View the April 15, 2020 seminar recording
Jennifer Symoun
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you to the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Jennifer Symoun and I will moderate today's seminar. Today's topic is Freight Beyond the City: Approaches to Improving Freight Mobility in the Suburban Context.
Before I go any further, I do want to remind you to call into the teleconference for the best audio quality. If you are listening to the audio over the computer and experience any issues, I am unable to fix them as audio quality will vary based on your network connection, computer, speakers, and other factors. Please also keep in mind if you are calling into the teleconference for the audio, you will need to mute your computer speakers or else you will be hearing your audio over the computer as well.
Today's seminar will last 90 minutes, with 60 minutes allocated for the speakers, and the final 30 minutes for audience Question and Answer. If during the presentations you think of a question, you can type it into the chat area. Please make sure you send your question to "Everyone" and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentations, but I will start off the question and answer session with the questions typed into the chat box. We will also take questions over the phone if time allows and I will provide instructions on how to do so once we get to that point.
The PowerPoint presentations used during the seminar are available for download from the file download box in the lower right corner of your screen. The presentations will also be available online within the next few weeks, along with a recording and a transcript. I will send a link to the recording in the next day or so and will also notify all attendees once all materials are posted online.
Talking Freight seminars are eligible for 1.5 certification maintenance credits for AICP members. In order to obtain credit for today's seminar, you must have logged in with your first and last name or if you are attending with a group of people you must type your first and last name into the chat box.
PDH certificates are also available for Talking Freight seminars. To receive 1.5 PDH credits, you will need to fill out a form. Please see the link in the chat box. Certificates will be emailed one week after the seminar. A seminar agenda has been included in the file download box for those who need to submit an agenda to their licensing agency.
Finally, I encourage everyone to please also download the evaluation form from the file share box and submit this form to me after you have filled it out.
Today we'll have three presenters:
Our first presentation will be given by Daniel Studdard, a Principal Planner at the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC), the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the 20-county Atlanta region. In this role, he manages ARC's freight planning program, which includes serving as the project manager for the ARC Freight Cluster Plans and leading the ARC Freight Advisory Task Force. Prior to joining ARC in 2014, Mr. Studdard spent a decade as a transportation planner for consulting companies, as well as three years in the communications field. He is the President of the Georgia Chapter of the American Planning Association and is a member of the TRB Urban Freight Committee.
Daniel Studdard
Thank you, Jennifer, and thanks for organizing this. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to everyone today. Again, my name is Daniel Studdard and I'm a principle transportation planner at the Atlanta Regional Commission where I manage our freight planning program. And talking today about our Freight Cluster Planning Program, and I want to start a little bit high level and show you some of our freight planning efforts over the years. We certainly did not come up with this idea out of nowhere. As you can see here, we created our Freight Advisory Task Force back in 2003, and this was a group based on a mix of folks from public and private sectors and also academia to discuss freight issues in the Atlanta region, as well as to provide input on all of our freight plans within the region. When I started at ARC in 2014, I was tasked with doing an update on our last regional freight mobility plan. We did this from 2015 to 2016, and as you might guess the plan has a pretty lengthy project list because we have a lot of freight moving in the region and there's a lot of transportation needs as it relates to freight. So, a long project list, but like all good plans it recommended we should do more planning. It recommended that we should do a Truck Parking study, which we did from 2017 to 2018. And, of course, it recommended that we do these Freight Cluster Plans.
Those came about because when we looked at that freight project list in our 2016 plan, we saw that we knew the big projects well. We knew the new interchanges, the interchange reconstruction projects, and the roadway widenings, but we only knew some of the more local projects; those kind of intersection or local level that get trucks to and from the highways to distribution centers or wherever they might be headed. So, we saw that you could get a good bang for your buck with some projects like that, so we really wanted to delve deeper and get a better grasp for what some of those project needs are in our region.
So, in that 2016 Freight Plan, it was focused on transportation, but certainly we looked at land use as well. What we found, we looked at industrial development square footage throughout the entire region, and we found that we certainly have industrial development in every county in our region. But no big surprise, we saw that we had a lot of industrial development located near other industrial developments. So, we started referring to these as our freight clusters. These are the areas with the most intense amounts of freight industrial development in our region. It can be shown on this map in purple. These are essentially all in suburban locations. One of these extent a little bit into the city limits of Atlanta on the west side of the city, but just barely into the city limits. Otherwise, these are really all in suburban locations. No big surprise, we don't have industrial development in the heart of the city itself, but in a big sprawling region like Atlanta we do have multiple areas where you do see these intense clusters of freight and industrial development. What we really saw was that if we spent money on transportation infrastructure here it could had a positive impact on freight movement, but also it could help economic development and jobs in these areas as well.
I thought about taking this slide out as I've used it before and times have changed a little bit, but it was good to see the snapshot of where we were a year or year and half ago to compared to where we might be now. I pulled this slide together for a presentation about one year ago. I saw this article, it was a BisNow National article, but I have seen other similar articles and other publications looking at massive growth nationally in terms of industrial development. But then this article also looked at a handful of regions within the country, including Metro Atlanta. What really stood out to me in terms of their data that they were looking at was the overall vacancy rate in Atlanta for industrial development was a little over 5%, which is obviously pretty low. But then when you consider how much was really being built it really looks low, because it showed that our 2018 fourth-quarter, 12 months before that, we had absorbed over 18,000,000 ft.² of new industrial development. So, that is not new industrial development that is just sitting there not being built, but industrial development being built and filled. Clearly a ton of demand in Metro Atlanta for industrial development in recent years, as there always has been, but certainly a lot of growth in recent years. That said, the past month or so has thrown a monkeywrench into everything. It is tough to say where the market really is right now, but we are seeing increases in demand in certain areas and decreases in others. So, that is something that as we continue to do these freight cluster plans will do that as well.
So, ARC, we are the Metropolitan Planning Organization for Metro Atlanta. For those not familiar, throughout the US any urbanized area with a population of at least 50,000 people must have an MPO, and that addresses the long-range regional transportation needs of that area. And one of the main products of the MPO is the RTP, or Regional Transportation Plan. And then short-term we focus on the TIP, the Transportation Improvement Plan. This is how we really get projects funded and implemented from an MPO perspective. So, as we talk about with these freight cluster plans, we really want to focus on getting projects funded, get them implemented, and move them through planning process like that. We don't want these plans to sit on a shelf, we really want to get these projects moving forward and implemented.
So, being we are such a large region, this isn't something that we can really create that RTP on our own by just working with staff internally. We certainly have to work with all of our local jurisdictions. We as an MPO cover 20 counties, almost 100 different cities within that, a population of over 5.5 million people within our region. So, certainly, that is a big effort to put forth that RTP. One of the ways we do that is through our CTP program, or Comprehensive Transportation Planning Program. These CTPs are at the county level and include all cities within each County. This is a way to start locally and find out what those transportation needs are and then work up into our regional RTP and really establish all those project needs like that. So, we have the CTP program, but we also have certain localized planning programs focused on downtown areas, activity centers, things like that. But what we found is that we really did not have anything addressing these industrial areas. So, we said we really like the CTP program, let's focus our freight cluster planning program and model it after the CTP program and focus it so it can also feed into the RTP in the same way, so that we can identify those freight and industrial area needs and feed into that RTP planning process as well. So, these freight cluster plans will have elements that you see here. We will do an existing conditions analysis, a needs assessment analysis, a traffic study, do a good bit of outreach, and of course recommendations. We want a pretty detailed project list to move things forward and work to implement the projects in the region.
Of course, we will be looking at a lot of data for this and we really want to do a deeper dive. These aren't county level or city level plans, these are much smaller focus areas for these studies, so we want to do a deep dive looking at a lot of pieces of data. So, clearly, we will be looking at roads, crash data, signage and lighting, bridges, railroads (which includes both freight activity and railroad crossings; some locations where there might be difficulty with trucks crossing or low bridges, things like that), and lastly delving into truck parking. I mentioned earlier that we did a regional truck parking plan, but that only takes you so far at the regional level, so we need to look at it as well on the local level as we do these freight cluster plans.
We will also be doing a traffic analysis as part of each these studies. We will be going out doing turning movement at the a.m. and p.m. peak hour, might do all peak analysis if needed, might do classification counts; it just depends on each study area and what type of data already exists in the area. But we really want to do detailed analysis that maybe has not been in the study areas and come out of this with recommendations related to capacity, operations, ITS projects, whatever makes sense in each study area.
