Home | Intermodal Connections—The Missing Links
INTERMODAL CONNECTIONS—THE MISSING LINKS
As daunting as are the problems within each major mode of transportation, some of the largest problems facing the U.S. transportation system lie at the connections between modes. In the 1991 Surface Transportation Act, the federal government first expressed the national need to look at the transportation system as a whole. The connections between modes need to be seamless if each mode is to maximize the efficiencies of the global supply chains. Progress has been made in many areas. The National Highway System Intermodal Connectors have been identified and the problems with some have been addressed.
Among the problems that have been identified are:
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Direct rail service to the dock of major American water ports. Often containers are trucked on local streets to rail yards miles from the ports multiplying the number of truck trips;
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“Last mile” highway connections to ports and rail yards. Often the last mile is on a local city street with traffic signals, poor turning radii, inadequate overhead clearances and narrow bridges which restrict efficient movements;
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Freeway interchanges to ports. The freeways and ports were developed independently and the local road network is the linkage between the massive international port and the intercontinental highway system.
The problems on the highway connectors are mirrored at hundreds of locations across the country when connections between other modes are examined. The examples that follow demonstrate how determined public–private effort can create more efficient intermodal connections.
What States Are Doing
State Departments of Transportation, local governments, and the freight transportation industry are collaborating on many important projects and programs to nudge the freight transportation system into the 21st century. Four of the most notable are CREATE, the FAST Corridor, the Alameda Corridor, and the I-95 Corridor Coalition.
The last mile connector often is the most serious problem on the international supply chain.
Chicago’s CREATE Program
The nation’s Atlantic, Pacific, and Canadian railroads meet in Chicago—a development pattern that exists from the 1800s. Critical linkages between these railroads are missing which creates inefficient truck movements across Chicago to move cargo from one rail yard to another. The CREATE program seeks to modernize this network by connecting 27 major rail yards that perform 5.5 million lifts annually. More than 14,000 daily truck movements serve these lifts. An estimated $350 billion a year in freight movements traverse Chicago, with more than 60 percent of it as high-value traffic such as intermodal and finished vehicles.
As critical as these rail yards are, they are not interconnected, requiring containerized cargo to be trucked between them. The State of Illinois, the City of Chicago, the seven Class 1 railroads, Amtrak, and Metra, the area’s transit system, have committed to a program of $1.5 billion in improvements. It will require state, local, industry, and federal financing proportioned to the estimated benefits of the project. In September 2006, federal, state, and local officials announced an agreement to supply $330 million of that sum over three years.
The agreement includes $100 million in SAFETEA-LU funds, $100 million from the railroads, $100 million from the state of Illinois, and $30 million from the city of Chicago. Slated improvements include 15 new overpasses separate motor vehicles from train tracks, six new overpasses to separate freight-rail trains from passenger-rail trains, and extensive upgrades to tracks, switches, and signals.
Washington State’s FAST Corridor
In the Seattle–Tacoma Washington region, the FAST corridor network seeks to tie together overcrowded port, highway, and rail connections at the nation’s third busiest international freight portal. The Puget Sound ports serve the entire nation with up to 75 percent of the containers entering its ports moving to rail with destinations outside of Washington State. More than $60 billion in imports and $12 billion in American exports used the Washington State ports in 2004. The Washington State DOT, the Puget Sound Regional Council, and the freight industry developed and are carrying out a multiyear, multimodal program of projects.
Since 1998, the public–private coalition has invested $568 million of public and private funding for strategic freight mobility infrastructure improvements in the FAST Corridor. Another $300 million is needed to complete the remaining 16 of the 25 of the priority Corridor projects.
California’s Alameda Corridor
The Alameda Corridor is the granddaddy of the intermodal connector projects. The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles handle more than 64 percent of Asian container imports and nearly 25 percent of all U.S. imports. The Alameda Corridor project built a state-of-the art rail access network to the ports. It consists of a 20-mile long rail expressway—basically a large-grade separation project—linking the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles to the nation’s rail network near downtown Los Angeles. It consolidated four branch line railroads and eliminated more than 200 at-grade crossings. The financing for the $2.4 billion project, which included a $400 million federal loan, was backed by a fee on every container moved. Traffic exceeded the projections, making it possible to retire the original Federal loan 28 years early. Trains moving through Corridor in 2006 hauled about 5 million TEUs, up by 32 percent from 2005.
