Back to The Institute for Sustainable Development		Ending Gridlock: Conference Overview: The Institute for Sustainable Development will host a one-day conference on March 12, 2004, entitled "Ending Gridlock: East End Transportation Futures." This is crucial juncture for transportation planning on the east end; the region is undergoing a major reevaluation of its transportation infrastructure and its impact on the long-term quality of life of the region. The conference will emphasize practical solutions to existing transportation problems, with a focus on finding strategies that facilitate regional mobility, enhance overall service levels, reduce regional energy consumption, and preserve eastern Suffolk’s rural character. The conference will provide an update and overview of ongoing federal, regional, and local planning efforts. Too often transportation is seen almost exclusively as an issue of mobility, moving people around safely and efficiently. Other issues, like land use, environmental quality, and energy consumption are seen as outside the purview of transportation planners. This tendency towards overspecialization ends up degrading regional quality of life as critical cross-sector linkages are ignored in the name of expediency. This conference will focus public attention on the need for a more sustainable approach that examines transportation, energy consumption, and land use as an integrated problem. Fortunately, the Sustainable East End Development Strategies (SEEDS) has been pursuing such an approach for the past few years. This conference will provide an opportunity to understand how the SEEDS process has developed to date. 2004 will be an important year for SEEDS as it begins to publish and publicize the results of its transportation modeling scenarios. The Conference will open with a talk by the newly-elected Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy on his vision for the east end. Congressman Tim Bishop will present the keynote address on regional transportation issues at lunchtime. The conference will also feature presentations from regional planning experts who will provide a brief overview of regional transportation planning, including the Long Island Transportation Plan 2000, and a more detailed analysis of SEEDS. The SEEDS presentation will include a discussion of what the East End will look like in 20 years if there are no changes in current transportation and land use practices. Regional discussants will analyze the strengths and weaknesses of these initiatives and will be asked by the Institute for Sustainable Development to emphasize creative ways for incorporating energy efficiency, land use, social justice, and environmental quality into transportation planning. The afternoon session will offer targeted planning workshops. Participants will evaluate current policy options and prioritize action plans, focusing on: Smart Growth, Ferry Services, and improvements to bus, rail, and jitney services. Participants will be asked to think about these service areas from the perspective of sustainable transportation. The conference will conclude with a preference survey from the participants, followed by a discussion of the survey’s results — that will be fed into the Institute’s report and recommendations. The Institute for Sustainable Development will publish the conference proceedings three to six months after the conference. The proceedings will review the key findings of the conference and emphasize new regional strategies for improving transit systems on the East End. The report will also compile relevant statistics and contact information on regional transit, and suggest ways of implementing its recommendations.