So, I talked a lot about data on those two slides, but I have to stress that data will only tell you part of the picture; you also have to go out and do a detailed field review. We really stress this to both our project sponsors and our consultants doing this because you never know what you are going to find until you go out and look at it. I took this photo that you see here about five years ago. I had no idea this exact problem existed at this location, I just needed photos of trucks for a different presentation. And I went out to this location and suddenly this congestion happened before my eyes without me expecting it. This is actually located in the city of Atlanta, just barely inside the city limits on the northwest side of the city, and what you can see in the distance as a driveway going into Norfolk Southern's Inman yard. Of course, we have a lot of trucks going in and out of here, this is a large intermodal facility. Just past the green truck that you see here was another truck attempting to make a right turn out of this facility at the same time this green truck was attempting to turn left into the facility. These two trucks are essentially in opposing paths and so they kind of got into a standoff. Neither one could move forward too easily, but neither one could easily move backwards either, so that created a problem. I'll take the green arrow off because I'm seeing something in the chat box about no photo, so maybe that is creating an issue. Neither one could move forward and neither could back up because there were vehicles queuing behind them, so it took a little while for them to maneuver past each other. And eventually they were able to sort it out and get past each other and immediately two other trucks moved into the same exact locations and created the problem all over again. As you can see, other vehicles got tired of waiting and started driving on the side of the road creating problems and safety issues for a pedestrian like myself standing on the side of the road. Certainly, we stress this as a big part of these plans to go out in the field to see what is going on, in terms of infrastructure as well as operations.
One other key issue that we focus on in these plans is access to jobs. We certainly hear this from industrial developments throughout our region, that just getting employees to these warehouses and distribution centers is a challenge. So, we're looking at transit access, bike and pedestrian infrastructure as well. It's not the main focus, but certainly we want to be sure to get these workers to the jobs as easily as possible.
Land-use is not the main focus, as this is really a transportation study, but we are looking at land-use in part because of that growth potential as we look at future year needs traffic analysis, and certainly land-use is a part of it. And we want to identify any land-use conflicts, like what you see here in this aerial photo. I would, to some extent, consider this is a zoning failure as we have an industrial cross dock facility right next to a single-family residential neighborhood. So, that is not a good thing. We cannot really fix something like this once it has been built, but at the same time, what we want to do is if we see existing zoning that may allow this, to go ahead and identify that as an issue so hopefully we can prevent that from happening.
Outreach is also a key part of these plans. I mentioned our Freight Advisory Task Force earlier. So, we want to talk about each of these plans at the regional level, because freight is not just local, but it is regional and national in its operations. And with that said, we want to do more outreach within the study areas, talking to stakeholders and talking to truck drivers and warehouse workers and find out exact needs; conduct some surveys with those who are actually driving the trucks in the study areas and to find out the problems they are running into.
And we are looking at how the industry is changing. We cannot do a freight presentation without mentioning that e-commerce is having a big impact, but certainly it is having an even bigger impact these days as people are avoiding going to stores. And looking at technology in terms of traditional ITS as well as connected and autonomous vehicle needs. And looking at alternative fuels as well. We do not see a lot of CNG or LNG electric trucks yet, but we do want these plans to look 10-20 years into the future, and so we know more alternative fuels will be in use over time.
In terms of plans we're doing now, we kicked off four of them in 2019 and expect to kick off a few more by the end of this year. We also have what is called the South Fulton CID. They did what they called a multimodal plan. They applied a few years ago through an existing program we had, and we said this was pretty similar to this freight cluster plan program we were creating, so we worked with them and it was kind of a precursor to the program that we have. Each of the plans we are working on or will be doing soon are identified by the numbers on this map. And you can see they are mostly close to the heart of the region, with the one exception as number four on the south side of the region. That is down in Spalding County in the city of Griffin. It is about 40 miles south of the city of Atlanta, just barely within our MPO limits. And as you see on the map, it is not within one of the freight clusters, but they came to us and said we really want to do one of these plans because we have a lot of undeveloped land. But they do have some existing industrial development; they have a Caterpillar manufacturing facility and some other manufacturers. They said we want to continue to grow, but we want to grow smartly. We want to consider our transportation infrastructure needs at the same time we try to bring in these new development and these new jobs. And we said that makes a lot of sense, because a lot of what we do in terms of planning is really trying to adjust to the needs that are already there and adjust to existing development. So, we went ahead and funded this one as well even though it was not located with one of those freight clusters.
So, the next four slides, I will touch on the four freight cluster plans underway right now. None of these four are completed yet, but they all expect to be done by the end of this year. I will touch high level on some of the initial recommendations coming out of these plans.
This first one up is the Aerotropolis Atlanta CIDs. When I say CID, in many other areas this is a business improvement district, here in Metro-Atlanta it is called a community improvement district, but same concept of a self-taxing area. So, some of these plans we're working with those entities as well as with the local jurisdictions to really lead these plans. One of the great things about the CIDs is that being that it is a self-taxing area they really know their owners well so that's really helpful when doing outreach, they already have those private-sector contacts. So, this first CID is the area around the Atlanta airport, so Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport. A lot of folks may not have been through the Atlanta area, but may have just passed through our airport, so you have been within this study area without a doubt if you've done that. The aerial you see here, just to the west of this is the international terminal for the airport. Just on the east side of the aerial is Interstate 75. If you travel north or south of the roadway in the center of this, that will get you to air cargo facilities on both sides of the airport as well as air cargo facilities off site. So, this intersection in particular is a hot point where there is a lot of truck traffic and a lot of people going to and from the airport and to other businesses from the area. You can see a number of things were identified here in this intersection in particular, but there and throughout the study area we are identifying needs for everything from turn lanes to improvements in signing and marking to wayfinding signage. And obviously, with the airport and a lot of air cargo traffic you may have a lot of people that may be unfamiliar with the area, so wayfinding signage can help reduce the amount of time that people may drive around looking at where they need to go with a fairly low cost way to address something like that.
Moving onto the next location, the Gateway 85 CID. This is in Gwinnett County in Northeast Atlanta. They have a population of nearly 1 million people. Certainly, there is a lot of residential, but also a lot of commercial and industrial development in this area. This is a closed in suburban location and it was developed in the 70s and 80s. So, we have challenges with the smaller parcels, smaller somewhat functionally obsolete buildings to some extent, so we're looking at redeveloping and also traffic congestion and challenges in the area. You see initial thoughts from stakeholders looking at reducing traffic congestion and making intersection improvements, but also looking at addressing lack of truck parking in the area. We have a lot of industrial businesses, but no truck parking located in the study area. You can also see a recommendation on improved transit which helps workers get to and from their jobs but can also potentially help to reduce traffic congestion because that is an issue in this area, as well. And with some of the major arterials there is not much room to expand those roads at this point.
Moving on to the Tucker Summit CID. This is also northeast of Atlanta in DeKalb County. This one is close to the Gateway 85 CID I showed you on the last side. It was similarly developed in the 70s and 80s with older buildings and smaller parcels and functionally obsolete buildings, so some of the same set of challenges. One of the things we set out early on as we started looking at access, we saw that truck drivers in a lot of locations had to make a right turn onto major roads because of existing medians along the corridor. These drivers sometimes wanted to make a left turn, but instead had to make a right turn and go down to a side street and go out of their way to loop back around and get back to the main road where they can make a left turn at a traffic signal. This adds vehicle miles traveled and adds delays to what they're doing, which is not a great set up for them. Our initial thought on how to address this is that if we would put in a couple roundabouts at key locations of this it would give them an opportunity to make a U-turn at these roundabouts and reduce the amount of time and distance they had to travel to get going in the direction they needed to go. We don't know yet if this will work. We need to investigate further and do the traffic study to see if it works, to look at the partial level impacts to see if it is feasible, but this is the type of local level analysis we want to get out of these plans where we look at those access needs and what it means in terms of operations.
Lastly is Spalding County, which I touched on a few minutes ago. This is about 40 miles south of Atlanta on the edge of our region. And again, they have some existing manufacturing and want to grow industrial businesses to boost the jobs in the county, but they want to be smart about it. So, they want to expand their street grid, because it is still fairly rural in some areas and so they need to build up their Street network and identify what the transportation needs are as they make these land-use changes and bring in more development.