The success of the Alameda Corridor means that train traffic will increase as much as 160 percent to the East through the San Gabriel Valley by the year 2020. To deal with that growth the $1.4 billion Alameda Corridor East Project is under development. It will improve safety and mobility at 39 crossings, construct grade separations at 20 crossings and eliminate several others. The result will be time savings for highway and rail traffic, improved safety and reduced air emissions.
The Multi-State I-95 Corridor Coalition
The coalition of 16 Eastern Seaboard states and various other public and private transportation providers has banded together for more than a decade to bring integrated planning to the massive highway, rail, transit, and water networks that exist between Maine and Florida. The Coalition members are anxious to expand north–south rail service to alleviate the overwhelmed I-95 highway corridor. A major study for the Coalition found that the rail network was designed in the 19th century to service primarily east–west traffic. The study identified more than 71 needed projects to eliminate rail choke points in the Mid-Atlantic states alone that would cost more than $6.1 billion. The freight traffic served is enormous, in a region that would be the world’s third largest economy if it were a country. The states and their private sector partners are now confronting the challenges of implementing a massive multistate freight infrastructure investment program.
States Move Forward on Planning, Investing
In addition to these well-known initiatives, many other states are actively involved in efforts to make the freight system more efficient and productive. They are planning, organizing, collaborating, and investing.
Planning—States such as Minnesota, Washington, Ohio, Oregon, California, New Jersey, Vermont, New Jersey, and Virginia have completed or initiated freight transportation to plans as a basis for establishing investment priorities.
Organizing—A number of states have established a unit within their departments of transportation through which to develop and carry out a freight transportation program. They include Louisiana, Maryland, Maine, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Washington, and Oregon.
Collaborating—Because freight transportation operations and much freight transportation infrastructure lie in the private sector states are initiating freight advisory committees to strengthen the link with government. They are well-established in Oregon, Colorado, and Minnesota and in the early stages in a number of other states.
Investing—Florida, New York, Virginia, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and California have recently created or expanded freight financing programs that either focus on rail or are available for investments in all freight modes.
- ConnectOregon—The State of Oregon developed the ConnectOregon program that provided approximately $100 million investments not possible from the State’s traditional revenue sources. Nearly 75 percent of the money went into non-highway freight projects at ports, railroads, airports and facilities which connected to them. The program was so successful that its Legislature is considering another round of projects.
The Alameda Corridor Project built a rail access network to the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
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Florida’s Strategic Intermodal System—Florida identified a strategic multi-modal network of highways, railroads, ports, airports, intra-coastal waterways and connectors which it calls its Strategic Intermodal System. It is making strategic investments of approximately $100 million annually to improve this network.
- California Goods Movement Action Plan—A portion of the proceeds from a $40 billion bond issue approved by the voters in 2006 will be devoted to projects identified in the state’s Goods Movement Action, many of which will relieve congestion and increase the velocity of shipments to and from the state’s major ports.
In other states creative financing arrangements involving government and business have made critical freight transportation possible where otherwise they would have been pushed into the distant future or into oblivion. One example is the Shelpot Bridge in Delaware where the state provided the $13 million in funding needed to restore a rail bridge connection to the Port of Wilmington, to be repaid by a “toll” on rail traffic over the bridge over 20 years, starting at $35 per car and dropping with increased volume. Another example is the Kansas City Flyovers, two projects which totaled $135 million, financed through the creation of Joint Transportation Corporations which issued bonds being repaid from railroad revenues. The flyovers will increase the velocity of train movement by eliminating rail intersections and highway-rail crossings.
These are just a few of dozens of major initiatives occurring across the United States. Each one represents a major effort to remove impediments to the free flow of freight within their region and collectively across the continent. However, each state and region is addressing these issues independently because there is no national framework or policy for freight mobility. More needs to be done at the national level.
