The new activity by Mexican trucks on Texas highways will be of special interest to LBJ School researchers who have been involved in a long-term investigation of policy issues related to transportation and NAFTA.

According to LBJ School Professor Leigh Boske, an expert on transportation policy issues, government officials who have been working with LBJ School researchers for the past five years have a keen interest in what impact the border opening will have on state highways. This includes physical deterioration of roads, trade patterns, and accidents.

The new research opportunities that will arise from this change in federal and state policy are expected to be diverse and will likely generate a number of projects. For now, Boske said, the Texas Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration are not only interested in what will happen after December 18 with regard to public safety and damage to Texas highways, but also in what impact the Mexican peso's decline will have on trade and transportation.

Boske, who has codirected five policy research projects on the topic of U.S.-Mexico transportation since 1989, has a long-standing interest in the ways the nation's highways are used and how goods are transported into and out of the country. He has held various high-ranking positions at the state and national levels related to transportation policy. Most recently, from May 1993 to September 1994, he was a full-time policy advisor to the Texas Transportation Commission, which oversees the Texas Department of Transportation.

According to Boske, the work the LBJ School has done on NAFTA-related topics began with a request for assistance from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Office of International Transportation and Trade.

"At the time, the U.S. Department of Transportation was the lead federal government agency negotiating binational transportation issues with Mexico," he said. "They wanted assistance in understanding the border. The 1989-90 policy research project on the Texas-Mexico transborder transportation system was the first study that was about the border alone."

The work done that year was especially important because, until that time, American studies related to transportation and international trade did not go beyond the border, Boske said. "Everybody who had looked at the subject stopped at the border. We were the first Americans to do an in-depth transportation study on the Mexican side of the border."

After the 1989-90 research project was completed, other projects on Texas-Mexico trade and transportation were developed in partnership with the UT Center for Transportation Research. Most of the work has been done through policy research projects at the LBJ School that have focused on multimodal transportation, logistics management, bilateral trade and transportation systems, and seaports and inland waterway systems. This year, the School is conducting the second part of a study on the Texas seaport waterway system that began last year as an offshoot of another project.

"Currently, just about everybody is privatizing in Mexico," said Boske, explaining how changes in one country affect the other and how the research possibilities are endless. "This change in the way Mexican railroads, seaports, and airports are run will be of special interest to their American counterparts."

The multi-year transportation study has involved numerous students who have traveled extensively in Mexico and the United States to interview local, state, and federal government officials as well as representatives of warehousing operations and other private-sector enterprises involved in transportation-related functions.

Over the years, five policy research project reports on U.S.-Mexico transportation issues have been produced and distributed to a variety of government agencies and private enterprises. "The results have been widely used and disseminated in the United States and Mexico," Boske said. "This includes U.S. Department of Transportation officials, consultants, state planners, and Mexican officials from all the border states."

The books are available in the Wasserman Public Affairs Library or may be purchased from the LBJ School Publications Office. Call 512/471-4218 for information.

Funding for the 1989-90 project was provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation through the LBJ School's U.S.-Mexican Policy Studies Program. A follow-up study in 1992-93 on Texas/Northern Mexico infrastructure and free trade was funded by the Hewlett Foundation, the Texas Department of Transportation, and the Federal Highway Administration. TXDOT and the FHA have paid for work done from 1993 until the present.