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Making a Difference in the Real World
Catherine Ross brings theory and practice By Gary Goettling |
When it comes to taking the measure of our lives, it doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, famous or unknown, says Dr. Catherine Ross.
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"In the end, all that really matters, the only legacy any of us can leave, is whether or not we made a positive difference in the world, something linked to the public good," says Ross, a former professor of city planning at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
That kind of big picture viewpoint is perfect for her job now as executive director of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA). A Georgia Tech professor for more than 20 years, Ross assumed the GRTA post in October 1999. Now, she runs a powerful state agency charged with overseeing transportation projects and major Atlanta-area developments. The agency's goal is to reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality.
Initiated by Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes, approved by the state legislature in 1999, and with backing by both business leaders and environmentalists, GRTA is supposed to reconcile local interests with the transportation needs of the region as a whole. The agency is empowered to build roads, sidewalks and rail lines, and wields veto power over major road and development projects.
GRTA's 15-member board of directors, which decides upon the recommendations of Ross and her staff, also doubles as the Governor's Development Council with oversight for land use planning statewide.
"Almost everything I did at Tech has prepared me for this job," says Ross, whose resume includes positions as vice provost for academic affairs, associate vice president for academic affairs, co-director of the Transportation Research and Education Center, and director of the College of Architecture's Ph.D. program.
"I've had the opportunity to operate in a number of environments with varied levels of responsibility, all of which required the ability to set goals, meet deadlines, manage and chart a course," adds Ross, who spent a year as a senior policy advisor to the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. She was also founder and a principal of CRA Consulting until disassociating herself from the practice when she accepted the GRTA post.
"Catherine is a very talented person who has a warm and winning personality," says Georgia Tech President Dr. Wayne Clough. "She is a successful university faculty member who excels at teaching and research, a successful university administrator and a great family person. The only downside to her taking the top job at GRTA was that Georgia Tech lost the services of one of its best people."
Dr. Larry Frank, an assistant professor of city planning at Tech, says Ross is ideally suited to her task. "Catherine possesses both a strong sense of the political process and the critical relationship between good information and credible decision making."
Frank's observation is also characteristic of the more than two dozen major funded research projects that have earned Ross a national reputation in land development and transportation planning expertise. Her work has included inquiries into the interaction between land use and transportation in both urban and rural settings. She has also studied the environmental impacts of growth and conducted air-quality modeling for urban environments.
The mental discipline associated with research and teaching at Tech imparts an analytical way of looking at things, she says.
"I believe in the unity of theory and practice," she says. "At Georgia Tech, I was able to concentrate on the theory side. This new job allows me to put theory and practice together to develop a higher-level, more fundamental understanding of what the issues are relative to transportation planning, engineering air quality, regional planning – all of the issues that are clearly on GRTA's mandate."
SmartTraq – Strategies for Metro Atlanta's Regional Transportation and Air Quality – is a project providing Ross with an interesting connection between academics and practice. Developed at Georgia Tech's College of Architecture and its School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, SmarTraq is a multi-faceted, holistic research project designed to integrate data on land use, transportation, air quality and even household physical activity. As a decision-making tool, SmarTraq will develop indicators that track land development and transportation investment patterns at the local government level with the ultimate aim of providing a solid knowledge base to back GRTA recommendations.
Atlanta's congested downtown connector interstate highway is jammed with morning rush-hour commuters every weekday. The Georgia Regional Transportation Authority is developing plans to alleviate some traffic congestion in metro Atlanta.
"You develop a tendency to look for a better way, a new way, a more efficient way in everything you do, which comes from the academic experience at Tech," she explains.
The stickiest challenges facing Ross will likely be getting disparate interests to go along with the regional transportation plans GRTA promulgates. The 13 counties comprising the metro Atlanta region represent different constituencies, agendas and directions. Indeed, the fact that local governments have had difficulty working together is the reason GRTA was created in the first place. But Ross is optimistic.
"I think the level of debate is operating at a higher level than it was 12 months ago," she says. "We're talking about the right issues – not just in this office, but in the public arena. People are beginning to have a sense of what congestion really means in terms of its impact on their quality of life, health and the future economic viability of the region.
"Atlanta is full of pragmatists. If a particular transportation plan is good for business, good for our health, good for our mobility, ultimately we'll get there. We're making uneven progress, but Atlanta is further along than any other city in coming up with a strategy for mitigating congestion and improving air quality. We have a mechanism in place – GRTA. Now we have to make it work."
While mass transit weighs heavily in GRTA's list of transportation possibilities, Ross knows from her research that effective solutions have many components.
"The congestion issue is simply something we have to provide options for – we have no choice," she says. "And it can't possibly be done in one mode. We need a multi-modal, balanced transportation system. Sometimes that means roads; not every place in the metro area has adequate roads."
Ross emphasizes that all stakeholders must be included in the decision-making. For any group to be estranged from the process undermines the effort's credibility and potential for success, she notes. It's a lesson in politics she learned first hand as an undergraduate at Kent State University in 1970. On May 4 of that year, National Guardsmen fired into a crowd of anti-war demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine.
Looking back at the Kent State shooting and the contentious period it symbolized, she realized that much of the unrest occurred because "people felt like they were on the outside, that they were not involved in decisions that clearly affected their lives."
That outlook will serve her well at GRTA as it did at Tech, where decisions are invariably politically loaded, and making headway hinges on "inclusiveness and encouraging participation by all sides of an issue, even as you make decisions they don't always support.
"Each of us has to rise above our own experiences and our own subjectivity, and that's not easy to do," says Ross, describing critical qualities common to both a researcher and a consensus builder. "We operate from our own narrow interest, typically, and our own subjectivity. And most people don't even know they're subjective – they don't understand that the view they're putting on the table is perhaps not a broad or inclusive view. If you can rise above that subjectivity – and you have to work at it - to bring diverse interests to coalesce around a common issue, then you can move people along."
Growing up in Cleveland, the oldest of six children, Ross didn't know exactly what she wanted to do with her life, except that she didn't plan on doing it in Ohio.
"I wanted to see the world, to move around and live in different places. I wanted to have a broader perspective than I had," she recalls, adding that the security of an advanced education was also important as a means to whatever end she ultimately selected. "I wanted to make a contribution to my society, my neighborhood, my family. And I wanted to be independent. I've always been fiercely independent."
After finishing at Kent State with an undergraduate degree in social sciences, Ross enrolled at Cornell. There she earned a master's in regional planning and a doctorate in city and regional planning. In 1976, she moved to Atlanta because her new husband, Georgia Tech economics Professor Dr. Thomas D. Boston, wanted to live in the South near his native Florida – at least for a year or two.
Twenty-four years and two children later, she's still here. In Georgia, Ross has found not only a home, but a calling.
"I think everyone ought to try and leave the world a little better than they found it, and that's why this work with GRTA is so important to me. If I can make even a small contribution, that's a lot to do."
photo by Stanley Leary
For more information, contact Dr. Catherine Ross, Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, 245 Peachtree Center Ave. NE, Suite 900, Atlanta, GA 30303. (Telephone: 404-463-3000) (E-mail: ross@grta.org)
Gary Goettling is an Atlanta-based freelance writer.
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Last updated: Sept. 10, 2000