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 Promoting Economic Revitalization Through Enhancing Freight Transportation. Please be advised that today's seminar is being recorded.
Before I go any further, I do want to let those of you who are calling into the teleconference for the audio know that you need to mute your computer speakers or else you will be hearing your audio over the computer as well.
Today we'll have three presenters, Janet Kavinoky of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, David Holt of Conexus Indiana, and Eric Madden of the Pennsylvania DOT.
Janet Kavinoky is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's senior lobbyist and policy director on all transportation issues and leads the Chamber's "Let's Rebuild America" initiative advocating the need to modernize and expand our nation's transportation, energy, telecommunications, and water infrastructure. In this role, Janet oversees the development of the initiative's goals and strategies and is frequently a featured speaker at infrastructure events all around the country, drawing needed attention to our nation's infrastructure challenges. Janet is also the Executive Director of the Americans for Transportation Mobility (ATM) coalition, a national business-labor-construction industry coalition seeking maximum Federal investment in transportation systems.
David Holt is vice president of operations and business development for Conexus Indiana. He is responsible for budgeting, business development and engagement activities, development of a statewide strategic plan for Indiana's logistics industry, and internal office operations. David has years of business advocacy experience, most recently for the Indiana Chamber of Commerce where he advocated on different public policy issues affecting business, with an expertise in education, health and job training policy. David also is an expert on Federal policy issues and advocated for the business community in Washington, D.C., where he focused on all policy issues.
Eric Madden was appointed Deputy Secretary of Aviation and Rail Freight for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation in March 2008. As Deputy Secretary, he oversees the administration of financial assistance grants, and technical assistance totaling over $75 million annually to 134 public-use aviation facilities for airport improvement projects, planning assistance, environmental guidance, licensing and inspection, and aviation awareness initiatives and over 65 Class 1, regional and short-line railroad operators for maintenance and construction of track projects, rail inspection and awareness initiatives.
I'd now like to go over a few logistical details prior to starting the seminar. 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. Once we get through all of the questions that have been typed in, the Operator will give you instructions on how to ask a question over the phone. If you think of a question after the seminar, you can send it to the presenters directly, or I encourage you to use the Freight Planning LISTSERV. If you have not already joined the LISTSERV, the web address at which you can register is provided on the slide on your screen.
Finally, I would like to remind you that this session is being recorded. A file containing the audio and the visual portion of this seminar will be posted to the Talking Freight Web site within the next week. We encourage you to direct others in your office that may have not been able to attend this seminar to access the recorded seminar.
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 week. I will notify all attendees of the availability of the PowerPoints, the recording, and a transcript of this seminar.
One final note: Talking Freight seminars are now 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. I have included more detailed instructions in the file share box on how to obtain your credits after the seminar. Please also download the evaluation form from the file share box and submit this form to me after you have filled it out.
We're now going to go ahead and get started. Today's topic, for those of you who just joined us, is Promoting Economic Revitalization Through Enhancing Freight Transportation. Our first presenter will be Janet Kavinoky of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
As a reminder, if you have questions during the presentation please type them into the chat box and they will be answered in the last 30 minutes of the seminar.
Janet Kavinoky
Thank you very much and I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you today. We have a good list of people from all over the country. As part of this presentation, or overall seminar, you can expect from me that I will be talking about the general business climate and also giving you a sense of the way business members, at least in our experience with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, think about freight. My aims are to impress upon you that infrastructure, maintaining, modernizing and expanding it, is something important on an ongoing basis, not just with a crisis. Also to realize that freight is something that floats, flies, and rolls. We are not just talking about trucks or trains, but I will talk about the importance of aviation and the waterway system, coastal ports, and the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Something that has become abundantly clear, to me in particular because a big part of my job is focusing on infrastructure, but another piece of it is operations that talking about freight is part of an economic growth and development strategy is not just about infrastructure but about operations, regulation and processes. Those are the things to keep in mind as I visit with you today. The other thing let me note to you is that my PowerPoint you will not seen them lot of words. Take good notes and I will be happy to talk with anyone in the Q&A afterwards.
Let's start with this image that is very well known to all of us, which is the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis. I took this job in 2006 and this happened about a year later. We have been looking for ways to bring the idea that transportation is good to the economy knowing that the reauthorization bill and the Water Resources Development Act were impending on the horizon. Many of us joke, and it is no joke, of course, that what we need in Washington is a crisis to get things moving and what we found out after the bridge collapse is that a crisis sometimes does not get things moving in Washington. We spent three weeks talking about the importance of our nation's bridge the infrastructure and since then have seen little movement on the national level. What we did learn out of this exercise when it comes to economic development, economic growth and activity is that the impact of losing a major piece of infrastructure really affected the communities around it and what was needed was a quick response and we got that quick response that brought out the best in the state and local and federal governments and private sector to respond to the crisis. What business needs, what the economy needs out of the people that design, build, operate and maintain and finance infrastructure is being at the best all the time.
That is, fundamentally, in all of this, time is money and is something that is said over and over again and you do not have to get a MBA to know it. The reality of freight, to be competitive in the global economy, deliver returns to shareholders and drive economic growth, we need to squeeze as much efficiency out of everything as possible. What we have learned in the last year or so, with regard to freight transportation is that the performance of this system is look map from the perspective of predictability, how can I plan? Where do I know the problems are? Related to that is reliability. I might be able to plan and project, but what is the problem and probability I need to add more time into my scheduling so that I can deliver things on time? I think that no where do we see that more than commercial air travel. I made it back from a business trip in San Francisco 35 minutes early on that one of our commercial air carriers and I'm jaded enough to know that when I landed and they said we're 35 minutes early, I do not know if I was early or they had planned for that. They know they have to plan because of weather, lack of capacity, maintenance issues. It is reliability, predictability and the question of cost effectiveness of transportation that speaks to a lot of different issues. When it comes to freight that is how you figure time is money.
It is also really important to understand that the infrastructure is a factor in freight, having infrastructure in good shape, having it well planned and coordinated. What we are also finding out in spite of this very clever quote from one of my PR people, that in spite of what we do with our infrastructure itself, and lot of businesses work around it than working with it and has given rise to the logistics industry. It is always a source of frustration as an advocate in Washington for infrastructure when I go to my retail members, I go to my manufacturers and say that I need you to tell me how important infrastructure is to the economy and get the response that "I have given up talking about infrastructure and will hone my skills with working around it and figuring what is and I will do my best". We are getting to the point where there are bottlenecks that we cannot work around that are costing us the time and money. That is why we need to address those issues.
