TRANSPORTATION TALK: At this month's round table, experts chat about everything from self-driving technology to the expansion of the state's ports as they examine the future of transportation in North Carolina.

• Position: TRANSPORTATION AND LOGISTICS ROUND TABLE

The round table was sponsored by Guilford Technical Community College and North Carolina Railroad Co. The transcript was edited for brevity and clarity.

WHAT IS THE STATE OF TRANSPORTATION?

LATHROP We're coming to the crossroads, or a fork in the road, where we have these technological disrupters coming, and they're affecting the way people are living, how they're working, how they're commuting. One of the challenges for us is to deal with those and make the most of those as we make all our strategic decisions about transportation. You're talking about electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, drones, big-data technologies that affect transportation. We are better positioned than a lot of states because we've been fairly diligent about our infrastructure. But we're at a point where we need to launch and take on these challenges so that we can not only maintain a position that we have but enhance it so that we can out-compete the rest of the world. We're becoming more urban. The transportation infrastructure is the key to connecting that economic opportunity to all areas of the state, from the ports all the way into the mountains.

WALDEN I think we may be facing the biggest changes in transportation since we moved from the horse to the automobile, and I think this will be a challenging and exciting time. Probably the short-run key question in transportation is financing. How are we going to finance transportation with, for example, new methods of fueling vehicles that are not producing gas-tax revenues or even with vehicles getting higher miles per gallon, which affects gas taxes? I think we will have to look at some alternative funding models in the future. We have to continue to think about how transportation fits in with economic development. Do we need, for example, a standalone agricultural port? Some have said yes. That would be very growth-enhancing. And the question is how you finance it. We are beginning to think about these issues and how we might plan for them. I think for most people in the state, the big question regarding transportation in the future will be, "How do we fund it?"

JOHNSON I think there are two key words in this, and one is "connectivity," because I think transportation is all about the connectivity, both near and far, and the different modes of transportation are part of that. And the second word is "balance," Do people drive to work individually in a car? Do they get on a light-rail train? Do they get on a train from Charlotte and ride to Raleigh? Do they get on an airplane and fly farther distances and do...