From David Gillen

A tribute to a Colleague and Dear friend who gave much to me, to the profession and to colleagues worldwide.

From David Gillen to Bill Waters, his family and friends.

Below is a major extract from a letter which I wrote back in 1997 in support of Bill’s promotion to Full Professor at UBC. I re-read it a few days after Bill passed on and I think it reflects what a significant contribution Bill made to the profession.

“I have known Professor Waters for over 20 years and have been familiar with his work for about the same time. We have been on conference programs together, have been colleagues when I was a visiting Professor at UBC in 1986 and have interacted professionally as joint editors of special issue journals. I have followed Bill’s career and have used a number of his articles in my courses dealing with Transportation Economics, Transportation Planning & Project Evaluation and Applied Microeconomics.

Before assessing his research contributions let me comment on his teaching and service/professional contributions. I have read Bill’s summary description of his teaching activities. A number of articles and papers Bill produced were designed as pedagogic devices to help students with a large and complex literature. These papers found their way beyond UBC and are used at a number of institutions in Canada and the US. These are rich in content and certainly are a tribute to his commitment to transfer knowledge. He has also been a tireless and unselfish contributor to the profession of transportation economics. He was the one who rescued the Logistics & Transportation Review and has singlehandedly taken on the task of transforming it into a good second tier journal.

Bill has been highly active in the Transportation Research Forum and other Canadian and International transportation organizations both as a member and as part of the executive. He has been active in bridging the gap between academe and business. This has been very important in building the reputation of UBC graduates among various transportation firms but also in placing graduates of the transportation division at UBC.

Over the last three decades Bill has produced a large number of articles, papers, reports and conference papers. He has not produced any one or two outstanding articles that made him prominent among his peers. His international reputation is built on an accumulation of effort in several areas but for the most part in three; benefit-cost analysis including his work on the value of time, costing and more recently in productivity and financial analysis.

Early in his career Bill focused on refereed articles producing approximately 16 up to 1980. These were to his credit and except for two American Economic Review articles were in second or third tier journals. In the 1980’s his emphasis was more on reports and books. His refereed article output fell to around 11 but still remained in second tier journals. His efforts since the 1990’s have concentrated upon quality articles in good journals. At the same time he has generated an increasing number of conference papers and reports. Except in the articles category his output since 1990 exceeds his output since he was hired in the late 1960’s. This is strong testimony to his commitment to academic quality and to UBC.

In the letter accompanying this request for review of Bill’s work there was a listing of criteria as to what constitutes ‘valued research contributions’. Bill’s work over the years but particularly since 1990 would fit into every category except (a). As I stated earlier I believe Bill is most well known in three areas. In benefit cost analysis he has made a significant contribution to the practice and application of benefit-Cost methods. His two American Economic Review articles I would place in this area of influence since they had an impact on how people viewed transportation in international trade and hence how they assessed changes in trading regimes. His work on valuation of time for passengers as well as freight has been another area of influence. The World Conference paper and Journal of Transportation Research Forum paper are important pieces. His earlier work in compiling variation in value of time and analyzing them has had a material impact on public policy.

Bill’s work on costing has been part of his research agenda for the last two decades. His first important piece was in the Transportation Journal (1976). This represented a first attempt to unravel the work that had taken place in the literature and expose the strengths and weaknesses. Subsequently he was part of a UBC team which undertook considerable research into costing approaches and practices, particularly in rail. The book with Woodland in 1984 remains a wonderful compendium of econometric approaches to rail and costing in general. It is required reading for my students at Berkeley. While not in academic journals his work for the AAR is important. It has led to subsequent high quality academic work but the piece with Tretheway (1988), for example, represents an excellent application of rigorous analysis to a major public policy and regulatory issue. Finally, the recent 1996 paper (Logistics & Transportation Review) represents a re-visiting of his work back in 1976 where he identified the trends, pitfalls and unanswered questions in the substantial literature of costing in transportation.

Bill’s productivity work has been produced primarily since 1990. It built on the output of the productivity study group at UBC that undertook a comprehensive assessment of rail costing and productivity in the 1980’s using state of the art theory. The subsequent work not only consisted of considerable primary data collection, organization and integration but also contributed a literature linking productivity and financial performance. The survey article in Transportation Research (1992) was an excellent piece that drew together a large and expanding literature. The article has importance for transportation economists as well as industrial organization economists. The recent Journal of Transport Economics & Policy paper (1997) is an applied piece using state-of-the-art theory and providing the fist discussion of linking productivity and finance and performance. This theme is carried on in the more recent submitted work (e.g. Review of Economics and Statistics).

As a scholar I would rank Bill Waters in the top ten percent of transportation economists in North America and Europe. He has made significant contributions in linking transportation and trade, the practice of benefit-cost analysis and in rail costing and productivity. It has been my experience that Bill has not aimed high enough in placing his research papers in the journals. I would therefore argue that the list of journals in which he has published until lately likely undervalues the importance and contribution of his work. His pedagogic pieces are used in most transportation economics courses in Canada, United States and Europe. These, while not of a scholarly research nature, are still scholarship and of high quality and are to his credit. All of this effort has placed Bill among the better-known people in his profession among international scholars. His work is respected, cited and he is invited to present his ideas to universities, seminars, colloquia and to governments in various parts of the world. As I stated earlier it has not been one or two pathbreaking articles that have built his reputation but rather an accumulation of effort and output.  His recent reception of the TPUG Award I believe is testimony to this and to him. I would certainly regard Bill as a very strong candidate for promotion and deserving of such.

Bill’s legacy I believe is one of a true gentleman, and gentle man who was selfless and sacrificed his career to a significant degree to help others prosper. When Bill retired from UBC we watched a marvelous colleague step away from everyday interaction, fortunately he did not take retirement seriously and spent many days at the Centre for Transportation Studies, ‘mucking about’ as he used to say. His ‘muck’ was always meaningful and always found its way into an article, a speech or a conversation. I will miss his ‘muck’ and his ’mucking about’.