(front row, left to right)
Kitty McCoy, Kansas City Regional Transportation Alliance
Jim Bowers, White Goss Bowers March Schulte & Weisenfels

Frank Weatherford, TranSystems (Event Chairman)
Kite Singleton, E. Crighton Singleton, Inc.

(back row, left to right)

Daniel Niec, Missouri Department of Transportation

Pat McGannon, Kessinger Hunter & Co.

David Warm, MidAmerica Regional Council

Sherri McIntyre, City of Kansas City, MO

Michael Collins, Port Authority of Kansas City

Jim Harpool, MD Manegement

Dick Jarold, Kansas City Area Transportation Authority

Matt McCoy, The Logistics Store

Joe Sweeney, Ingram's Magazine

Transportation: KC’s Opportunity to Dazzle the World

“One of the things that Kansas City does better than other parts of the country,” said Frank Weatherford, a principal with TranSystems, “is cooperation.” Whether that cooperation is between cities and the state departments of transportation or between public and private entities, Weatherford believes that “we work together better here than anyplace else in the country.”

The consensus among participants assembled for Ingram’s Transportation Industry Outlook was that the cooperation Weatherford alluded to is one reason the Kansas City metro area has finally seized the initiative on the transportation front. This includes the whole range of modalities, everything from rails to rivers, highways to airways.

Cooperation does not happen by itself, said David Warm, executive director of the Mid-America Regional Council. “It takes leadership. It takes something that is compelling enough to unify people.” Warm agreed with Weatherford that this region cooperates more effectively than most in transportation implementation. “Kansas and Missouri work seamlessly in coordinating investment strategies. We have all kinds of discussion, in the trenches, behind the scenes. It doesn’t get seen,” he said.

“I don’t know why that is,” Weatherford said. “It just seems to be true and it’s one of the reasons we have been able to do what we have.” TranSystems sponsored this year’s assembly, held two days after the election in Ingram’s Freight House district offices.