So, to wrap things up, I want to touch on a few lessons learned here. One thing we found going into this, we see a little bit of a freight knowledge gap. This happens in terms of both our project sponsors and some of the local governments and consultants working on these. Not everybody has a lot of freight planning experience. I would have put myself in that category without a doubt when I started working at ARC, so I do not say that negatively toward anyone. It is a learning experience for all of us. That's why I think webinars like this are great as it is easy for all of us to access and learn from each other. Certainly, it is a challenge when you go into studies like this. For a lot of people, this is not part of their day-to-day lives so one of the key questions we can all work to answer is how we better integrate freight into planning and engineering and policy roles as well as into academia for those who may not be focused primarily on freight?
While that is certainly a challenge, we also see certain benefits coming out of these plans already even though they are not done. We identified issues with traffic operations, parcel level access, and various other issues related to infrastructure and operations. So, we see a lot of benefits coming out of the plan and ways they can help to move freight more efficiently, as well as make these areas better suited for development and redevelopment and bringing in jobs to these areas.
Outreach, as I mentioned before, is key to doing these plans well. It can be a challenge sometimes to get input from the private sector, but we found existing relationships with some of these businesses are key and we found that law enforcement can be very helpful. In a couple of these study areas the law enforcement were the eyes and the ears, and they can give a lot of detailed information. I want to mention one outreach example that went through one of these plans that had a positive and a negative. We had a consulting team who conducted surveys with truck drivers while they were at warehouses and distribution centers and they were waiting on pickups and drop-offs. They actually had other truck drivers conducted the surveys, which I thought was a great idea because the truck drivers speak the same language and can more easily talk to each other than folks like myself. The challenge on the backend is that I saw some of the questions and we did not delve as deeply as we could have. We still got some good information, but if we were to word the questions a little differently, we might get more useful information. But I really liked the fact that they had other truck drivers give these surveys, so it was a unique twist and we got good information out of it as well.
Lastly, the data is always a challenge on a plan like this. I don't know of any data set that would give us commodity data at such a localized level. But we have been looking at other data sets out there, such as Streetlight Data, which was purchased as part of one of these plans which can provide origin/destination data coming in and out of the study area. The pros and cons to all the vendors, certainly a financial cost to all of those, but that is part of what we have been looking at as part of these plans. And, of course, I will be happy to take questions at the end or type them into the chat box and now this will hand things back over to Jennifer.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Daniel, and I do see a question and we will get to that after all of the presentations. If you do have additional questions for Daniel please feel free to continue typing them into the chat box.
Our next presentation will be given by Becky Bradley, the Executive Director of the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission (LVPC). Becky has 20 years of experience in city, regional, economic development, historic preservation and transportation planning, including significant implementation experience in small town revitalization, roadway redesign and trail construction. She has been the Executive Director of the LVPC since August 2013 and is leading a $2.5 billion regional transportation planning program, as well as balancing the needs of the Lehigh Valley's rapidly growing population through this organization's county planning responsibilities. The LVPC is wrapping up the first bicycle and pedestrian masterplan and just adopted FutureLV: The Regional Plan, setting the direction for the region for the next 25 years. This plan balances the needs of a rapidly growing region and booming freight economy with environmental, housing, education, technology and quality of life goals. Prior to joining LVPC, Becky was the Director of Planning, Codes and Development at the City of Easton, where she was instrumental in the over $500 million revitalization of the community, including the addition of the Lehigh Valley's first sculpture trail, the state's first road diet and the opening more than 60 restaurants and shops.
Becky Bradley
Thank you very much. The Lehigh Valley is the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton area of eastern Pennsylvania and we really are at the intersection of freight, freight, and freight. The Lehigh Valley Planning Commission and the Lehigh Valley Transportation Study are actually two organizations with separate boards that share one staff. So, for argument purposes today let's just call it the LVPC (Lehigh Valley Planning Commission). But the LVPC is actually a two County planning agency and is governed by a state law called the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code, and it is responsible for comprehensive planning amongst a series of other land-use functions that advise our 62 municipalities and 17 school districts. The Lehigh Valley Transportation study is a federally designated metropolitan organization governed also by a federal code in partnership with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and is responsible for transportation planning and investment for our two county region, which is Lehigh and Northampton Counties.
Just to give you an idea of where we are located, we are just 89 miles southwest of New York City and just 65 miles north of Philadelphia. So, we are part of that northeast megalopolis. We are one of the fastest-growing regions in Pennsylvania with a projected 24% population increase by 2045. We have seen a sustained population growth since really the 1960s. So, every year, even during economic downturns, we have seen more people and we've seen more business. That growth is largely driven by migrations of people into the region as more workers and families are attracted to our region for its natural and historic character; we have a very high quality of life and we are obviously conveniently located. As the region grows demographics are starting to shift. People older than 65 have the most significant increase as our population ages, while children and young adults under the age of 20 are expected to increase as well with a growing number of families coming in. So, we are kind of balancing the needs of a variety of populations as well as a variety of business, which brings me to employment. In the Lehigh Valley it is projected to increase by 17% before 2045. And many of the regions fastest-growing occupations are in the healthcare, manufacturing, warehousing, recreation and technical and professional service industries. Out close proximity to these major metros have really helped make us the second fastest growing freight corridor in the nation.
So, a lot of growth. As the Lehigh Valley grows, so does competition for resources of all type, and freight being one of them. In 2015 we conducted a return on the environment assessment to quantify the value of the region's natural resources. And I am going to focus just on air quality as it directly relates to transportation emissions and our freight economy. Key findings from that assessment included that air pollutant removal by trees was estimated to have a $48.2 million annual benefit. Carbon sequestration by trees was over 181 million tons each year, which provides all sorts of health benefits and about a $3.6 million annual quantified benefit to the region. So, overall these types of things help us to avoid healthcare costs, help us preserve and maintain our quality of life and even enhance it, but it also limits damage to agricultural lands, our natural environment, and buildings. All in all, that estimated benefit is $54 million annually.
So, we have a clear green approach to our region, and we are valuing that not only for its economic value before a variety of other benefits, while simultaneously we have this really explosive growth in freight. Just since 2014 there has been almost 3,000,000 ft.² of approved industrial, which is the blue bars on the chart which includes manufacturing and general industrial, where the green bar on the chart showing manufacturing. So, since 2014, in warehouse or e-commerce we've had over 26,600,000 ft.² approved and built or are in construction now by our local governments. So, all in all, things proposed between 2014 and the end of last year and approved (meaning they are constructed, into construction, or about to go in construction) is 29.59 million sqft. But when you add the approved in with the proposed, our total goes up to 45 million new sqft. You are adding that in a very short 6 year window which is incredible. So, we knew we had to have a different strategy; that it had to be just as much long-term as it was short-term, it had to be greener, we could not have any fear, and it had to be reasonable so it could be achievable.
So, we decided we would merge our comprehensive plan under our County planning responsibilities with our long-range transportation plan into a single balanced regional plan, and formally link those aspects that make our community work, whether it is housing or the economy, to the transportation investment strategy for the Lehigh Valley. We also account for the changes, whether it is 3-D printing, energy diversification, climate change, automation, or even a pandemic as a future force to make sure we are accounting for those things inasmuch as we know today what they could mean for our future. That plan is called Future LV. Ultimately, we organized our strategy into a series of major seams and then tied goals, policies and actions to those to address these broader integrated approaches to the region especially as it relates to the freight. I will talk about a couple of these really quickly.
Balance; obviously development patterns are changing. There's less available land and the region's population continues to grow, business continues grows. So, that increases pressure on everything, whether it's farms and open space to the transportation system itself. So, striking that balance between growth and presentation, leveraging existing assets, will be key to meeting needs today and also into the future and it's really critical to maintaining our identity. As far as mobility, people and goods are moving in and out of the valley in greater numbers than ever before. So, the next generation of mobility improvements have to rely on increasing access to the transportation system itself, but moderating costs, diversifying transportation options, and incorporating new technologies.
We have seven distinct freight districts today and it is a variety of types of freight districts, a variety of trajectories. Everyone knows about the Bethlehem Steel site and what happened there; it was the largest brownfield in the country. But we leveraged that pre-1900 asset into a series of new uses and that is really the story of the Lehigh Valley. If you want to maintain your open space, your farm economy and all of these other things that then tie into your suburban and urban economies, you have to balance that by development type. So, there has been a lot of leveraging of existing lands. I mentioned the Bethlehem Steel site, but there are also many, many others. And this just shows they are spread out, our seven districts across the Lehigh Valley. But, ultimately, we have over 46,000 acres in freight uses today. In total there are 464,401 acres in the Lehigh Valley. So, it is a pretty significant, not only economic entity in our region, but it takes up a significant amount of the region's land. So, overall, we wanted to strengthen freight mobility and minimize quality-of-life impact to residents, but also to business.
