McMaster Institute for Transportation and Logistics gets green light
[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Kanaroglou_Pavlos.jpg” caption=”Pavlos Kanaroglou, acting director of the School of Geography and Earth Sciences, will serve as the first director of the McMaster Institute for Transportation and Logistics (MITL). File photo.”]McMaster's Board of Governors unanimously gave the green light for the creation of a new institute that will bring industry and government together with the academic community to investigate transportation and logistics issues.
The McMaster Institute for Transportation and Logistics (MITL) is already positioned to work with industry and government partners to address planning and policy issues related to efficient transport and logistics systems, with three confirmed industry partners and interest from all levels of government.
Pavlos Kanaroglou, acting director of the School of Geography and Earth Sciences and Canada Research Chair in Spatial Analysis, will serve as the Institute's first director. An international expert on transportation modeling, Kanaroglou knows first-hand the challenges businesses and governments face when transporting goods and people.
“The beauty of the Institute is that it is industry-driven,” says Kanaroglou. “It's a win-win for everyone because industry and government will find access to expertise, while the academic community will have access to projects that can produce results that can affect the quality of life.”
Kanaroglou believes MITL will bring an applied research focus to the daily challenges of business, encourage research collaborations among a number of academic institutions and provide the multi-disciplinary research needed to study transportation from all angles.
The focus will be on three broad areas:
Nick Markettos, director of strategic partnerships at McMaster, is convinced the Institute is much needed and welcomed by the industry and government sectors for a number of reasons.
Along with the University's academic expertise in this area, Hamilton is an ideal site for such an institute because of its strategic geographical location, according to Markettos, who has been involved with the project since talks with industry and government began almost a year ago.
“Hamilton is a logical site for MITL because of its location within the Golden Horseshoe,” he says. “We're in an international hub of road, rail, water and air transportation systems and blessed with a number of companies in the transportation and logistics sector.”
Even in its infancy, the Institute already has industrial partners who helped to get the project kick-started. The Hamilton Port Authority, Hamilton International Airport and CareGo Transport, a Hamilton-based supply-chain specialist, are eager to get moving to create a centre of excellence that will help drive innovation and improvements to all transportation networks.
Richard Koriscil, president and CEO of Hamilton International Airport, believes the partnership will provide the much needed research and analysis to identify opportunities to improve the Hamilton Gateway and, in turn, drive economic growth for the City of Hamilton and southern Ontario.
“MITL brings a much broader perspective to the movement of goods and people,” says Koriscil, adding it's not about how one mode will move ahead, rather how they can all work together to drive an efficient inter-modal transportation network.
Keith Robson, president and CEO of the Hamilton Port Authority and chair of the MITL advisory board, couldn't agree more. Robson says he got involved because of a need for more academic research into logistics and inter-modal transportation.
“Currently, there is very little research in this area in Canada compared to other countries, yet it is critical to the economy of such a large country with its population spread so thinly,” he says.
He's optimistic research from the Institute will provide technical solutions relating to the cost of transferring freight between modes to make the best use of each and reduce the impact of transportation on the environment.