We are very focused on the importance of growing the U.S. economy and how that connects to the export initiative. It was Tom Donohue at the Chamber that calls for a doubling of exports before President Obama did. We are very supportive of that initiative, but there has been little emphasis at the highest levels of the government about how freight and supply chain factor into the success of the export initiative. Which is why we are pleased to see things like the Talking Freight seminar. I use this picture as an illustration that is not just about what USDOT is in charge of. It is important that the inland waterways system, the locks, the dams, the levies provide low-cost, competitive transportation for bulk commodities, natural resources, energy resources are as just as a part of our freight system as our rails and roads. Despite of the fact that that is largely controlled out of the Army Corps of Engineers, I strongly encourage freight planning professionals to incorporate what is happening on our rivers as well as in the Great Lakes, seaway and coastal ports as part of what you are the thinking about, even if that is not part of the infrastructure that you have control over because in particular, when talking about doubling exports in this country, that will come in the agriculture and natural resources sector where we can be competitive because of low-cost transportation. It will also be things that are rolled on, role off cargo and other bulk commodities because that is as much on our marine transportation as well as our other transportation.
It is important to realize that freight transportation and the infrastructure is both public and private in nature. We look this quote about the world's largest rail bottleneck and realize it will take help with public and private sectors to remedy. It is a constant balance of managing expectation and looking at what is now made public good and what benefits the public sector versus what is in the interest of business to make investments in. Going forward, because we are managing a mature transportation system and not adding as much capacity as we have, historically, there will be lot of negotiating between the public and private sectors so that we can get the jobs done. Let me talk about the national needs that we see. In addition to making strategic investments related to be boosting our exports, it is of critical importance that we focus on bottlenecks in the system. Do not think about this one place or another, you have to realize that as soon as you fix one, it might pop up somewhere. That is why a systemic approach to transportation is important and why the Chamber still believes we need a strong federal role in highway transportation. One of our former economists many years ago just wrote a piece for the Washington Times arguing that we should devolve the entire highway program back to the state, and we have to defer because that's one of the responsibilities of the federal government is interstate commerce. We believe that there needs to have a systemic look our major road networks to do things like addressing bottlenecks. We also have to look at multimodal and intermodal projects that will be public and private in nature of. When it comes to the freight transportation, the border issues are particularly salient and again this is where you see that is not just about the infrastructure but about the operations, Homeland Security, regulatory-related issues where it is not enough to pay attention to just the physical infrastructure but the environment in which that happens, as well. Let me talk about who the partners are when it comes to freight. We put people in three different categories. We have the carrier who is directly related to using infrastructure and that are most sensitive to regulatory and procedure issues.
First and foremost, understanding the businesses, understanding the business models, how it is that they make money, but because structures are, where the revenue comes from, how to better understand how to plan the freight of the structure and how to price it. The 15 years I have been doing this, I often find people throwing up their hands and say well why don't the trucking companies just accept this or why don't the railroads just accept that? It is good for everyone to spend some time understanding the business is that our carriers are in. The shippers, of course, are the ones that have to move goods as well as move people and as much as we want to talk about freight transportation, understand these are shared networks. Different commodities, different products, high volume, low volume, bulk, not so bulk have characteristics that have the freight transportation system working differently for them.
We try to explain here in Washington that this country has the opportunity to produce, midstream, manufacture and deliver a lot of different goods and freight transportation has to be nimble so that it can support all different movement. Of course, the third piece is the infrastructure owners, operators and people financers. I encourage many of you to reach out to your shippers and make partners out of them as you think about maintaining, modernizing and expanding the network plans in your locality, state and region. A lot of time they have practical experience, something you would not normally think about. Let me give you another example. I am on a National Cooperative Freight Research Panel on Urban Goods Movement that has a very good group of people. We are talking about putting together guidebooks for people who are not transportation people so at a local level they can understand if you are putting up medians or reconfigure lanes or looking at grade crossings, there are practical things to think about that if you have not been in the mind of someone driving a truck or a someone at a railroad, you might think of that one foot here does not matter, but it does. Putting together those partnerships is important. One of the best ways to do that is to reach out to your state and local chambers of commerce. If you happen to be in Michigan, the Detroit Regional Chamber is an excellent partner in helping plan freight transportation and the U.S. Chamber is more than happy to try to put you in touch and create forums where people can talk to their state and local chambers.
I think what I will do here, because I will be better at answering specific questions, is to turn it back over after I note this. Let's go back to where we began. We are very good at dealing with things in crisis. Consider it something that Minnesota should be proud of and all of the partners should be proud. We went from this to this under a year (showing slide of the Minneapolis bridge collapse and then a slide of the rebuilt bridge). We are hoping that by putting more emphasis on the importance of freight and the economy and the importance of transportation in the economy that we can move Congress, we can move your state legislatures to put in please be adequate levels of funding, effective program structures and the effect of regulations so that we can make improvements on a regular basis doing the best job possible, just like they did in Minnesota so that we can contribute the most to the economic development and growth. Thank you, very much. Letsrebuildamerica.com as our website to find Chamber information and I look forward to your questions.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. We will move onto the next presenter, but will type that web address into the chat box. I'm now going to turn it over to David Holt of Conexus Indiana. As a reminder, if you have questions for Janet or any of the other presenters you can type them into the chat box as well.
David Holt
Thank you, Jennifer and thank you for that presentation, as well, Janet. I appreciate it. Conexus Indiana, people hear that name and say, what is that? There are three types of not for profit organizations, organizations like Chambers of Commerce like Janet who work to better their current level of public policy needs or maintain what they have. There our local economic development organizations who take the assets of the community and try to sell other companies getting them to relocate to a particular community. We are the third type where we look at the assets, do a SWOT analysis, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, and try to better our statewide asssets in Indiana. We are a state wide entity. We look at the state assets in a particular area, our particular focus on advancing manufacturing and logistics. We take care of the threats and make sure that we are meeting all of not just Indiana's needs but all of the needs of in the Midwest. How do we do that? We started this process off by doing regional round tables in the major areas of the state of Indiana. In Northwest Indiana, outside of Chicago, the South Bend area - which is North Central, and Northeast Indiana, which includes Fort Wayne, Central Indiana, includes Indianapolis, Southeast Indiana, which includes New Albany/Jeffersonville, the Indiana suburb of Louisville and Southwest Indiana, which includes Evansville. After the round tables were conducted, it became very apparent that we needed to have a statewide agenda for logistics because as Janet mentioned, a lot of the carriers fight amongst themselves. A lot of time they are fighting for funding and we know by 2035 that the capacity for rail and trucking in Indiana will increase by over 50% and will increase by 100% in water-borne and 150% for air. There will be enough business going around but we need to figure out how to put that puzzle together. We had a group of CEOs across the state in all of the different sectors of logistics - air, rail, trucking, waterborne, infrastructure, manufacturing, and all of the service industries that go into logistics and what we wanted to do was three things, enhance the environment for Indiana logistics companies, create a more attractive environment to attract new companies to Indianaand to create higher paying jobs which is about increasing the wages for individuals.