So, as our location at the heart of Lehigh Valley, it is close to 100 million potential customers within a day's drive. We have one of these fast growing corridors for freight movement and it has been long-term growth in freight movement. But after hurricane Sandy, about a decade ago now, where the port of New York and New Jersey, significant stretches of the coastline around the New York Metro itself lost electricity, products, goods and services, we became an alternative for a lot of staging and preparation to get goods and services in and out of the New York markets, but then really other points west. Now we have had a growth in the nation's appetite for online shopping. And the need to get those goods within two days give or take is growing, so our region provides that access to it but again that has a series of challenges from traffic congestion to lowered air quality associated with it. But by 2040 the flow of freight is projected to increase by 96% to more than 80 million tons a year in and out of the Lehigh Valley. And some of those consumer goods are coming into the region by planes and trains, but nearly 90% are moving by truck today, and we expect that trend to continue. Many of these goods are moving through massive warehouses and it is rare that we see a warehouse these days being under 1,000,000 ft.² before they go across the Northeast. And so, the change of how goods are purchased and delivered is having a dramatic impact on how we develop land and how we plan our transportation system for the future. And the implications of such drastic changes to the transportation network requires significant investment and coordination with partners, like the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway administration, but also our adjacent regions and our adjacent freight partners, whether it is the port authority of New York and New Jersey or the North Jersey Transportation Planning authority.
So, we really looked hard at sites overtime, along with our counties who made significant investments in reuse and redevelopment. The image on this slide is some e-commerce development that's happened on some of the former Bethlehem Steel lands that were heavily contaminated and could never be used for residential. So, we were able to work with a series of partners, and a few I mentioned before, to then support some investment that would allow our e-commerce portion of the economy to grow but also not to eat up farmland that was key to other industries and other sectors in the region. So coordinated development, partner relationships, collaboration with public and private partnerships have become very important and will only increase in importance in our region.
We also work on a micro scale just as much as a macro scale to ensure that real transportation equal environment can be insured with the work we do. Here is the before of a growing freight route that runs along the edge of an historic poor community that is a National Register of Historic Places listed. So, we actually went into the community and worked with them, we talked about their needs and we found out a lot of things. For example, there are a lot of users of the LANTA transit service in this region that live in that location; they had poor walkability; there was a desire and a need to connect people to the growing freight job centers that were happening; a lot of those folks do not have cars, so, even if this isn't on a fixed route, other opportunities to enhance mobility through walking and biking while simultaneously being able to support freight movement. So, we have done a series of urban design projects with specific municipal partners to address that freight growth as new freight comes into areas that haven't necessarily seen a lot of freight growth in the past, like over in the city of Bethlehem, but maybe towards the north side of the airport where we have had a real new growth in those sorts of movements.
So, our plan shows major transportation infrastructure and opportunities for creating denser mixed-use transit development. And I think that is one of the things we often don't talk about when we talk about freight, but it is absolutely critical to freight operations, is access to the workforce. If we cannot get workers to the facilities where they need to work, that is a significant issue. And so, transit plays in, especially when you go into a conversation when you talk about low-skill or low-wage workers and then being able to get them to jobs. A one million-square-foot freight facility can totally change the transportation pattern, not only for freight itself and goods movement, but also access to a site by employees as well as the employer. But you cannot just have new transit routes pop up everywhere, so how do you balance those needs of transit, the new economy, getting people to their jobs, and then also the changed traffic patterns that go with it? So, you have to have a balanced approach and that is really what our transportation plan sets out to do. And so, we kind of prioritize the types of communities we have. We have historic communities and these in many cases have colonial roots to them, but they are pre-car communities. We have our post-World War II communities; they have a very different development pattern and are more car-oriented. And then our emerging areas that you can well imagine we have given the fact we have so much population growth, which tends to be more of a balanced approach to vehicle mobility as well as pedestrian and transit and bike mobility. And so, we overlaid these development types with the hierarchy of our road network to create that really comprehensive plan strategy for how we can move people around. The other thing, since we have had so much growth and we have a really strong favorability towards reuse and redevelopment, is how do we recapture all of the public and private sector investment as our retail economy changes, as the needs for malls decline? And not just allow development to happen and greenfield after greenfield after greenfield where we do not have enough money to maintain the transportation, sewer, water and other things, and just add value to what we already have by really redeveloping those good locations that have the good transportation access right near highways along the way.
We did a series of concepts working with a variety of partners whether it is the transit agency or our municipal governments to say right now this shopping mall may be very viable but what happens as more and more shopping goes online and we do not need that much retail square footage anymore? I think we will see a significant collapse. I was talking about the retail apocalypse and anxiously awaiting the next article to find out what is happening in the retail economy of the Wall Street Journal, but I think now that we see the pandemic, some of this timeline will be even more accelerated than we initially expected. So, are these new locations for residential, mixed-use, or other forms of commercial including freight? They have great freight access now so how can we still use those and still maintain global mobility? The same goes for connecting transits to the people in our region. The transit agency worked with FTA and the PENDOT to designate some express bus service areas, and then we through our comprehensive and transportation planning then started to tie it to other forms of mobility including freight mobility, and we did a series of renderings around that. So, how can this new infrastructure or this repurposed and enhanced infrastructure support our economy overall, but also get the people and jobs connected in these areas that are already significant economic locations for the region.
Simultaneously you also have to balance the needs of our rural communities. So, we came up with some crossroads village concepts. And why this is really important is that a lot of these crossroad villages are located within very close proximity to the highway network, yet they do not have sewer, water, roadway, local road system connectivity that could support more intense uses. Yet there are a lot of people looking at these locations for million-square-foot warehouses, or the newest thing we have seen proposed and emerge the last few months is the idea of the dark box. These could be 10 or 12 or 13 story facilities without people in them that are fully automated, essentially creating a downtown midrise skyscraper in a rural location or even a suburban location that can move quadruple in some cases or more freight through those facilities. So, what does that actually mean for the road system moving forward and how do we balance all of these things?
Heading back to the idea of green in everything, which is how we think, how do we take our assets and treat our green areas as providing natural system services that support the transportation network and are integral to the transportation network? This is a rendering that we worked with the Graduate school of Design, or the Stewart Wiseman school of design, at the University of Pennsylvania on to really identified where we have existing large tracts of green parcels adjacent to the highway system that we could leverage then for the air-quality benefits just as much as we could to preserve natural habitats and the like. Another thing we did as well is because our region's roads have more and more vehicles and because the region's development pattern is this mix of colonial to current building types, we often have significant issues of scale as it relates to the roadways; we literally have buildings on the roadways in some cases, like the corner of the house is basically at the right-of-way. So, we are leveraging the robust regional trail system we have (we have over 300 miles built today) as part of the transportation network and not separate from it to support active community and recreation for all people, while creating opportunities to connect our heritage, natural areas, and job centers. Especially since these trails go so far and go into natural areas, they have been really beneficial as we think ahead on how to connect to the new freight communities that have been built on the edge. But they also then connect into areas that already have significant amounts of freight, whether it is the Bethlehem Greenway that goes right through the former Bethlehem Steel site or the Bethlehem and Lehigh National Heritage Trail which you see in the image here.
Planning, managing, and investing is everything, so how do you do that? How do you put it all together, how does it work on the ground? First, we identify who the partners are, and this slide shows some of our manufacturers that are key to freight movement. Including folks like Mack trucks, Crayola, Ocean Spray, Sam Adams, all of these folks into the conversations about what they need, how their supply chain works, and how it benefits the transportation system, and it is critical to understanding workforce needs, as well as mobility overall, the economy, natural environment, and the like and it allows us to build partnerships that transcend normal thinking about freight or isolated thinking about freight. You have to think of it as a system in order to make it work, because that is really how freight operates. Additionally, we have significant supply and logistics in e-commerce partners. For example, FedEx Ground opened its largest freight facility in America adjacent to the Lehigh Valley International Airport just over a year ago. So, as we start to see these changes in demand, leveraging those existing partners and those existing assets in those companies becomes important. So, it is a balance between manufacturing the supply chain and just overall smooth movements related to e-commerce. They need similar things but also need different things.
