Peter Fifield Swan - Comments

Two areas are woefully inadequate for creating policy for freight in particular: data collection and understanding of markets. I am attaaching a paper on freight research strategy that I wrote for the kickoff meeting of the NCFRP sterring committee and a paper that I wrote for the DOT on market-based regulation of freight. Without good data on output in particular, it is difficult to gauge the neccessoty of effectiveness of regulation. Further, if our policy is to use markets to reach strategic goals, we need a much better understanding of how they work (and how they don't work) if we are to be successful.