These are some of the groups that we have been involved with, you can see a few Fortune 500 companies. We have FedEx, their domestic sorting center,CSX, and a few other major companies. This is a list of all of the CEOs. I will not go through them all but we have high level people that got involved with this ensuring participation of the decision-makerson what our strategic ambitions need to be. Indiana is known as the crossroads of America. The entire economic impact of Indiana's logistics is almost $10 trillion, 3.9% of Indiana's 2008 GDP numbers. We employ about 310,000 people in Indiana team the logistics area. We have a lot of good numbers and including waterborne transportation and we are 14 or 15 based on the last numbers and that is pretty high for a please that is landlocked, because we have the Great Lakes and the Ohio River. These are some advantages that we have. We are in the middle of the country and we have a trade surplus and do business in every continent in the world except for Antarctica. We are one of the leading exporters of coal iron, steel, grains, food products, and scrap metals.
Knowing this, when we did the regional roundtables, we wanted to find out what our limitations were. We found that we have the transportation bottlenecks. Some of that, as Janet indicated, Chicago is the greatest rail bottleneck, in air as well, that costs Indiana companies millions of dollars by having to get their products from this bottleneck area. We have lack of direct rail service where the trains do not stop, in Indiana,and we have air facilities that are good facilities that are underutilized, and have a lack of efficient mode-to-mode connectivity in some areas. We are actually pretty good this mode-to-mode connectivity, but we have certaing areas which are need better connections.. We have a lock and dam infrastructure problem and a lack of dredging that prohibits larger ships to maximize capacity. What happens if we don't act on these? It would increases the cost and have potential environmental impacts, increase inefficient freight movement, loss of productivity, and a decrease in safety. When we got the CEOs together, they decided to break things up into four areas. This group decided that the mission was to create a sense of urgency of how important this industry is and we need these opportunities to grow the businesses and attract new ones to the state. To do that, we broke it up into infrastructure, which is all the transportation modes. We have public awareness which is paid and earned media for most of the sector. We have public policy, looking at the policy needs that cover the state of Indiana, and workforce development working to better our that human capital needs, to make sure we have the best work force we need to attract these employees. One strategy which the group decided on was that we need to increase the flow of goods to originate here, terminate here and add value to the state of Indiana, which is what the third-party logistics is. We need to provide a broad-based forum, strengthen the work force, and increase public awareness. How do we do that? We created what we call "Do You Know" stories. Do you know that 50% of all cell phones in the United States go through Indiana? Basically, if you have a BlackBerry phone, which I'm sure most of you do on this call and if you have one it was programmed and sent to you through Indiana directly from Brightpoint in Plainfield, Indiana.
I will not go through each of the goals. You can get the PowerPoint and later on print those out for yourselves. This report provides the key "go-gets" for what Indiana needs to do in order to better itself. By the way, I should not just say Indiana. We've also pulled Cincinnati and Louisville into this and some other communities around. We did not pull Chicago into this because to be honest with you. Alot of the issues we have deal with Chicago and will not get into those. The five things we identified are theneed for two or three large intermodal/multimodal facilities in Indiana, mostly intermodal. We are working on three projects right now. One in Fort Wayne, one in Avon, and one in Evansville, Indiana. We are looking on construction and redesign of our key locks. There are two locks that are on the verge of catastrophic failure. One is a feeder that goes into the Mississippi River. If that lock goes down, not a single barge would be able to go into the Mississippi from Ohio, which would hurt Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia; anyone that is up river. The other is the Soo Lock that allows access to Lake Superior and Huron to Lake Michigan. If that lock would go down, no ships would get into Lake Michigan, which 40% of all of Indiana's iron ore comes fromWisconsin and Minnesota. If this did happen, all of those shipments would have to be trucked or railed through Chicago and would increase costs to the point where Indianafirms would not be competitive. We are working right now with all of the regional airports around the state that I mentioned earlier and are attempting to put a plan together to be bypass Chicago, where many costly delays occur. We want to be the reliever airport around Chicago, in case of major delays. We are convening all of the major air freight carriers and airport directors in the state tomorrow to have a discussion on putting a plan together on how toincrease the state's air freight business.
The other thing we are working on is the bottleneck regions. The Illiana Expressway is outside of Chicago, and there is a joint agreement through the Governor's in Indianaand Illinois to start work on the expressway. Indiana also has made joint agreement to work on the Spaghetti Junction, it is a huge bottleneck connecting southern Indiana and Louisville. We put together a list of key projects that have statewide and regional implications outside of Indiana that need to happen. Last but not least on the infrastructure side, we want to identify and create a plan to improve and provide infrastructure-like access to regions and cities with limited access based on impact and potential. What does that mean? Well there is a city like Jasper, Indiana which has oneFortune 500 companies. They do not have major interstate access because the companies grew up in that city and mighteventually leave because of not having interstate connections. We will have to figure out how to give them the interstate connections. So what we want to do is figure out how do we get them a four lane highway that intersects to the major interstate. On the public policy side, we are in the process of convening all of the major trade associations in Indiana and putting together a package that states the needs of the logistics industry in general and provides a major emphasis to the governor saying that if we do these five or six things that the industry needs, then we will be one of the most competitive states in the union. The Indiana Chamber of Commerce, and the other associations,will try to get this introduced in 2011 or 2012. We are also going to put together recommendations on future financing, similar to what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce did and take recommendations from them and what other entities have worked on, and make recommendations to Indiana's Congressional Delegation in Washington.
In the workforce development area, we convened all the major vice presidents of logistics, operations, and human resources from our major logistics companies and said, what are the skills that your workers need to have in the future? They then identified all the major skill levels from level one to level two. That means the entrly level worker each company has and moving them to the next level such as a supervisory role. We identified those and are working with community colleges in the state of Indiana to, literally, create a curriculum around the needs of logistics workers. Eventually, we hope this is a national model . We are working with the National Association of Manufacturers on this and starting work with some of the other logistics associations on the national level. When we get that curriculum developed, we will also be working on an online program to provide this job training directly to the workers at their place of business. They would be able to get an industries certification or associates degree without ever leaving the facility. The online programs are very innovative and just like being on a Wii, that your kids have, and learn to do certain aspects of their job in the logistics Industry.
