Robert Poole

Columnist Robert Poole is Director of Transportation Policy and the Searle Freedom Trust Transportation Fellow at the Reason Foundation. He has advised the U.S. DOT and half a dozen state DOTs on transportation policy. Over the past 20 years, he has helped introduce a number of policy ideas into U.S. transportation, including long-term toll concessions, HOT lanes, and truck-only toll lanes. A Reason policy paper Bob wrote in 1988 directly inspired the first state PPP law, enacted in California in 1989. That law led directly to the 91 Express Lanes—the first all-electronic toll road and the first U.S. long-term toll concession project.

Poole received his B.S. and M.S. in mechanical engineering at MIT and did graduate work in operations research at NYU. He’s a member of the Transportation Research Board’s Congestion Pricing Committee and its Managed Lanes Committee, and was a member of TRB’s special committee on the long-term viability of fuel taxes for highway funding. In 2007 he was named “Private Sector Entrepreneur of the Year” by the Public-Private Partnerships division of ARTBA. In 2008 he was a member of the Texas Study Committee on Private Participation in Toll Projects. In 2010 he was a member of Washington State DOT’s Expert Review Panel on the I-405 corridor, and was also a member of the transportation transition team for Florida Gov. Rick Scott.

Poole produces Reason’s monthly e-newsletter, Surface Transportation Innovations, and writes a monthly column on transportation policy for Public Works Financing.

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