So, we had to start thinking outside of the box. And this image here shows how we can leverage hard infrastructure as an existing manufacturing district to reduce burden on the storm water system by connecting it to adjacent residential and supporting enhancing green infrastructure and using plants instead of hard infrastructure to manage the growth and storm water which allows us to add more improved environment but also support the addition of a job while still connecting people in the adjacent neighborhoods to these workforce centers and make it easier for them to get to their jobs and not have to get into a car.
You have to plan ahead, too, for what happens when goods movement is challenged. And this shows the bridge between New Jersey and Easton Pennsylvania during the flood of 2006 or 2007. And so, working with the County emergency management agencies, the Pennsylvania emergency management agency, and FEMA, we recently put together a Lehigh Valley Hazard Mitigation Plan. But it has been so important during COVID-19, that plan and that thinking ahead and this existing collaboration and partnerships which have been built over time, not just around this planning effort but earlier ones like the flood in this slide, to understanding the things that can actually interrupt the supply chain. The closing of rest stops was a critical one. We were able to work with our partners as part of the MAP Forum, NMTIC, North Jersey Transportation Planning, and other folks in the state of Pennsylvania to support the reopening of truck stops to make sure that the supply chain still continued even through the pandemic.
All of these things require work. And when you are getting a lot of growth, a lot of development, you have to build a lot of partnerships. You really have to understand that your role overall is as an advisor, but also as a partner and a collaborator. You have to be trusted, you have to be open-minded, and you have to be willing to share credit. So, where our work fits in is often with municipal governments, again we have 62, but also with nonprofit agencies that have built this fantastic trail system that connects people to freight facilities as well as other types of jobs. So, we have set up all sorts of ways to communicate, share information that we can then use to build overall a sustainable and greener economy while addressing the fact that we are at the intersection of freight, freight, and freight. You also have to test the theory that no idea is a bad idea and you have to be okay with failing along the way. The Pennsylvania Department of transportation, 13 communities, the airport authority, the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission, and others, we came together and did an airport area training pilot to test some of the transportation theories we had, identify challenges, and figure out how we would move forward especially since FedEx Ground built its largest freight facility in Lehigh Valley and everyone else wants to invest around it. Well, how do you evolve a transportation system in a period of two years? How do you grow it and how do you not have an adverse effect related to congestion and other things on adjacent residential units or historic core communities and the like? That is a big task and you have to be willing to walk down that road together and try to do some short-term and then long-term problem-solving. So, building a bigger table and capacity is key to that, and understanding that freight issues do not live in isolation, that housing is affected, access to jobs is affected, air quality is affected, even bird migration patterns are affected. And that is critical if you are in a migratory bird path as we are because there are issues overall with balancing the global and natural environment that we have and how that relates to other things; nothing exists in isolation. So, you have to come up with a new way of looking at things, organizationally as well as with the community. And so, developing public, private, and nonprofit partnerships approach to infrastructure development and management is important. We have managed to work the private sector to develop and open a new interchange along with Northampton County and a series of other partners. We have another interchange under investigation so to speak in Lehigh County, strategically investing through our MPO in bridge reuse, rehabilitation, and replacements. That has been key to figuring out how we keep the system in good repair, but beyond good repair, available for the next generation of traffic and use. Developing strategic nongovernmental partnerships through our CEOs in the region, through our Chamber of Commerce, our workforce investment Board, and our utilities has been important as well.
We have change how we do business even from a traffic counting perspective. Now when a land development plan comes to our office, if it is freight related, we automatically go out and we sat down traffic counters down, so we get to know what the traffic is. We do classification counts as well, so we know how many cars and how many trucks are going through there now and then as the plan goes through the approval process and if it is ultimately built, we will go back and monitor and do additional traffic counts and especially classification counts, to see how the system has changed and evolved over time. This is really important to then being able to be nimble almost in real time as it relates to where you invest. And we try to educate and communicate wherever we can. We agree to be at tables that we know will be really awful because there are things that happen so quickly and there are a lot of people very upset about the growth and freight. But they simultaneously are not upset about it right now because they can get grocery delivery and Amazon packages. But when the pandemic goes away, there will be traffic congestion again.
So, we need to work on a variety of things. Being at the table to support ITE manual changes, because we really know what freight growth is and how it impacts the infrastructure system overall. Looking at alternative fuel and automation infrastructure partnerships, and we are starting to build those and will be working on things like that moving forward. Quantifying the environmental offsets associated with freight that we have been working on with our partners, vis a vis green infrastructure. Really supporting the idea that partnerships not just internally within our Lehigh and Northampton County area are important, but how those then tie into our neighbors and how the supply chain really works. That origin and destination related stuff really tells us where our partners need to be. So literally following the freight has allowed us to build alliances through the Metropolitan Area Planning Forum, which is a New York/New Jersey/Connecticut/Pennsylvania initiative to looking at simple things that Metropolitan Planning Organizations can do, like looking at the functional classification system updates, not just planning for freight, but for everything simultaneously. And then just taking a chance to breathe and stepping back and look where you stand and then you might like to go as a group. And I think we will take questions at the end so thank you.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Becky. Please continue to type in your questions. Daniel has been answering some of those that has been typed in for him which is helpful. Thank you, Becky. Our final presentation will be given by Tom Cherrett of Southampton University. Tom worked for Wincanton Distribution through their graduate trainee program before undertaking a PhD in Transportation Engineering at the University of Southampton, graduating in 1998. Following a spell with Oscar Faber in 1999, he returned to the University of Southampton in 2000 where he later became a lecturer on the Transportation Planning and Engineering course and is now Professor of Logistics and Transport Management in the Transportation Research Group. His research largely focuses on improving efficiency in last-mile logistics where he has participated in many EU and UK projects, having over 130 journal and conference papers published.
Tom Cherrett
Thank you very much, Jennifer, and good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you today. I would like to talk to you about some research ongoing the UK at the moment related to the possible use of unmanned aerial vehicles for the movement of NHS logistics products. That is basically things for the National Health Service in the UK. This piece of work that we originally did was largely simulations and real movement data that we obtained. And it was part of a bid to the Office of Transport late last year as part of the Future Transport Zones call for funding. We found out last month that we have been successful in this, so we have about 8 million pounds to look at the whole way unmanned and manned aerial vehicles can be jointly managed and share their space at 400 ft, that's the primary purpose of the work we will be doing. Largely, we need some case studies for that, and they will be based around the National Health Service and the movement of medical logistics products. I would like to acknowledge the co-authors here. My colleague, Andy Oakey, who is a PhD student studying this particular area and has been doing a lot of the animation work here. And Amy Moore, from the Oakridge National Laboratory, who was instrumental in doing some of the earlier modeling work, particularly looking at clustering and how we use combinations of vans, cycle couriers, and unmanned aerial vehicles most effectively.
So, this is what we are talking about, pathology. No doubt all of you on this webinar have had blood taken at some point in the recent past. About 75% of all healthcare related decisions involve a patient's samples going through some form of pathological analysis. Last year there were about 105 hospitals across England and Wales providing pathology services, and they were undertaking about 1 billion tests per year. So, that's about 14 tests for each person in England and Wales, and that costs the National Health Service around about 2.2 billion pounds per annum to do. So, it's about 300,000 tests performed in the UK by pathology staff each day. And at the present time with COVID-19, there is an even greater pressure on those labs to turn around samples at the present time.
There are surprising amounts of samples as well. As you see on the left side of the screen, this is the classic test tube there, and then they are grouped together within the Doctor's surgery and they are placed in these Versa packs, which is the box you can see on the right-hand diagram. And then a van will typically come and pick those up batches, probably twice a day, from the surgery. There are roundabout 55 different types of pathology samples, we have some of the main ones on the screen here. Around 83% of those are typically related to plasma or blood, which have been taken from patients. But there are many more specialist/unusual types of samples that have very strict delivery requirements associated with them, and it's very important to consider those as well.
In terms of pathology logistics using unmanned aerial vehicles, this is not new technology now really. Companies like Zipline have provided very innovative commercial services, particularly operating in Rwanda, where they make about 500 deliveries a day at the moment of medicines and blood products around the country, where the governments have given them licenses to undertake that. And it is a significant difference in terms of the bleed to diagnosis time in treatment for patients. And they've got 30 minute average flight times, all electric platforms, and some very innovative delivery systems associated with them. And Matternet, on the right-hand side of the screen, have also been doing pathology sample movements in places like Papua New Guinea, using the opticopter kind of format as well. So, there are lots of different companies out there at the moment working in the use of UAVs with medical logistics.
