Christensen Associates Transportation

For more information,
contact Mark Meitzen.

Overview

Christensen Associates has a long and diverse history of consulting for transportation industries – including railroad, trucking, and airline – tracing back to when these industries navigated the choppy waters of deregulation in the 1970s and 1980s. Using our extensive institutional knowledge of transportation industries, sound economic principles, and state-of-the-art modeling techniques, we have developed solutions for the increasingly complex market problems in these industries. Furthermore, our broad experience with other network industries, such as electricity and telecommunications, gives Christensen Associates a unique perspective and insight for analyzing the issues currently facing transportation industries.

Christensen Associates has produced authoritative studies on cost structure, productivity, and industry structure for the railroad, trucking, and airline industries. The U.S. Surface Transportation Board selected Christensen Associates to conduct an independent study of the competitive state of the U.S. freight railroad industry. The 14-month study culminated in a report, A Study of Competition in the U.S. Freight Railroad Industry and Analysis of Proposals that Might Enhance Competition, released by the Surface Transportation Board in November 2008. In the 1990s, Christensen Associates provided analytical support to the U.S. Department of Justice concerning the Union Pacific-Southern Pacific merger. In the 1980s, we performed landmark productivity studies for the U.S railroad industry that provided a key element in the new regulatory structure that transformed U.S. railroads from a declining industry to one whose productivity was among the highest of any U.S. industry. Throughout the post-Staggers Act era, Christensen Associates has provided expertise for rail rate cases, contract disputes, and market structure analyses. We have submitted expert testimony before the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Surface Transportation Board.

In addition to our technical expertise and the quality of our work, Christensen Associates also has a demonstrated ability to work as part of multidisciplinary teams and administer large, complex projects. For example, contracts for the two recent studies performed by Christensen Associates for the Surface Transportation Board – the original 14-month study of the competitive state of the U.S. freight railroad industry and a supplemental study on railroad capacity issues – amounted to over $1 million and were performed on-time and on-budget. During the November 2008 public hearing on Christensen Associates’ original study, Surface Transportation Board Commissioners praised the study for its substance and quality, which exceeded their expectations, and also commended the study team for delivering the report on-time.