Jeff Shane is a partner at the international law firm of Hogan & Hartson LLP, based at the firm's Washington, DC, headquarters. His practice is focused on regulatory, legislative, transactional, and policy-related matters arising in transportation.
He returned to Hogan & Hartson in May 2008 after completing the most recent of five tours of duty with the U.S. Department of Transportation, serving most recently as Under Secretary for Policy, a Presidentially-appointed and Senate-confirmed position. He has also held a variety of other senior transportation policy positions at DOT and the State Department.
From 1994 through 2001 Shane was Chair of the Commission on Air Transport of the International Chamber of Commerce and Chair of the Military Airlift Committee of the National Defense Transportation Association. He was Chair of the ABA Air & Space Law Forum from 2000 to 2001. From 1985 through 1989, he was Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University, teaching a course in International Transportation Law.
Shane is the recipient of a number of professional recognitions, including Aviation Week's L. Welch Pogue Award for lifetime achievement in aviation. In September 2007 he was elected President of the triennial Assembly of the UN International Civil Aviation Organization, the first American to serve in that position since 1959.
Shane received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his law degree from Columbia University, where he was Articles Editor of the Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar.
He and his family live in Washington, DC.
Critics of DOT’s performance under ARRA are simply off the mark. The DOT staff and leadership are performing magnificently. The new statutory mandates piled on the Department were daunting, but DOT has delivered on every one. That’s not at all surprising to this alumnus. After the Air Transportation Stabilization Act was passed immediately following 9/11, when the mandate was to keep an already weak airline industry from cratering, the DOT aviation staff worked round-the-clock for weeks and the cash moved out smartly. There are lots of other examples of that kind of heroism in DOT’s history. It’s a superb team and… Read more
Lest there be any doubt, the main point of introducing state-of-the-art technology into our transportation system should be to improve its performance, not to measure it. Once that technology is deployed more widely, of course, an important by-product will be more timely and granular information about how the system is functioning. In effect, better performance data will be a freebie. NextGen. The next big ramp-up in transportation technology will not be on the ground; it will be in the sky. NextGen – the multi-agency initiative led by the FAA to overhaul the way we manage air traffic -- is already seven years old. It’s… Read more
A brief update: I said at the end of my recent response to this week’s question that DOT would publish “next week” proposed guidance to applicants for discretionary grants made by the Secretary of Transportation from the $1.5 billion included in the Recovery Act for projects of national or regional significance. That guidance will indeed be published next week – Monday, to be exact, in the Federal Register – but it was actually made available today. It can be found at http://www.federalregister.gov/OFRUpload/OFRData/2009-11542_PI.pdf. I am pleased to report that the proposed guidelines do include positive references to the role of private participation, without suggesting… Read more
I agree with everyone who thinks the Midway story tells us very little about the future of public-private partnerships in the United States. To better understand the implications of Midway for future privatizations, however, it might be more instructive to ask: What if the Midway deal had succeeded? Since our, timid, toe-in-the-water, airport privatization pilot program allows a grand total of one large hub airport to be privatized, success at Midway would have meant the end of large hub airport privatizations in the U.S. (Call me cautious, but I'm not planning to bet very much money that the opportunities for large hub airport privatization expand in… Read more
Here’s a handy tip you can use when evaluating a possible change in policy. You can try it at home; it really works! Just pretend that the proposed innovation had been our policy from the get-go, and that we’re debating whether to change it to the policy we have. This simple reverse flip usually makes it a lot easier to decide whether a proposed change makes sense, especially if the old policy has been around forever. Let me illustrate with an example. Think about the decision to ban smoking on airplanes. All we needed to do was pretend that we had never allowed… Read more
The responses to this week’s question unanimously conclude that we are not intermodal enough. But what does that mean? It surely can’t mean that our institutions aren’t intermodal enough. Intermodalism was the animating idea behind the launching of the Department of Transportation way back in 1966. We already had lots of mode-specific transportation agencies; it’s just that they were scattered all over the Executive Branch. So Congress created DOT to “ensure the coordinated . . . administration” of federal transportation programs and to “make easier the development and improvement of coordinated transportation service….” Those words are still enshrined… Read more
When it comes to ushering in “next generations,” we’re obviously better at technology than people. That this week’s question has engendered a smaller response than any previous week’s question speaks volumes: Nobody really wants to spend any time thinking about the human resources dimension. Normally I’d take comfort in knowing that we’ll get around to fixing this problem just the way we get around to fixing all our other problems: when it becomes a crisis of historic proportions. The problem with human resources is that we don’t have a reliable crisis meter. How will we know when the public service is in meltdown? Or is it already… Read more
I have already submitted one overlong posting for this week, but now I want to compound that sin by supplementing it. I ask readers' forgiveness in advance. First, we can now celebrate the passage a short while ago of a bill that establishes, at long last, DOT’s appropriations for FY 2009. At the risk of belaboring, these are the appropriations that DOT should have received six months ago at the start of the fiscal year. Again, today’s enactment is the culmination of a process that President Bush launched with his final budget submission in February 2008. The lesson from all… Read more
It’s time for a reality check. As we think about President Obama’s preliminary budget, it is useful to recall that the budget DOT is operating under as I write this (on March 10, 2009) is based on a budget proposal that President Bush submitted to Congress in February 2007 – more than two years ago (DOT’s Fiscal Year 2008 appropriation extended by successive continuing resolutions). If Congress passes an omnibus appropriations act for FY 2009 today (halfway through the fiscal year it’s meant to cover) and the President signs it, DOT’s new funding will be the end result of a process begun over… Read more
Lisa’s question highlights a genuine dilemma. To be effective in getting the economy moving again, it’s essential that the stimulus funds be put to work as quickly as possible. But the need for speed means that Congress will spread the surface transportation money across the country like peanut butter in the only way they know how: using the existing FHWA formula. Steve Van Beek is right: projects aren’t likely to get funded unless they have met some basic benefit-cost test. But Bob Poole is also right: the formula approach means we can’t possibly maximize the economic leverage we get from this… Read more
Although the current low price of fossil fuel poses a temporary setback to the market for greater energy efficiency, it is providing an important near-term economic reprieve for millions of Americans struggling right now to make ends meet. It is surprising in these circumstances to read so many comments urging a significant increase in the gas tax. Before we can even begin to think sensibly about whether to raise the gas tax, we need to decide what it is and why we are collecting it. Is it a “sin tax” whose chief purpose is to discourage the consumption of what we’re taxing? (Think cigarettes and… Read more
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