Those are the key things that came out of the report. Some other things in our report included the skills template that we just talk about, we did a logistics market analysis of where we stand in every category, and we did the SWOT (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis with what we do well. Some things we do really well are public/private partnerships. We leasedthe Indiana Toll Road in Northern Indiana to a private company. We are one of the few states that have had money for new infrastructure projects. That money is going to run through 2012 and finish I-69 and start the Ohio River Bridges project and a lot of other key statewide projects. Also, we changed the daylight savings time to be on Eastern daylight savings time which ensures that people do not miss a meeting. Indiana used ot be on Eastern Time for ½ the year and Central time the other half of the year Causing major issues for Indiana companies.
The last issue is the current financing for all transportation modes. The report included every funding formula on the federal and state level regarding how transportation is funded in Indiana. Last but not least, we are starting Phase II of our vision and will include the public policy package, the cost calculations for for everythingthat needs implemented in Phase I. We will also recommend ways to improve the financing mechanisms for infrastructure on the federal and state levels. Last but not least are the long-term goals and tactics. There is a group that we work with in Indiana; they are a private company worth about $2.5 billion. Their owner is about 85 years old, a Purdue graduate. He found this painting from 1929 World's Fair. If you saw the picture and look it, it is an interstate system. Guess what, there was no interstate system in 1928 or 1929. They started thinking to themselves that we need to have an innovative idea of what our system looks like in the future just like the person who drew the picture. Should we have dedicated truck roads instead of dedicated truck lanes? If you have dedicated truck roads, you could have fewer trucks on the road and reinforce them to handle more weight and have their own exit off of interstates and lower emissions and fuel costs because you have less trucks on the road. In the end that is just that one ideas being kicked around, and we will look at those innovative pictures. We are going to look at innovative ideas through university studies, and then we will make recommendations on both the state and federal level of what those should be. That is pretty much what we did and how we did it. I look forward to everyone's questions we are finished. Thank you for having us, and I will turn it back over to Jennifer.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you David. I encourage everyone to post any questions into the chat area for any of the presenters, and we will get to them after this presentation. Now we will move on to our final presentation, given by Eric Madden of the Pennsylvania DOT. You can go ahead when you are ready, Eric.
Eric Madden
Thank you, Jennifer. Good afternoon everyone. It is a pleasure to be here to talk about something near and dear to my heart. I am familiar with the rail freight aspect of life, but freight is multimodal and I will talk about that later. In terms of rail freight, I oversee a $40 million annual grant program which I provide to railroad companies, businesses, governments to actually improve or build rail infrastructure. I thought it would be interesting if I talk about that and talk about why we make these investments and what are some of the trends we are seeing? What do some of the trends tell us? We will talk about some of the benefits and close out with two projects that we are having very large discussions in and significant progress with two of our class one railroads. The question, why invest in freight? We will go through some of these maps that everyone has seen just to illustrate the purpose of why we are doing this. Peak period congestion here in 1998, and of course we see what is going to happen in 2020. Everyone has seen and heard the projections. We have had a small hiccup with the economy, but believe me we will see a rebound and see that in freight.
Jennifer Symoun
If I could just interrupt you, your volume is low. Could you possibly speak up a little bit?
Eric Madden
Is this better?
Jennifer Symoun
Yes, thank you.
Eric Madden
This is a snapshot looking at the domestic freight flow, just looking that the trucks. If I can pull up the pointer here, this is Pennsylvania. This is Pittsburgh, our state capital is in the middle and Philadelphia is here. The major interstate that you see is I-80 and it goes from New Jersey straight across the state to the heartland and this is where most of our truck traffic flows, right across the state and you can see a large portion of it goes from I-81 from Maryland through Harrisburg and into New York. This is what it is projected to look like in 2035. This is strictly trucks at this point. We have to look things in a very multimodal approach. Essentially, the trucks carry about 78% of the freight through Pennsylvania; I think that is the national average. Any investment we make in rail freight is a good investment, but trucks will be the primary mover of freight in this nation. The questions of how do we address that, you need to do everything. You need to make the improvements in the highway infrastructure and improvements the freight infrastructure, the rail freight infrastructure and at the ports and airports, as well. Chokepoints, the major ones you see are in Chicago and along the I-95 corridor and in the Northeast: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Maryland. Right now, capacity is okay, because we have seen a slight downturn. It will increase as you look that some of the projections, particularly if you look that the projections in conjunction with the opening of the Panama Canal. Those are major chokepoints that are nationwide that will have an impact on how we move goods and how we essentially move this economy. We are a consumer economy so we have to get the goods to where they are needed.
What does this mean? This completely changes the way that DOTs think and we need to truly understand global logistics. It is not as simple as getting something from A to B because sometimes A to B used to be in your own state, but now it is well beyond your region and borders. It is an understanding that a product starts in a manufacturing plant in China and needs to get to the consumers' refrigerators in the heartland, how does that happen? We need to think about how we move the goods and economy. We have to do it in a very multimodal approach and we have to reach out to new partners. In the public sector, we do have the Metropolitan Planning Organizations and the DOT, other DOTs, Federal DOT that we have many partnerships with. Now we have to do things differently. We have to reach out to the Wal-Marts because they are making decisions which we are trying to catch up to accommodate the moves they are making to get the goods to where they need to be. One of the best partnerships I have is with the Pennsylvania Motor Trucking Association, particularly as I bring the rail community to the trucking industry, yes, they have their issues, but they also realize they will need each other if they will be successful with moving goods and products across the country. The trucking industry has a shortage issue with their drivers. Drivers do not want to do long hauls anymore. They are partnering with the railroads to do the short connections, the final mile if you will while the rail is going the longer distance. There are new consequences at various decisions that we make at the state level and federal level, as well. Sometimes the decisions are very well intended from a safety aspect, but have very adverse economic consequences. I will give you an example. There was the issue of driver fatigue in the trucking industry, there has now been, well not new anymore, but the hours of service of which when trucks can be on the road. It limits the amount of time that a trucker can be on the road. They used to be able to go that night and you see many of them going during the day with everyone else that is putting more congestion. It crunches their time. If you are trying to moveproduct out of the Port of New York, it will take you three hours to get out of New York to get to the point where you can get on I-80 to get to the heartland. The decisions that we make at the state level do have an impact and we need to realize that.