So, the objectives of our work initially were to try and first of all quantify business-as-usual pathology logistics from the doctors' surgeries in the big cities. It's kind of an interesting area of logistics, which hasn't been touched on much. And from that we wanted to investigate what the scope was for integrating unmanned aerial vehicles into this logistics system. I think it is important to say that UAVs, or drones, are not going to be the solution for all problems. I see them very much as an elements of logistics which could be used as part of a mixed fleet combination, and in certain circumstances it could potentially prove quite effective. The final bit was also to see what combinations of different van, UAV, and cycle would be best in terms of serving doctors' surgeries, and then to look at the potential benefits and dis-benefits of those.
So, what does business-as-usual pathology logistics actually look like across a city? So, here we have the city of Southampton, which has a population of 254,000 people. This is where the famous Titanic sailed from the docks back in 1913, you can see on the right-hand side of the screen. There are 75 doctors' surgeries around the city. And the size and colors of the circles here represent a number of samples generated. So, the Blackfield surgery, the large red circle you can see, generates about 177 samples per day. And there are 12 van rounds that constantly circle the surgeries collecting the samples, and each surgery being visited on average about twice a day.
If you could now play the first video. This animation just shows the actual surgeries being collected on one typical day; so, this just shows the van rounds actually operating. So, the 12 van rounds obviously all end up at the hospital, the pathology lab. And they're collecting around 3.5 thousand samples a day, and each van is driving around 121 Km, about 3.5 hours a day, and visiting on average around 22 surgeries. And interesting research questions here are, "What would be the minimum number of unmanned aerial vehicles to yield the maximum reduction of vans needed?", obviously taking cost into consideration; and "Which of the GP surgeries would we best target using UAVs, and how can we cluster those together, potentially using electric cycle couriers where they are densely packed?", because we cannot have unmanned aerial vehicles go from each surgery as it would be completely uneconomical.
Now, moving on to the next slide. So, this is the kind of operating model we have been investigating. As I mentioned it is too costly and impractical to have UAVs operating out of each surgery. So, the surgeries will be put into clusters around a consolidation point, which will be one of those surgeries, and you have electric bicycles with a radius of no more than 20 minutes maximum cycle time. Now, from these surgeries, UAVs would originate and go over to the hospital to deliver samples on a fixed flight basis. And that's as opposed to the system right now where the vans are driving around picking up samples from different surgeries and then depositing them at the actual pathology lab at the hospital.
The major advantage to the National Health Service. This graph shows for a typical day across the 75 surgeries in Southampton, the numbers of samples which have been bled from patients. So, you can see that by 11:00 there have been around about 1,000 samples. If you think of giving a blood sample, you're fasting overnight and you go to the doctor's surgery first thing in the morning from 8:00, you give your blood sample, and then you're going off to work to have your bacon sandwich or whatever to make up for it. So, there are a lot of samples available by 10:00. This next slide shows the cumulative average daily receipt at the pathology labs. So, we can see that the pathology labs are really not getting samples at all until after midday. There is a huge lag in terms of these vans being out on these collection rounds when, ideally, we would try and target certain service to have a direct path into the pathology lab to provide samples earlier. And this would even out the workload on the actual lab staff in order to make them more efficient. There has been a lot of interest amongst the practitioners at the hospital on how it might work.
So, this shows some the work that we did for the TRB paper back in January, and this was a lot of the work Amy was undertaking. It shows how we are looking at clustering some of these surgeries together. All of these paddles on this diagram represent a doctor's surgery. We were particularly looking at the more rural surgeries to the south of this diagram, to the bottom there. And you can see the green, the yellow, and the red surgeries there have been grouped together in clusters, and they are no more than a 20 minute cycle apart. So, the idea is that those surgeries would be served by cycle couriers, the samples would be moved to one of the surgeries in the centroid of that area, and then the UAVs would fly backwards and forwards to those particular points. And the rest of the surgeries in the city would still be serviced by the vans as they are now. And you can see here, this is a picture of that really. It shows the kind of flight routes we were looking at across the very rural parts down at the bottom there. You can see the five drone routes from there going into the main city. It is a distance of about 19 miles from the furthest point you see down in the southwest up to the hospital itself. So, we are looking at probably for 4 van rounds and 3-4 UAVs doing that particular amount of work.
So, these are the kind of requirements we have. Obviously, we have a range of unmanned aerial vehicles at our disposal here at the University through our aerial logistics department, and they have done a lot of research and development work in this area. Also, Amy Moore and her colleague, Victor Walker, from the Idaho National Lab have done some very interesting papers and research looking at the actual carrying capabilities of some of these platforms and their energy use. But this is the kind of vehicle that we are looking at; quite a low payload, around 1.5 maybe up to 2kg, vertical take-off and landing to be able to use the helipad at the hospital itself. And the very important thing is as little human interaction as possible at the surgery end. So, it is designed to have a cradle underneath with a deposit box which is magnetically attached automatically as the drone lands on top of it and then takes it away automatically.
So, this shows the actual optimization work. But here we were looking at reconfiguring the rounds in the city from 8 vehicles down to 4 vehicles, because we have taken out a lot of that work to the south, the rural areas, and it was a large constituent part of the overall logistics footprint in terms of servicing some of those rural surgeries that would now be done via drones. So, that was the key thing is servicing the cities via the van and using the drones to service the 21 surgeries in the rural areas. The key thing with this though in designing routes with unmanned aerial vehicles is to think about when they cannot fly, or they break down or are not operating. It is all very well having UAVs, but if they cannot operate, your samples have still got to get to the hospital. So, it is very important to think of contingency van rounds. And we've been thinking about things like that; here is the van round would cover in an emergency these rural surgeries. And the Council have a fleet of over 400 own account vehicles, and some of those could be used in an emergency situation to cover some of these particular surgeries. This is a very important part of looking at the wider issues associated with the use of these new technologies.
And Jennifer, if you could play the last video, please. This shows the animation from the simulation work showing the 4 van rounds and the UAVs in action. Basically, there are 4 vans that are working for 8.5 hours a day servicing the main city. And then we have the unmanned aerial vehicles, 3 of them, working 12 hours per day carrying about just under 900 samples from 21 surgeries in those rural points back up to the hospitals. They're doing about 1200 km a day in terms of flight time. The key thing is that the first drone will be able to carry about 40 samples at a time but will be arriving at the hospital around 9:00. And that is the key thing, getting those samples moving in early into analysis labs. And so, the drone schedule would see approximately 850 samples arrive every day at the hospital, and significantly more before midday, which was the key aspect of this. It has to be said though that in terms of the costings, and obviously we are still working on that, it is very dependent on the use of safety pilots, etc. It is not cheap at the moment to operate unmanned aerial vehicles, particularly here where we can't go beyond visual line of sight. So, there's a lot of work being done to make it more efficient and reduce those costs. But, if you're taking 8 vans out of the equation from 12, that is a significant reduction in cost. But then we cannot underestimate how much the UAVs actually cost to operate at this scale. So, just to finish with, this kind of shows the impact we think this might have on the pathology lab's performance. You have business-as-usual now on the left in terms of receipt time, and you can see the difference on the right in terms of the numbers of samples that would be able to be received for analysis before midday. So, it does make a significant difference, and that is really what is of most interest to the practitioners at the hospital.
Some key things to make this a reality, and this is really the focus of our research for the Department of Transport which will start later this summer. And that is looking at the whole ways in which we can implement manned and unmanned aircraft passage in shared air space. How can we successfully coordinate manned aircraft and drones under 400ft? And if you look at flight patterning, a lot of modeling you see is straight line of sight, but that is really not the case. The diagram on the right hand show various establishments you would not be able to fly over. The bottom right-hand diagram shows current restriction zones around Southampton Airport. And that really is the bedrock of this. We know we cannot go to schools, nurseries, colleges, at certain times of day; gas station, parks, certain national infrastructure; Becky in her presentation mentioned migratory birds. And so, what are the potential impacts to going up the Southampton water? You can see on the left-hand side there a huge population of migratory birds. Lots of research needed to be done to understand what those impacts are. And that really will dictate how effective some of these can be. Because, if you have to make a significant detour within the headwinds to get around these issues, what will that do to the battery life, etc and their actual capabilities? That is very important aspect.
Now, this is a very interesting new data set being produced by a company called Drone Prep here in the UK. They are taking all kinds of land registry data and various other data sets and fusing them together to show people exactly who owns what when you are flying over things. You can see the red paddle in the middle of the screen here that shows the hospital side. And around it, just by color scheme, it shows you the different landowners. So, you've got black for the private houses, to that kind of green color, which is local authority owned bits of land, to private companies and so on. And that helps you understand you have to obtain permissions from. And that is an interesting aspect of how you get permissions and how you work out effective flightpaths.
