Emil H. Frankel, Director of Transportation Policy, Bipartisan Policy Center
Biography provided by participant
Emil H. Frankel is the Director of Transportation Policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, DC, and an independent consultant on transportation policy and public management issues. In early 2008 he served, as Acting Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Transportation. From 2005 to 2007 he was a Principal Consultant of Parsons Brinckerhoff, the international engineering and consulting firm. He is currently a Visiting Lecturer at the Yale School of Management and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Frankel was Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy of the U.S. Department of Transportation from 2002 to 2005. Appointed by President George W. Bush, Frankel played a key role in the coordination and development of the Administration's proposal to reauthorize the Federal highway, transit, and highway safety programs. He also provided policy leadership in such areas as intermodal freight transportation, reform of the Nation's intercity passenger rail system, transportation project financing, and the application of information technologies to transportation systems operations.
From 1995 to 2001 Frankel was Of Counsel to Day, Berry & Howard in the law firm's Stamford, Connecticut, office. During that time he was also a Management Fellow at Yale University's School of Management and a Senior Fellow at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, engaged in teaching and research on issues of transportation, energy and environmental policy and public management. In 1995 he was a Joint Fellow at the Center for Business and Government and the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Frankel was Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Transportation from 1991 to 1995, responsible for managing an agency with more than 4,000 employees and an annual budget of over $1 billion. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was a senior executive of The Palmieri Company, a national firm engaged in business and real estate reorganizations. Previously, Frankel served as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and as a Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Jacob K. Javits of New York.
Frankel served as a founding Vice Chair of the I-95 Corridor Coalition and as a Director of the Regional Plan Association of New York He currently serves on RPA's Connecticut Committee. He was a Selectman of the Town of Weston, Connecticut, from 1999 to 2001.
Frankel received his Bachelor's Degree from Wesleyan University and his LL.B. from Harvard Law School, and was a Fulbright Scholar at Manchester University in the United Kingdom. From 1981 to 1997 he was a Trustee of Wesleyan University, where he is now a Trustee Emeritus.
Since the enactment of SAFETEA-LU there has been a growing acknowledgement that national transportation policy has lost direction and a clear sense of purpose. Congress, itself, recognized this fact, by establishing two commissions to examine national transportation policy and funding. Whether the next surface transportation authorization bill is truly transformative, however, remains to be seen. The explosion of earmarks in the multi-year surface transportation authorization bills over the last fifteen years and the hundreds of earmarks that are included in the annual transportation appropriations are symptoms of this loss of national purpose and consensus. The authorization bills have essentially… Read more
When the Bush Administration introduced the bill that became SAFETEA-LU, it contained a provision to remove the existing prohibition on tolling the Intersate Highway System. The legislation that was eventually enacted in 2005 contained, instead, an expansion of the various tolling and congestion pricing pilot programs. What seemed appropriate in 2003 seems equally so today, that is, allowing the introduction of tolling and congestion pricing on the Interstate System to be "mainstreamed," rather than the subject of continuing pilot programs. It should be emphasized that this is not a call for the federal government to prescribe the use of road pricing, as a means to… Read more
When the planned sale of Midway Airport to private investors by the City of Chicago fell through, several observers viewed it, as a blow to the privatization of transportation infrastructure. Whether this is true or premature, it highlights an important issue for transportation policy: the appeal of infrastructure to private investors will ebb and flow with market conditions, experiencing booms and busts, like other areas. Public policy must take this into account, when considering the role that private capital can play in infrastucture investment. Many have noted that there are tens, perhaps hundreds, of billions of dollars of private capital,… Read more
I was interested in the posting that quoted the comments of a Hill staffer, who had served as a civil engineer at a state transportation department. His experience was quite different from mine, and, in some ways, more relevant. I am a lawyer, not a civil engineer, and my only service at a state transportation department was as its chief executive officer, not as a career professional. My work with young civil engineers at the Connecticut Department of Transportation in the early 1990s suggested that the range of their experiences was quite varied, depending on the quality of work assigned to… Read more
On my brief return to the Connecticut Department of Transportation (ConnDOT) early last year, to serve as Interim Transportation Commissioner, I was struck by the loss of experienced programmatic and project leadership that the agency's career service had experienced in the thirteen or so years, since I had served there. The loss of these skills was the result of normal retirements and attrition, early retirement programs, and the inability to fill vacancies, either because of state budget constraints or because of failures to recruit new talent. Certainly this experience is not unique to Connecticut or to transportation departments, but it seems to me that… Read more
Much of the discussion in the transportation sector, in response to the release of President Obama's FY 2010 Budget Outline, has focused on the change in the budgetary treatment of transportation spending. Essentially, as others have pointed out, the Presient would remove the "firewalls" that protect the transportation trust funds from consolidation into the federal government's gneral budget and would treat transsportation spending like other discretionary programs in the federal budget, that is, make it subject to the annual appropriations process and required to compete with all other domestic programs for its share of the federal budget. I will leave… Read more
The stimulus bill, about to be enacted as I write this note, provides an indication of how the new Administration and Congress may deal with financing the Nation's transportation system in these turbulent economic and financial times. It hardly needs to be said that we are facing the most severe financial, credit, and economic crisis that America has experienced, since the Great Depression. This intial reaction suggests a recognition that transportation infrastructure investments can bring substantial economic benefits. The needs for, and the benefits of, transportation infrastructure investments have been discussed by many panels and organizations in the past few… Read more
As the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission (the Policy Commission) noted in its report a year ago, the problem in this area is that there has been a proliferation of narrow categorical programs (over one hundred), not to mention the thousands of earmarks and "special projects" in both authorizing and appropriating legislation. Often these programs and projects have little connection to national transportation goals, and grantees are neither held to performance standards, nor held accountable for the manner in which they use federal funds. As former US DOT Secretary Mary Peters commented (and the Policy Commission recommended),… Read more
There has been much discomfort in the transportation community about the amount of funding for transportation infrastructure in the stimulus, or economic recovery, bill reported out of the House Appropriations Committee a week ago Of course, we do not yet know what the final bill will contain for transportation or even the degree to which the House language is reflective of what the new President and his Administration desire, but this first significant legislative action on economic stimulus is an opportunity to remind ourselves of our goals and purposes. I am not an economist, but it seems to me that… Read more
While the question of whether mass transit’s time has arrived is an interesting one, I think it is a component of a broader question: how can transportation best serve national goals and purposes like economic growth, environmental and energy sustainability, national connectivity, metropolitan accessibility, and safety? Improved transit can and should be an important component of transportation programs that serve those purposes – but objectivity is required to assess realistically how far transit can move us in the right direction. Transit is well-suited to many situations, but not all. Improved transit in high-density areas can improve accessibility, reduce environmental and… Read more
During his career in the U.S. House of Representatives Congressman LaHood had a reputation for approaching public problems with an open and pragmatic mind. I am confident that this attitude will translate into a willingness to consider significant reform in the transportation sector during his leadership of U.S. Department of Transportation. Many necessary changes can only come through legislative action, but DOT can undertake administrative and regulatory changes to promote greater linkages between transportation policy, economic growth and competitiveness, energy security, and climate change. Addressing these issues, which are deeply interwoven with transportation policy areas, is essential in developing a… Read more
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