transportation
There are a number of ongoing public private partnerships in transportation research and technology deployment that are candidates for assessment for the purpose of deriving important generalizations about this process. The four examples chosen for this report represent a wide range of transportation applications and partnership structures.
These examples are:
- the Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN), an initiative by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to undertake basic medical research to benefit transportation safety;
- the Clean Cities Initiative, a Department of Energy program that seeks to stimulate the voluntary deployment of alternative fuel vehicles in response to legislative mandates;
- the Next-Generation High-Speed Rail Program (NGHSR), a series of partnerships between government and industry to promote commercial high speed intercity passenger rail service in the U.S.; and
- the Fraunhofer Society in America, an example of how another developed nation, in this case Germany, manages public/private partnerships for technological development and deployment, and of how this model is exported to another country.
These partnerships also complement the projects assessed in the first volume of this report. Those were:
- the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV), a surface transportation project that reflects governmental concerns over environmental and natural resources issues;
- the Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiments (AGATE) Consortium, an aviation partnership aimed at safer flight and industrial revitalization; and
- the Fuel Cell Technology Development for Marine Applications, an example of public support for alternative technologies.
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