I will give you another example. We are a cold weather state and we had a rather significant winter this past winter and to keep our interstates clear, we had issued an advisory that we will close the interstate to plow and to get them to a certain level where they would be safer for the traveling public. This is a great decision and is taking full advantage of our assets, but what does the trucking industry do? If someone leaves Ohio and goes into Pennsylvania for products they need to get, we will tell them to get off of the interstate, but where do they go? What do they do? How long will they be off? So, there are many decisions that we are making that have varying consequences on freight and the economy. We need to understand that better and work to let everyone know what we are thinking, what does this mean? What is the impact? This is a true rebirth of true planning. Working at the DOT and I do not know if this happens at other DOTs, our planning is an exercise in managing a transportation program. You are taking projects and moving them along and making sure the financing is there and moving them along. This is an exercise to get us back to the true aspect of planning; looking long range, trying to define where is this? Where is the need? Where do we need to make the improvements to make the strategic investment now which will have an immediate impact but also a much longer range impact to make sure the goods get to where they need to be.
Along the lines this is where we start thinking of freight and even before the Obama administration had started the high speed rail initiative, in the Northeast Corridor, the Keystone Corridor which is rail from Harrisburg into Philadelphia, all of the other rail in Pennsylvania is privately owned by the railroad and to do the intercity passenger service in conjunction with freight rail service, we thought it would be necessary to have a plan to see how we were addressing it. This is a snapshot of what rail is in Pennsylvania and in general it is a big deal for Pennsylvania. We have over 6,000 miles of rail and 65 railroads operating in Pennsylvania, which is the most in the country. Three of those are class ones: Norfolk Southern, Canadian Pacific, and CSX. We have the three ports and the trucking industry in Pennsylvania is the fourth largest employer. So, it is a big deal for us. In terms of the rail, we wanted to think about where we should start making the investment to make sure that freight moves and gets to where it needs to be either in or out or through Pennsylvania. What we decided was that everyone understands the highway system a little bit better so we wanted to take the rail system and categorize it. This here is the Norfolk Southern line going across the commonwealth, this is the CSX line. This is the Canadian Pacific line. These are our corridors of national significance. These are our interstates essentially and carry the vast majority of freight. This is one of our regional railroads. This comes out of Lake Erie and is actually owned by Canadian National. These are our secondary lines; you might want to consider them the U.S. 40's. Then you have short-lines that are significant in themselves because many of them are the origin and destination of the freight movement. Much of the business and the goods in the commonwealth originate on the short-line and they are a critical part of goods movement throughout the state.
When we took the national freight systems and secondary systems, we wanted to look for a specific standard that any transferring freight through the state would know there is a standard.If you are on the interstate system we will make investment to double-stack clear all of those routes. They will be double-stack clear and we will not be a choke point. They will all be 286k compliant and we will preserve the right of way, we are building intermodal yard capacity to unload freight and put it on a truck for the final mile and make track and bridge upgrades so that they can maintain speed to keep the freight moving. The same thing with the secondary lines, it is the same initiative. We will not put the majority of investments to double-stack those because most of the double-stack trains are the larger class 1's or are coming directly from a port. Lastly is the economic and business development connections; those are the short-lines that when we build those into industrial parks or directly into a business, itself, to make the connections, that is the true economic development generator where you make the site that is multimodal in approach but gives that industrial park or business options and this is what it is all about. Options create competitiveness. That is what it is truly all about.
It is not just that. If you look at what happened in the first round of the TIGER investment, the $1.5 billion federal program, the top three awards, Norfolk Southern, CREATE, the $100 million to fix the bottlenecks in the Chicago area, and the CSX National Gateway, they were the top three money receivers in that program, which is rather unheard of. There has been a great deal of talk that we will make investments in freight, but you saw little of it come to fruition until this program. Over $300 million go to freight railroads as one, two and three, there was another small regional railroad that received $12 million.The DOT is starting to put the money where their mouth is and you see the change here. Why do you want to make the investment in freight? Well, it is easy using the fact that you will yield three dollars in return for every dollar you put into the rail infrastructure. Again, it is a big deal in Pennsylvania. There are more than 7,000 Pennsylvanians employed in the rail industry with the average salary is $65,000. It is a big deal. Of course, everyone has heard about hauling freight 457 miles on a gallon of fuel and you have the environmental impact, the emission reduction and for my brothers on the highway side, it is a significant impact. Every time you move something on freight, it is one less truck on the road. Again, nothing against trucks but every less impact happening on our highway is absolutely critical because it makes our highways last longer, makes our dollars stretch further and makes our roads much safer. I will end with talking about two projects that are happening in Pennsylvania that we are partnering with several other states and the railroad itself and the federal government. The CSX National Gateway, this is a double-stack clearance project all the way from Northwest Ohio going through Pennsylvania, Baltimore and, eventually, down into Wilmington. It is an $842 million project and we received $98 million from the federal government for Phase 1 which should get us from Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and into Maryland and the double-stack clear that route. The savings of $35 million logistics, reduction in emissions, but specific to Pennsylvania we will have two intermodal yards in Chambersburg and Pittsburgh. Those terminals will create 2,000 jobs. Again, jobs in Pennsylvania pay very well; the average is $65,000 a year.
I will go one slide forward to give you the illustration. This is a rather significant project, 300 miles and many of this is already double-stack clear but this is to provide several new intermodal yards and two different track improvements to increase the speed, just to make it competitive and, again, as a shipper, to have a choice between taking the Crescent, putting it on I-95 or I-81. The benefits of that-we will be taking nearly 700,000 trucks off of the road in Pennsylvania because of this. There will be 10.5 million gallons of fuel saved, and 116,000 pounds of CO2. The bottom figure of 26,000 jobs will be created over the next 10 years, and that is from a Cambridge Systematics study. With that, we will have one new yard in South Pennsylvania, which is in Franklin County and significant upgrades to our Philadelphia yard and our Harrisburg yard. Again, this is a big job with big money and big business. This route will parallel I-81 and I-78 which are heavy truck routes. Again, I am very curious as to any questions that anyone might have. There is a link to the passenger freight rail plan and I thank you everyone for your time and patience and am pleased to be here. I am more than happy to answer any questions.
Jennifer Symoun
Okay. Thank you. Now we have gotten through all of the presentations, we will start the Question and Answer session with the questions that have been typed into the chat room. We have a number of questions, and I will start off with the top of the list and go on down. The first question is for Janet, and it is: how would I get involved with the Urban Goods Movement Group?