To finish, looking into weather conditions. Last year we had eight recognized storms in the UK, all named. And we would not have been able to fly on any of those days. And that goes back to my earlier comment on having contingency plans and logistics of how to keep going. So, what we do under those circumstances, and it is hugely important to do that.
And the final slide is to show you what is happening at the moment. We've been asked by the Department of Transport to have one of the largest drones in the UK at the moment, which has been developed by a company called Windracers with my colleagues in the aeronautics department; it can carry around 100 kgs of payload up to about 300 kms. And we are trying to have this ready in case the National Health Services on the Isle of Wight need emergency supplies moving across during this COVID-19 crisis. And that is some of the work we're doing at the moment, and that is one of the experiments that will be undertaken more long-term, part of this funded program we are moving into. This emphasizes some of the ways some of these vehicles may be used in the future, but also some of the issues associated with running them, as well. Thanks very much indeed.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Tom. We will now move on to questions. We do have some time and the presenters are willing to stay on a few minutes extra if we need to. I see Becky and Daniel have done a good job of typing in answers to the questions that have come in. What I will do us still read some of those and that way if you want to expand on any of your answers you can, or some people just maybe on the phone line and they are not seeing the responses. So, Daniel, a question for you. Have you had good success in engaging with truckers?
Daniel Studdard
I would say overall for the efforts we have put into it we have. The biggest challenge I think is getting to the business operators, the industrial businesses themselves, because that is how we have gotten to some of the truck drivers so far. For example, in the Aerotropolis Plan, that was the one where he had truck drivers giving the surveys to other truck drivers. And the consulting team working with the community improvement district was able to get in touch with a few distribution centers, were able to go on-site while truckers were loading and unloading and talk to them while they were waiting. It was not taking them any additional time it was when I had downtime. And since it was other truck drivers approaching them, we had a good response rate at those locations. That said, there were a few other locations they attempted to work with but were not able to get permission to come on site. So, it was not so much the truck drivers that were the barrier as it was some of the businesses. That said, one of the other ones going on right now, Tucker Summit CID, is looking to do the same thing. They have not done the questions yet, but they got permission from a Pepsi facility on-site to have them do the same thing there. And then UPS that has a facility just outside the study area said they were happy to distribute the survey to their drivers who operate in the area. So, it is mixed results, but certainly got some good input from those we were able to talk to.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. Another question for Daniel. Can you ascribe the methodology, metrics included, used to define a freight cluster?
Daniel Studdard
Yes, we did these about five years ago, so I do not remember off the top of my head the exact details. But I can tell you that we had square footage data for industrial development in our region, which we got from Georgia Power, the power provider for most of the Metro Atlanta counties. They do a lot in terms of economic development because that is how they can bring in new businesses and that means more revenue for them. And they were able to give us who their industrial customers were throughout our region, and it was down to individual addresses for these businesses and the square footage of these developments. And that was broken down between manufacturing versus warehouses and distribution centers, and then vacant industrial properties. If you delve into our regional freight plan, we have three sets of maps for each of those types of industrial developments. We took that information and turned it into heat maps for each of those three. And then as a fourth map, that is the one we saw with the final freight cluster map, where we essentially combined all of that. And it was a little bit of science at that point and then it was a little bit of an art to take it and say here is where we get in terms of those freight clusters, and it included a little too much residential in some areas and things like that. It was a little bit of art as it was a science to make sure the areas really made sense and it did not terrify residents that we were suddenly saying their homes would turn into industrial businesses. That was not in any way the intent, it was trying to identify what was in these industrial clusters already. That was the basics of it, but I put a link to a regional freight plan in the chat box and that really goes into more detail on exactly what we did creating those heat maps and going from there. But if you do not have that data from the power company, certainly Costar data is something that we have looked at recently and it has the same set of data available.
Jennifer Symoun
There are a few people that asked about sharing the survey questions. If you want to, Daniel, send them to me and I can get those out with the recording link, or if you prefer people to email directly if they want them, that is fine as well.
Daniel Studdard
That would be great, Jennifer. I will put them together the next couple days and get them to you which would be easiest, I think.
Jennifer Symoun
That would be great, thanks. Another question for you. What level of involvement and interest have you had from the Atlanta area railroads (NS/CSX) in your regional freight planning/plan development/needs assessment/etc.?
Daniel Studdard
It varies by what is in the study area. So, as I mentioned in the chat box, one of the first ones out of the gate, kind of that precursor study, was that South Fulton CID plan. They have a large CSX facility right at the heart of that study area. And so, CSX was heavily involved, was I think at every meeting I ever went to related to it. They saw the value in it. They were a major contributor to that Community Improvement District and certainly see some of their infrastructure needs they have locally. So, they were very involved there. Spalding County that is about 40 miles south of Atlanta, they have a small North Southern facility there, and so Norfolk Southern has done a stakeholder interview for that. So, certainly, they have had some involvement there. And I think the others all have rail lines that pass through their study areas, but I do not think any have standalone intermodal facilities within the study areas themselves. And so, in essence, CSX haven't been as involved in those. They are certainly welcome to be and they are both on my Freight Advisory Task Force email list, so they are certainly aware these are going on and do attend some of those meetings as well. So, they have not been involved in ones where they don't have direct facilities but have been pretty involved in the ones where they do.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. Becky, we have two questions for you, and we'll start with the first. The DNL "Westside Trail" appears to be an old railroad grade (line), and is it correct this is an ex-rail line?
Becky Bradley
No, it is not. It actually predates the railroad; it's early 1800s and it is an old canal towpath where they used to have mules with a rope tied to them that would pull barges down a canal. There are sections of the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor Trail that do run along former Lehigh Valley Railroad Line, but that is the new stuff that we are building. And we are actually trying in certain locations, with the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor, to expand the trail system to create loop trails so it goes on both sides of the Lehigh River. And how we have been able to do this is because the Lehigh River was privately owned for a very long time. So, as a result of that, the watercourse itself has remained relatively naturalized even as it goes through our cities like Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. And the second question is, what is the nature and level of developer review (permitting/environment assessment) that occurs and is required in the LVPC MPO area?
Becky Bradley
Because we are a two County planning agency, we see every subdivision and land development plan, and are advisors to our 62 municipal governments, to our conservation districts in both counties, to our water and sewer authorities, and to developers themselves. So, we do provide comment based on the regional plan that I went over, at least a portion of the freight piece, in the presentation. Ultimately, our local governments have the final say, but we get first bite at the apple. So, it is an interesting relationship in Pennsylvania that we have a very back and forth collaborative relationship with developers, developments, and the community as a whole.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. And I see there is a follow up question. A portion of the DNL trail is on the old Lehigh Valley Railroad in addition to the old canal towpath. Isn't some of the old Lehigh Valley Railroad line still intact and operating?
Becky Bradley
It depends on where you are at. There are pieces that are where the DNL runs adjacent to it, and that works out just fine. There are other portions of it that have been privately purchased as part of a public-private partnership that are being developed as part of a complete street, but also then as part of the commuter trails. There are a lot of different transportation aspects that tie into the DNL system.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. We will take a few extra minutes to get through the rest of the questions. Tom, what is your cost per kilogram-kilometer or ton-mile, or whatever unit you would like to use?
Tom Cherrett
That's a particularly difficult one at the moment. It's a bit of a misnomer in the presentation. We didn't really look at the cost in detail the first parts of this simulation work. That's something we're moving onto now with the potential work we're doing with the Windracer platform going over to the Isle of Wight. We were really concentrating on largely performance aspects of the UAV in terms of its speed, capabilities, and the numbers of trips that will be needed. So, the cost end is something we're working on I really cannot give any further details on that at the minute, but it's something we'll have some results on fairly soon and I would be happy to send those around.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright, great. Another question for you Tom. Is there an ideal service area based on distance?
