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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 Advisory Committees - Overview from Committee Organizers.
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:
Tiffany Julien joined the FHWA Office of Freight Management and Operations in 2013. Prior to that, she was a Senior Planner with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission transportation section. Her work included reviewing proposed residential and commercial developments for the purpose of determining the adequacy of multimodal transportation facilities, and promoting better coordination between land use and transportation decisions. Tiffany was also a Transportation Planner with the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG) where she led the multimodal freight transportation planning efforts. Tiffany was instrumental in developing the freight deficiency analysis that was included in the Regional Long-Range Transportation Plan and facilitated the Regional Freight Task Force Committee.
Bruce De Terra has served as the Chief of the Office of Freight Planning for the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) since 2010. The Office led the formation of the California Freight Advisory Committee and has thus far facilitated 9 committee meetings at various locations around the State. His office is currently producing the California Freight Mobility Plan to respond to MAP-21 guidance and State requirements. Bruce has worked in the Caltrans Planning Program for 25 years.
Jakub Rowinski is a Principal Planner, Freight Planning with the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA). He has over 15 years of diverse transportation planning experience in the areas of intermodal freight transportation, logistics, travel demand modeling, congestion management, and safety. Prior to joining NJTPA in 2008, Mr. Rowinski held various positions with NJIT's International Intermodal Transportation Center (IITC) and National Center for Transportation and Industrial Productivity (NCTIP) where he led research projects for state and federal government customers. At NJTPA, he has managed a number of freight consultant activities looking at the projected demand of goods movement and regional infrastructure and policy issues critical to the safe and efficient movement of goods. He also serves as technical support staff to the NJTPA Freight Initiatives Committee (FIC).
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. If we run out of time and are unable to address all questions, we will attempt to get written responses from the presenters to the unanswered questions.
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 notify all attendees once these 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. I have included more detailed instructions in the file share box on how to obtain your credits after the seminar. Today's webinar is not yet available on the AICP web site but I will send out a notice once it is.
For those of you who are not AICP members but would like to receive PDH credits for this webinar, please note that FHWA does not formally offer PDHs, however, it may be possible to receive PDHs for your participation in Talking Freight if you are able to self-certify. To possibly receive PDHs, please download the agenda from the file download box and submit this agenda to your respective 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.
I'm now going to turn it over to Tiffany Julien of the Federal Highway Administration to get started.
Tiffany Julien
Okay. Thank you very much, Jennifer. I'm looking forward to discussing freight advisory committees and why the Federal Highway Administration is supporting this as a forum for stakeholder and public engagement from the freight and planning perspective. Public and stakeholder involvement is critical to good transportation planning. Without meaningful participation, there is a risk of making uninformed decisions, or those that don't address the transportation needs. With good stakeholder and public engagement the fundamental objective of public engagement is addressed. This is to ensure that the concerns and issues of everyone with a stake in transportation decisions are identified. Freight advisory committees can help address freight and the development of policies, programs, and projects. It's proposed as part of the statewide and metropolitan planning process.
Before I go further, I'd also like to have you all note the makeup of these committees is very important. We highly recommend it be multimodal in nature, being that all modes participate in these advisory committees and we encourage you to have your MPOs on board, law enforcement and environmental representatives, community groups, etc. With that, I'd like to go into the importance of freight stakeholder and public involvement.
Freight stakeholder and public input helps us gain the information that we need to know. This contributes to understanding what projects we need to prioritize, how we prioritize them, where some of the bottlenecks and where the other problems are. Freight advisory committee members represent the freight industry and can help with that. Regions have competing priorities as they move freight in, out, and through an area. Balancing the needs of freight with economic development, safety, congestion, sustainability is best done early in the planning process. The private sector can provide detailed information of freight related issues that might not be available from other stakeholder groups. Their perspective on congestion, economic development, financing incentives, environmental and security concerns is essential information to inform decisions. Public agencies can better understand in their area, if they obtain input from the private sector freight representatives moving freight on the transportation system.
In addition to that, in recent years, there have been a number of states and urban areas were the business community has taken a strong leadership role in advocating for sufficient investment of transportation. Public agencies stand to gain from private sector input. Freight stakeholders provide goods movement perspective into the transportation programming and planning processes that support the freight community and the regional economy. Freight stakeholder and public involvement gives the freight community an opportunity to voice their opinions, frame alternative solutions, and provide the freight to the public, elected officials, and other public agencies. Many states, regions, and MPOs already have freight advisory committees. They go by many different names. Regions with extensive freight activity have found that freight advisory committees are important to obtain freight input.
As stated on the slide, freight advisory committees facilitate the participation of public sector freight stakeholders and transportation planning processes. They can ensure that their freight transportation needs are addressed in the transportation planning and programming processes, facilitate safe and efficient movement of freight and provide high priority and strategic freight transportation projects. FHWA has long been an advocate for effective stakeholder involvement as early in the transportation planning process as possible. We are pleased to see Congress also acknowledging the role for the freight community by specific mention of freight advisory committees in MAP-21.
