by Pat Caraher
photography by Rajah Bose
Creeping in convoys up the I-90 grade west of Vantage, their
running lights flashing as you jockey to pass them, or looming up
in your rearview mirror as they bear down behind you on I-5, trucks
are an inescapable fact of life on Washington’s highways. The next
time you find yourself boxed in between a double-decker you’re
passing and another one pounding along a few car-lengths ahead of
you, try to remember that although you can’t avoid them out there
on the freeway, you can’t live without them, either.
As Ken Casavant, longtime Washington State University professor
of agricultural and resource economics, says, “Everything we eat,
touch, or wear has been handled by truck.”
Washington commodities—apples, wheat, meat and dairy products,
timber, ore—are almost totally dependent on truck movement. World
communities too depend on trucks for the transportation of goods
into, out of, and through Washington. Inadequacies in the state’s
transportation infrastructure can cause markets—and revenue—to be
lost.
That’s why gathering comprehensive data on the movement of goods
in Washington is so vital to state residents and our economy,
Casavant says.
Growing up on a North Dakota farm, Casavant developed an early
interest in transportation economics. Analyzing the cost and
movement of commodities—often over long distances by road, rail,
and barge—still fascinates him. The Washington transportation data
he and his team of researchers have collected have made WSU
nationally recognized in the field of transportation economics. But
it is his analysis of these data that has affected policy in the
state.
Casavant has been at the forefront of a pair of six-year studies
for the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). The
first was the Eastern Washington Intermodal Transportation Study
(EWITS), conducted from 1992 to 1998. The Strategic Freight
Transportation Analysis (SFTA) is currently in progress and will
run through 2008. This successful research program now is focused
on creating a WSU Regional Center for Freight Mobility.
While conducting truck studies for a master’s degree at North
Dakota State University in the late 1960s, Casavant frequently drew
on the work of WSU professor James C. Nelson, considered by many as
“the father of transportation economics” in the United States.
Under Nelson’s tutelage, Casavant (’70 Ph.D. Ag. Econ.) gained a
greater appreciation of the value of competition in increasing
productivity and efficiency in the transportation sector.
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