Janet Kavinoky
It bought me some time to make sure I got all of this information. The person leading that research is on the call with us, and that is Suzann Rhodes with Wilbur Smith and Associates out of Ohio. The Urban Goods Movement is not so much a group as a National Cooperative Freight Research Program Project. As part of that project, Suzann's team will be doing a focus group to check the findings of the guidebook that is under way and in addition the idea of the panel overseeing the project was to make sure that there was a robust outreach program following it. Suzann sent me a quick e-mail and said it was okay to give you her contact information. I will also type this in, but Suzann Rhodes and her phone number is 614-888-9440 extension 1242. Suzann can involve you in the project or if you have input for her or would like to be a part of the focus groups, she is happy to bring you in. Once that is done and the estimated end date is early 2011, you will be able to be part of some of the outrage that is intended for that part of that project. I will also type that into the chat.
J. Symoun
Thank you. I think she just did type all of that information in the chat.
J. Kavinoky
There you go.
J. Symoun
Okay. Thank you. The next question is directed for all presenters. Are there any regulations, ordinances, etc. that restrict freight growth or competition by any given mode, in your state/region, or at the national level?
Eric Madden
This is Eric. We do not have anything like that that is restrictive by mode. If we do have anything, it might as the overarching. It is not mode specific.
David Holt
In Indiana, we have one regulation on trucking where we do not allow heavier weight trucks to come into the state compared to some of the states that surround Indiana. If the truck is coming from Michigan through Indiana to Ohio, there are little stops for they have to transfer the product over because they have heavier weight limits. There is that issue that we are trying to get fixed in the state but that is that one issue that we have that probably puts us at a competitive disadvantage compared to some of the states around us. Each state is different when it comes to the limits.
J. Kavinoky
I think this is one of the things that we have asked our Urban Goods Movement study group to look at so that we can provide information through that guidebook to state and localities of what the implications of different ordinances are. Things that have been brought up are things of time of day movement, restrictions on when deliveries can occur. Do not forget that this is not just about intercity or interstate freight, but goods movement is something that happens 24/7 and in different forms. Some of the things that I have heard are that Homeland Security regulations can be restrictive, different modes that can move on, whether rail lines need to be relocated. There are impacts across the board. I do not know of a really good resource that would provide a list of those things.
E. Madden
The American Trucking Association would probably have a very good resource. There might be the effect as idling, as some states would allow them to idle and some have very good truck parking. There is trying to be a standardization of the weight of a truck. There are some states now that will allow more weight, but it depends on the permiting and the specialized permits. I believe ATA might havesome of that information available.
J. Symoun
Okay. Thank you for all of the great information. The next question, how does one fairly plan for investments that untie local congestion bottlenecks of freight with the fact that many of the economic benefits are regional, not local? I will open that to any of the presenters.
J. Kavinoky
Let me give you a quick philosophical answer. I am hoping you know that you are not alone in asking of question. This is one of the fundamental problems in even getting surface transportation bill passed in Washington. We have gone from a point in it infrastructure were people understood that we needed to build roads in Montana or Wyoming to get freight in and out of California or New Jersey. Now that we have a fairly mature system, and then lot of people are saying, what should I make an investment here when the benefits are so diffuse? I wish I had a really good answer. This is one of the things we have to grapple with that. There will be investments and bottlenecks that need to be made that have much more broad benefits but required to local entities to make that decision. It is a great question and I wish I had a good answer for you.
D. Holt
We have done something in Indiana. The governor is working with the Kentucky governor. We have created a public-private partnership with Kentucky and created a commission to do the Ohio River Bridges project. It is a regional project that benefits Kentucky, Indiana, and kind of Cincinnati as well as. We have created a special commission that has of people from both states, but this group together decided to allow for user fees in order to pay for the infrastructure bill because the federal government can pay for part of it but they don't have enough money to finish the projects. It is a toll or fee or some other public-private partnership agreement to fund the rest of the project. We are working on the details now but the legislatures in those states approved similar to legislation and moved it and are working cooperatively on that one project. The same thing with the Illiana Expressway project, that is up by Chicago and Gary between Indiana and Illinois. So there are models out there. For the Jefferson area and Louisville, in the end, the states have to step up and help the local communities make the investments and make things happen.
E. Madden
That is absolutely true. A case in point, what we have outlined in our state rail plan, there are investments happening in certain areas where people will say, why are we making such a big investment in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh when the northern area will not benefit from that? That is not necessarily true, but there is a plan out there to give the perspective of, this is where we are making the investment and this is why and even though it is not in your county or region, it has a benefit for the betterment of Pennsylvania as a whole. That is one of the reasons why things can be rather fragmented from the national level. I know that FRA is developing a National Rail or Freight Plan as we speak, but just because there has been that vortex and then the national level with a national plan should look like and where they should go, that would help entice and make investments that are more regional, to make investments that are not necessarily in my region or state, but that have an impact. The case in point is there is a Tunnel in Maryland that is about a mile long and is single track that is owned by CSX and had caught on fire several years ago and had a major impact around the Northeast because nothing could get through. Nothing could get North or South. The question is, how do you fix that $2 billion problem? Maryland does not have the money, and CSX has not made the commitment to go that far. How can I get Pennsylvania to contribute to that, New York or North Carolina? It is a hard thing to tackle. We are getting better.
D. Holt
Another example, the Sioux Lock I talked about earlier which is not in my state. The Sioux Locke is in Michigan and the other feeds into the Mississippi are, basically in Illinois. We went to some of our delegation members and see how they are affected by the river. We are a heavy agriculture state in. Most of the agriculture is produced in the fourth and sixth district which is on the east side of the state. Most of that stuff goes via rail down to the water where they put them onto the boat and ship them down. If that lock goes down it has to impact on the farmers that lived in that district. With the General Assembly in Indiana we asked them to contact the delegation members saying that this is a problem for Indiana and from that connect and contact Ohio and some of the other states around. This is what we did in Indiana and we encourage you to do the same thing because in the end we are impacted by this and hopefully that will press the members to say that we need to get these projects started and make them happen now.
J. Symoun
Okay. Thank you. We are having some great discussion here and have some great questions. The next one is directed to you, Eric. Are you or the other speakers aware of funding available to town, cities, and counties for rail road bridge replacements? The structures are 'obsolete' and the low clearance causes over-height vehicles to take alternative routes. New structures could enhance the gateways to several communities, encouraging travelers to enter the city, rather than avoid it.
E. Madden
I am not familiar with any funding sources to go directly to a municipality for railroad bridges. Other infrastructures, we have things in Pennsylvania for that, particularly on the road bridges. Railroad bridges are something that we are studying in Pennsylvania. Even though they were built to last 100 years, they were built about 120 years ago. They are, actually in a position where some of them are becoming structurally deficient and the railroads are beginning to recognize that. If you are not a class one or regional railroad, if you are a short-line you do not have the financing to take on a bridge because it is capital intensive and very expensive. I am not familiar with any programs that are specifically for railroad bridges. Through our grant programs, I can assist the railroad with that.
