Eno, like many other organizations, has a strategic plan to help guide us toward our vision of a transportation system that improves the quality of life for all. Over the last few years, as we’ve celebrated our Centennial and weathered a pandemic with all of you, we took a deep look at the larger economic, demographic, environmental, and technological changes underway in today’s transportation industry. Given the dynamism evident in transportation, our staff and Board focused on crystalizing the goals of our work and strengthening how the organization anticipates, reacts, and adapts to the expected trends over the next three years.

It is this kind of insight that enables Eno to maximize the impact of everything we do.

For example, throughout our long history, Eno has been at the forefront of transportation workforce issues with our coursework, training, and research. Of course, workforce challenges are evident in many industries today but no less so throughout transportation. Last year, our leadership courses—Transportation Senior Executive and Transportation Mid-Manager—returned to in-person events. While the Eno team continues to take full advantage of a range of innovative tools for virtual trainings, there is still demand for the kind of interpersonal connections that are difficult to replicate online. Our Multi-Agency Exchange (MAX) program wrapped up its 10^th year, and we are working now to meet the demand for similar peer-to-peer learnings across other modes.

The nation continues to grapple with difficult supply chain and freight bottlenecks. In response, Eno featured several webinars on the past, present, and future of supply chains and freight systems, and how technology can address the myriad challenges today. We also featured insights from partners in our network to weigh-in on the freight-related workforce concerns, especially in trucking. Our research on inland waterways spotlighted their importance and looked abroad to makes the case for how and why the U.S. should invest with an eye toward economic competitiveness and national security.

While major issues around workforce, safety, and supply chain issues are prominent outside of transportation, Eno also directs considerable attention to governance and institutional issues in places. For example, Austin, Texas is embarking on multi-billion projects to expand its highway, transit, airport, and bike/ped networks to meet the needs of that growing region. While those investments garner obvious attention, Eno focused on the need for strong institutions, collaborative partnerships, and clear decision-making responsibility.

These issues matter because of the need to build projects, better, faster, and cheaper than we do today. Over the past few years, Eno catalogued the premium we pay for projects in the United States and last year unveiled a centralized hub of research, data, and analysis to help places do just that. Given the interest in international examples, we looked over six continents for real lessons from real projects and tailored insights for the U.S. context. Places from coast-to-coast are putting this work into practice

Staying updated and current means reaching out and connecting with the best and brightest up and coming experts. Last year we produced a compendium of articles from our first-ever essay contest. Named in honor of our Eno colleague Martin Wachs, to challenge transportation professionals and students to convince us that their idea was the best way forward toward our vision of a transportation system that fosters economic vitality, advances social equity, and improves the quality of life for all. The resulting anthology presents a diverse and compelling set of ideas for the new normal.

While our impact is evident, we do not do it alone nor do we generate ideas with the doors closed in our Washington, DC office. For example, last spring we recognized the massive impact the war in Ukraine would have on global air travel. So we brought in an international aviation expert to help us understand the implications. We also engaged telecommunications and wireless industry perspectives to join with our aviation experts and help develop a safe way to roll out new 5G networks. We partnered with clean energy stakeholders to collaborate on a state agenda for promulgating best practices to boost the infrastructure workforce.

This all goes to highlight what we have noted before: partnerships, networks, and collaborations are part of the fabric of this organization. Our success is always shared, and we cannot do it alone.

Thank you to all our members, donors, and supporters who helped 2022 be such a great year!

We are excited for the next year and look forward to our collective and significant impact.

With gratitude,