Tom Cherrett
That's a good question. I think it very much depends on the capabilities of the unmanned aerial vehicle platform itself. So, the UAV we were looking at would have a range with the batteries of about 30km. But I think some of the work Victor Walker and Amy Moore have done in terms of looking at the actual capabilities of some of these platforms and battery life. And it shows it can be a lot less than that actually, in terms of that you have to take into account the precipitation, wind, impacts, etc. But we're looking at a range of short hopping but also long hopping, and it depends on the type of propulsion you're using as well. The Zipline platform is in the range of about 30 minutes average flying time, 80km service distance basically. So, it really depends on the platform and its actual capabilities, but there's a whole range of distances that can be covered.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. We have a question for both Daniel and Becky. I think both of you (especially Becky) touched on this in your presentations, but what kind of coordination does your MPO have with the economic development agencies that represent your regions, especially with regard to industrial development? So, Daniel, if you want to go first.
Daniel Studdard
Sure. So, we definitely work with economic development agencies, starting at the state level. Georgia Department of Economic Development has something they call the Georgia Center of Innovation for Logistics. Kind of a complex name, but it's really focused on industrial businesses throughout the state. So, they're great in that they kind of know what the businesses need and try to communicate back and forth at our Freight Task Force meetings, as well as some of these Freight Cluster Plan meetings and can provide information and help put us in contact with the private sector folks. We also work with the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and then the Chambers of Commerce at the local level, typically at the county levels. Again, they have local area contacts and can help put us in touch with folks. They can tell us directly from a private sector about needs. And on the flip side, pointing toward these plans is something that I have provided to these Chambers and said when they have questions for businesses about what they're doing in terms of transportation, I have given them some information saying hey, here's what we're doing; we know that congestion is an issue, here's how we're addressing that. So, we've worked with them, and again at the county and city levels where they have economic development staff, they are certainly part of all these freight cluster plans. And again, they tend to have those local area connections. I kind of mentioned in the lessons learned, having those existing relationships is really key in terms of getting to the private sector. So, working with these organizations in freight in terms of how we get to the private sector folks and are able to get the input from them or access to their sites to talk to the truck drivers, things like that. So, they're definitely a part of all this.
Becky Bradley
We have a similar process. Economic development here is not so straight forward. Both counties have economic development entities, plus we have a regional economic development entity. So, we just invite everyone to the table, and that's really the best way to do it. When people are looking for things, we'll share information with the economic development agencies. But it's a little tricky for us, too, because we do have this land-use review authority and we are a neutral entity whose job is to support the community as a whole. And sometimes economic development interests do not always align with the greater community interest. And so, we're always trying to work with people and build a bigger table conversation and the collaboration conversation and say, Ok, is there a way to make this economic development work for the community over all? Is this really something that is going to bring in the types of jobs that we want? Are we going to be sacrificing too much? Is there a way to make that work? And then helping our communities, the economic development agencies themselves, try to really support good deals that work. And that's really important as we don't just have available land for infinite greenfield development and we really are working in a scenario of reuse and redevelopment. And so, it's inherently more complicated and that's where those bigger partnerships become important.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright, thank you. We have two more questions and then I think we're going to go ahead and close out. First question is for Tom. Any thoughts about the specific energy intensity?
Tom Cherrett
Yeah, I think it's very true to say that flying is much more energy intensive. Victor Walker's work has done quite a bit of interesting stuff on that related to drones. Again, it's a combination of the different propulsion systems that can be potentially used. But, yes, it's going to use more energy generally, but I think the question is, what is the main purpose of what we are trying to do? Which is really to speed up this supply from remote areas. And, of course, if it's electric power we're moving away from internal combustion engine. But, yeah, it's a very valid point that the energy of flight is quite something.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright, thank you. And then, one last question for all presenters. Considering suburban areas exclusively, what are some of the most critical freight planning considerations? What - if any - strategies have you found particularly effective for lower density freight areas nearby residences? So, Daniel, we'll just start with you.
Daniel Studdard
Sure, I'll just start with the second part of that. In terms of dealing with lower density freight areas and residential areas, there are not great solutions out there necessarily. The couple things I will mention off hand, one, zoning is key, get ahead of it if you can. I showed an example where there is a cross dock next to a single family residential development, which is clearly not a good thing. It's tough to fix that once it happens. So, anything you can do to try to separate those land uses as much as possible. Have some commercial or institutional or green space or something in between your industrial and your residential developments, certainly do that. I'm more of a transportation planner than a land use planner, so for me to say try to get your land use right on the front in is one of the best ways of addressing that.
Secondly, I will say we get a lot of complaints of folks saying trucks are driving through residential areas and things like that. They're all correct, I'm sure the trucks are there. But one of the big questions to me is always why? We have one location that I have staff turnover locally every couple years and they come to me with the same problem every time and I point out to them a key location where there is a weight restricted bridge. I told them this it might as well be the Grand Canyon for them because the trucks can't drive over the bridge. And by having that bridge there, until you replace it, the trucks are going to have to take an alternate route, which results with them going through some residential areas. There is just no other way for them to get around without hitting some of these roads that are mostly residential. So, then I say, look, if you have a lot of trucks going through a residential area, try to figure out why. Is it simply that it's a shorter route? Or is there a weight restricted bridge or a low bridge or a railroad restricting them from going across? Is there some reason that is forcing them to go there? Simply a shorter route, then yes it makes sense to try and direct them otherwise. But if there is some physical barrier like that, then no amount of signage you put up is going to have an impact on them, and you're not going to be able to do enough with law enforcement to get them out of those residential areas. So, find those barriers like that, try to fix them and address them. Design key corridors. This is kind of going back to the conversation about suburban freight and industrial development. Figure out where you want that to be and try to design both your land use as well as your roadways, your key corridors, to really accommodate those truck movements as best as you can. And then on the flip side, the areas that are more residential, make it truck unfriendly. You know, have your truck friend roads in the industrial areas and then take those residential areas and put in traffic calming, narrow the streets, put in roundabouts so they can turn around and get out of there if they make the wrong turn or something. But certainly try to use context sensitive design. That is a term that gets thrown around a lot, but certainly it makes sense to use it for industrial areas and for freight movement, as much as it does for these residential areas where you may not want the trucks. So that's kind of what I think of in terms of suburban context and design.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. Becky?
Becky
I think Daniel made some valid points, so I'm just going to add a couple things to that. You have to understand that freight doesn't generally begin and end where you have your freight districts, and that you're going to have trucks not only in those adjacent residential areas, whether you have it designed to be truck unfriendly or not, but that freight doesn't care what community it is in. So really making sure that those industrial districts are in so it's easy to get to your higher order road network, and it's easy to get to places that have capacity, and that it's easier for the trucking industry to make that choice to go to those higher order roads is very important. I don't think I can say that enough. The other thing I think is important to understand, too, is that a lot of the new freight development or industrial development itself is built on speculation. So, you don't necessarily know who your end user is when those are going through the planning process. Which makes it very, very important for that zoning to be correct, like Daniel mentioned. But also, if you can do it, and I know it varies state to state, but like in Pennsylvania, if you get a group of communities to create a multi-municipal comprehensive plan then they can share zoning uses. So, instead of every community having to have an industrial district, that industrial district can be better located where it makes more sense, near that higher order road network, connected with your freight rail lines, near an airport, those sorts of things. I think the other thing to understand in the suburban context is that freight is inherently multi-modal. So, it may arrive on a ship at a port, but it could then come by a train to a manufacturing facility or a logistics center of some sort, be broken down or repurposed or whatever, and then go out on a truck. That truck could then go to an airport and so on. So, thinking about not just the freight industrial location itself, but how it is going to move in the different types of freight movements that are going to be associated with those goods and services is really important to getting it right.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright, thank you. And Tom?
Tom Cherrett
Just a few thoughts. Some interesting ways in which companies have been working with municipalities in Europe. Things like the logistics hotels, as they're called, which have been implemented in parts of Paris in the outskirts there. So, getting companies to use shared warehousing space is quite interesting. The other one, you see it particularly in Scotland, is menzies distributions. It's very interesting work where, instead of all of the parcel carriers trying to deliver to all 89 inhabited islands, they have naturally migrated to what one would call a carrier's carrier. So, in terms of planning you're looking at these companies all sharing a warehouse facility operated by a third party to reduce the amount of vehicles that are actually traveling on [audio dropped].
Jennifer Symoun
I think we lost Tom, unfortunately. We are actually out of time, so I will check with Tom and see if he wanted to provide anything in his response and I will get that out to everyone. I want to thank everyone for attending today's webinar. I will send out a link to the recording of today's webinar within the next day. The May Talking Freight seminar is not yet available for registration but once it is, I will send notice through the Freight Planning LISTSERV. The Freight Planning LISTSERV is the primary means of sharing information about upcoming seminars. I also encourage you to join the LISTSERV if you have not already done so.