J. Symoun
David or Janet, are you aware of anything?
J. Kavinoky
This is Janet. I am not other than what might happen on a state by state basis, but I am not aware of anything at the federal level.
D. Holt
I am not aware of anything on the federal or state level in Indiana. There our options. We are trying to build an intermodal facility and will do it through the private sector and probably through a bonding process where they paid for get the facilities they use. You can use them similar mechanism for projects if you can get buy-offs from your governor or state Economic Development folks. In the end it would not be free money. It would be paid back by the users that use that project.
J. Symoun
The next question is for Janet. Given that federal resources are limited in these economic times, which freight mode would you say has the most urgent need for investment if the goal is to improve economic competitiveness, and why? I heard you mention marine transportation because of the expected growth in the export of bulk and agricultural goods.
J. Kavinoky
It is a very interesting question and will say that I think if a false choice to say it is one mode or the other. We have focused for a very long time on the mode piece of this and is now made question of looking geographically and in terms of the different economic slices of the economy, it is more of a location choice and is a matter of performance. The question is more of, are we going to focus on relieving congestion? Are we going to look at the last mile intermodal connector, whether it is rail or road or simply an entire port region and figure out how we make that work the best? There are a lot of people because we do have a real difficult situation in terms of paying for infrastructure and that is the barrier to moving anything in Washington. People want to retreat and say I will look my own mode and promote that and that will be the best way to go. I read something that was said about the need to go back to real transportation planning, real long term, what are the overall needs? What are we trying to deliver? That has to drive investments and is more of a question of how you measure performance and make the right investment for performance, which in some kids will be about technology and management and not, necessarily, investing in a particular mode.
D. Holt
I think Janet is right. In Indiana, the reason we got our plan was we did not think that one mode was more important than the other. We thought they were tied together but one thing that the federal government is responsible for are the water ways and have always been. Unfortunately, when the stimulus package past there was money for roads and even rail. The one area with no increase and the Army Corps of Engineers was flat funded was the waterways. I am worried about that infrastructure funding spigot is going broke like the highway trust fund and in the end, that it's got one of the structures that the Fed's need to take care of that they are not. If any of these go down, it could have devastating consequences.
J. Kavinoky
Amen to that.
J. Symoun
Do you have anything to add, Eric?
E. Madden
In the interest of time, I think I am pretty good.
J. Symoun
Thank you. I think this next one is meant for you Eric, but in regard to rail freight, has there been any resistance from trucking freight? Are they worried about losing business?
E. Madden
No. Like I said, there is always friendly competition between them. They are in a position where they realize they need some help because they are losing drivers. It is hard to attract drivers and many do not want to go the long haul anymore and want to come home at night or a good portion of them want to. They do not like losing business, of course, particularly now as things are very tight and very competitive. They do not want to lose business but realize with the longer haul and know that there are regulations out there and they have issues with personnel and there is the issue of traffic and congestion, if they are going to survive, they might need to do things differently. The railroads have to understand that, as well.
D. Holt
To add on to that, most of the truckers that I talk to in Indiana are supportive of intermodal. They make more profit off of their margins by doing short hauls than long hauls and are trying to get away from the long hauls because of the fuel prices. Secondly, and lot of the trucking firms are becoming third party logistics providers where they add value. Someone will send them something as one of their products and will package it for them and distribute it for them. Because of that, they need to use intermodal a lot more and seems like they are interconnected now with the rails, where before they were not as much.
J. Kavinoky
Where I see the industries fighting with each other, the industry groups is when someone tries to say that we need to move truck off of rail, and therefore, we do not need to invest in our highways. Because this is a highly politicized environment here, there are people who want to make that statement that rail is better than trucks and better for the environment and, therefore, we should not drive and invest in highways and take our money and put it in rail. That is taking it a step too far and where you see the industry groups start to vault, because the case is no matter how much freight you move off is going to get off and on to rails, we still need to maintain, modernize and expand the roads, as well as. We routinely have our members who are trucking and railroads that say we are each other's best customers. Try to keep that out of being politicized helps.
E. Madden
Janet is absolutely correct. It gets into the debate to shift from the one mode and neglect the other is not helpful and it just shifts the problem, does not create a better environment for economic development.
J. Symoun
Thank you. The next question is also for Eric. What is the source of state funds for the rail investments?
E. Madden
We have a $40 million program broken up into two separate programs, the Rail Freight Assistance Program, the $10 million General Fund Appropriation that comes out of the General Fund, and we have a $30 million capital bond program.
J. Symoun
Thank you. The next question, I should have addressed the earlier, but you made a comment about building roads in Montana or Wyoming.
J. Kavinoky
I typed a quick response. The gist of it is that some point that we started losing sight of the fact that this is a national transportation system and a network. It is now harder, I think, at least when you were talking about a Federal Highway System, to convince a congressman from South Carolina that there is value in their dollars going to Wyoming and this is the whole donor debate. Somehow, we need to be able to make investments that do have and show broader-based benefits. This is the heart of a lot of debate in both the state and national level.
J. Symoun
Thank you. The next question is for all presenters. While the potential benefits of shifting freight from truck to rail such as environmental/fuel savings, etc. are impressive, how much do you think the public sector can really influence and promote the desire to effect a freight mode shift when so much of the freight movement is a private sector decision and the fact that there are a number of dynamics that influence what freight movements go onto truck versus rail such as distance for freight hauls, local deliveries, operating margins for freight movements, efficiencies, etc.?
D. Holt
Well, from our perspective in Indiana, I can tell you the discussions which we have had. Railroads are looking for public-private partnerships. What the state can do is help facilitate or help working with the railroad. In the end is the private sector in the end that will be paying for it, especially on the intermodal and multimodal and will be up to be railroads to make the investments because up until the last few years they really never took federal money. Just recently they have been seeking the public-private partnerships and that is because they have not invested in their lines as much as they should have and some is falling apart. I think it will be important to have the state supportive of the efforts to try to get rail activity but not necessarily funded.
