Transportation has played an essential role in human civilization, generally for its betterment, but now, sadly, for its detriment in the era of the pandemic elevated to become a global catastrophe by movement of people.

But with soaring unemployment – Nevada’s reaching 33% – and millions facing hunger and eviction, delays can no longer be tolerated for shovel-ready projects only lacking allocation of long-authorized monies, and as explained below key functions of the Institute for Effective Transportation are to coalesce support for worthwhile transportation projects and then lobby for them to be programmed.  Long-deferred infrastructure projects need to go into construction now for injection of stimulus.

There also needs to be an immediate revolution in passenger transportation because conveyances for common carriage whether by surface transit, for-hire vehicles, trains or planes have been implicated in the spread of Covid-19 both across international boundaries and within cities.  Conventional mass transit is even more problematic from the standpoint of virus transmission than are mass gatherings.  Existing policies which fail to account for a dramatic fall-off in transit ridership at least until a vaccine is proven safe and effective need to be placed under a more critical lens provided by the Institute for Effective Transportation if our cities are not to suffer gridlock while their enormous investment in subways is underutilized.