E. Madden
This is Eric. You are correct. If you look up what we have in our rail plan, we do not own any of the infrastructure and they can do whatever they want. We do have a very competitive program and they want public dollars to help them in maintaining their infrastructure, but if they want the public dollars, these are some of the things we are looking for and what we would like to see. They could take it, or not. The purpose of making the investments, it is not so much for the railroad or trucking, because they are shippers, they are middlemen. It is the manufacturers and distributors, we make the investment in the highway and rail and airport system to give the distributors and manufacturers a choice and let them choose. You let the shippers compete, which ever works best for the manufacturer to get the product to wherever it needs to be, that is why we are doing this because we are not trying to do a sea change here, we are providing other options for choice and choice is competition and competition is good.
J. Symoun
Thank you. Janet, would you like to add anything?
J. Kavinoky
I think we can all talk about it all we want, but fundamentally it is a business decision, how do I get my product to the right destination in good condition at the right price for what I am selling it for? Unless you are really starting to talk about the subsidization of one mode over the other, you can try to change the cost structure, but fundamentally, we are trying to maintain a free market economy. I think it will be up to the shippers, and it might be useful in a future webinar to grab some of them, someone from retail, manufacturing, energy and natural resources and pick their brains on how they make the decisions that they do.
J. Symoun
Thank you. Our next seminar it is on a different topic, but the plan is to have some shippers on there. The next question is that one of the speakers mentioned changes in freight traffic projected to occur with the Panama Canal widening. Is there a study available that documents this growth and related assumptions?
J. Kavinoky
I am sure there is but do not know offhand. I would have to look around for it.
E. Madden
I believe there is and I think Cambridge Systematics is putting something together on that.
J. Symoun
I think we have a few people in attendance from Cambridge. If you are aware of it feel free to type the information in the chat box. If anyone else is aware of a study, feel free to let us know.
D. Holt
I have heard some things. TranSystems would have that information as well. They are another company like Cambridge Systematics and they gave me that data. I did not know where they got it from.
J. Symoun
Thank you. This one is for David. What was the expressway agreement between Governors that you mentioned? Does it involve NN designation for freight standards? Over what timeframe did you conduct your Phase 1 initial study?
D. Holt
I am not sure what the NN designation for freight standards are. In regards to the agreement between the states, I do not know if they were memorandums of understanding, but both the legislatures, adding that the case of the expressway by Chicago, there was a bill signed by the General Assembly allow for public-private partnerships for the Ohio River Bridges and the Illiana Expressway. That is down by Chicago. The governor signed the agreement with the governor from Kentucky on the one and created the commission and signed another memorandum of understanding with the state of Illinois on starting the building process for Illiana Expressway. In of sense that one is more of a funding mechanism down in Southern Indiana and the commission put together to figure out how we will finance the whole project, the same thing up in Illinois except where the Ohio River Bridge has already started a lot of their environmental impact studies, Illiana is just finishing up on theirs and what will happen is we will probably end up putting the commission similar to what they did down on the Ohio River so that the two states and have everyone working together. I hope that explains it, I am not sure if it did.
J. Symoun
Just to clarify, someone just typed in the National Network.
D. Holt
I do not believe so. It could have. I would have to check on that whether that is the case or not it. In regards to what time frame we conducted our studies for Phase I. Basically we started in the summer of 2008 and finished February of the 2010. It was about a year and a half and we had probably six meetings with the group of CEOs and about every month we had a task force meeting with each of the business leaders who assign their specialists who really knew their stuff enough all of those different areas, infrastructure, public policy, work-force development and public awareness. Once we got all of the due diligence done and put it together and brought it back to the CEOs and they confirmed it, and the end of last year, we had some due diligence to do before we put the report out, which we did at the end of March.
J. Symoun
Thank you. We have one more question that just came in. In what ways can regional land-use planning work together with these larger transportation projects? I will put this out to any of the speakers who want to answer.
E. Madden
It does not work without regional land-use planning. It is just that simple.
J. Symoun
Janet or David, do you want to add anything?
D. Holt
The way we did things in Indiana is we wanted to see what the business leaders throughout the state that are in all of these other different sectors, what they felt we needed. Then we told them, the specialists from the different organizations, we said, okay, this is what they are saying they need, what are you currently doing? That helped us to prioritize things and figure out what made sense to go with and what did not and our CEOs supported some things and some things, for example U.S. 30 is not on the target, it's basically a shorter route. They are putting all of the stoplights in and we are trying to get that stopped. Once we put it in there, they looked at it and said, you are right and we need to make sure that that does not happen and they are working with us to make that happen. We worked with them and agreed with them on 99% of the items. It is the one percent that you need to work through.
J. Symoun
Thank you. Anybody else?
J. Kavinoky
I will have to do some digging, but there are some examples of this regional planning out of there that might be able to provide some good examples of what is going on. I do think that you have to get the people who are doing land-use, local officials, transportation officials but also, as David said, you need the users of the system all talking on the same page, which is a lovely thing for me to do is sitting in Washington were my job is to talk about this stuff and it's a completely different thing for all of you to put into action.
D. Holt
Then you have land-use. An airport recently expanded and they built new runways and built a new terminal. We have the old terminal sitting around for land-use and people are trying to decide what they are going to do. You have the company you were talking about in Ohio, I think that is the company they hired to do this study and what we are trying to do is figure out, working with the business community and with the government leaders, we are going to try to decide how that land-use is done and create a plan on how to use it in the future so does not just the mall or something that comes in there. Hopefully we will be able to come up with a good use of the land. I think Columbus and Louisville have these networks that look that these kinds of things and they have a couple of models you might want to look besides what is happening here in Indianapolis.
J. Symoun
Okay thank you. We are about out of time so I think we are going to wrap up for the day. We won't do any questions over the phone today, but I do not think there were many people over the phone line today. If you were, I hope you were able to type in your question. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact the presenter or post the question to the Freight Planning LISTSERV. Thank you all for attending today's seminar and thank you to the presenters. We had a great seminar today, a lot of great discussion during the question and answer session. I think everyone appreciated it. I know I learned a lot. The recorded version of this event will be available within the next few weeks on the Talking Freight website.
As a reminder, if you are an AICP member and would like to receive 1.5 Certification Maintenance credits for attending this seminar, please make sure you were signed in today with your first and last name or type your first and last name into the chat box if you are attending with a group of people. Please download the evaluation form and email it to me after you have completed it. Please also download the CM Credit instructions if you are unsure of how to obtain your credits for today's seminar.
The next seminar will be held on July 21 and will be about Freight Productivity Impacts by Natural and Man-Made Disasters. We do currently have a speaker from UPS on that one and are working on getting others from industry to present.
If you haven't done so already, I encourage you to visit the Talking Freight Web Site and sign up for this seminar. The address is up on the slide on your screen. I also encourage you to join the Freight Planning LISTSERV if you have not already done so.
Enjoy the rest of your day!