At FHWA, we have some resources available to assist you all. First, I'd like to tell you about our NHI course "Engaging the Private Sector in Freight Planning." It's a one-day workshop intended to provide techniques and strategies to help practitioners establish and strengthen relationships with the private sector. It's designed for practitioners addressing freight issues at metropolitan planning organizations, state departments of transportation, local governments, and economic development agencies. Our office, the Office of Freight Management and Operations, offers a peer-to-peer program, which allows for development of opportunities to learn what others are doing in the sharing of information. Also, Public Roads, a magazine published by FHWA, published an article in the July/August issues that highlights how advisory committees contribute to the discussion of freight at the national, state, regional, and local levels and the impact this stakeholder dialogue is having on freight planning processes and program delivery. I have up on the screen my contact information.
Before I hand the mic back to Jennifer, I'd also like to give you an idea of some of the types of projects that we know this type of engagement is really helpful in, and that's truck parking projects. We know that a lot of states are working with private entities to identify truck parking projects in their states. I think that this is a true representation of the coming together of the public and private sectors using the forum of the freight advisory committee to identify specific projects that can mitigate some of the problems being had in the freight community and their respective states. With that, I'd like to turn it back over to Jennifer.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Tiffany. Our next presenter is Bruce De Terra of the California Department of Transportation.
Bruce De Terra
Thank you very much, Jennifer. Unfortunately, I'm not able to see the same slides at the same time, so pardon my interruption between as we go through. Let's see, for slide 1 after the title slide, the title is Pre-MAP-21. California had begun working on freight planning and had advisory roles all the way back in 2004 for the kind of current, modern freight planning and at that time, we formed the California Marine and Intermodal Transportation System Advisory Council, which doesn't roll off the tongue, but fondly is known as CALMITSAC under the leadership of Norman Fassler-Katz. We established the advisory body at that point and it helped produce a good foundation report in 2005 in conjunction between the California resources agency and the transportation agency. That helped set the foundation for the development of a bond program that was voter approved for a $2 billion freight funding and that project selection process was helped by the Goods Movement Action Plan.
Throughout these processes, we had a variety of advisory committees. We had a good foundation of different agencies and private sector involved within these planning processes. At the same time, some of our regional agencies also formed freight advisory committees, most notably SCAG, the Southern California Association of Governments, which formed a very active freight committee that continues to be active. It has really set the standard for how to do freight committees and planning from an MPO perspective, certainly, in California. Their expanding their coordination with other MPOs and they are going along on that, as well. Caltrans, recognizing that there is a lot of activity in the mid-2000's we started updating our freight planning in late 2010. MAP-21 came along and 2012 and we were into the freight process and we had guidelines coming out that encouraged the state to form a freight advisory committee, but it didn't require a committee. So, we went ahead and formed a committee and we started off with the goal of having perhaps 25 people on the committee. As we went through the process, as you'll see in a little bit, we ended up with a much larger committee. Part of that is due to the California Assembly Bill 14, from Assemblywoman Lowenthal, who is from Long Beach. It requires the state to have a freight advisory committee, so that was a very important distinction between being encouraged to have it. There was nothing the statute that said we had to have it. It actually specified that we form a freight advisory committee and listed state member agencies that had to be part of the committee. That was very helpful to us as a department in doing this work. It was also helpful to other agencies in the utilization of the resources, contracting resources, staff resources - it's in the law that we have to do this activity since it helps protect it. These activities during budget fluctuations where they look for things that are not absolutely required, we could stand behind something that said we have to have this committee and do this work.
At the same time, since it's in state law, it triggered open meeting laws that have very formal things such as ten-day notifications and provisions such that if we have a webcast every recipient of that webcast on the committee, that recipient site becomes a public meeting site. It makes it awkward for us to have back-and-forth communication over a very large state via electronic means. This Assembly Bill 14 assigned responsibility for the committee and the states freight plan to our parent organization, the California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA); they have a fairly lean staff. They are very talented and multi-purposed, but they don't have a group a group of people that could coordinate this on a day-to-day basis.
They delegated Caltrans to work on the freight plan. That helps us in our committee, that we have a cabinet level representation and involvement in the committee down to our staff level at Caltrans of the day-to-day work doing that. The chair of the committee is currently the Chief Deputy of Caltrans. Part of this is because we are responsible for delivering the freight plan, thus we really need it over this short time period, to have direction of the committee and not have it go off and some other direction. We had to get the plane done. At this time, we don't have any subcommittees, or no formal subcommittees.
We have the CFAC, 60 plus member organizations, both public and private: the freight industry itself, the stakeholders who represent those agencies, advocacy groups from community groups, and environmental to safety organizations. We have to balance all of California's regions. When you take a look at the state, you know that we are quite large and diverse in our urban areas and rural areas. We need all those areas represented. We have a core set of participants on the committee of approximately 40-45 people who almost always attend and are engaged. Besides that we have a balance of 15 or 20 depending, who don't always attend and some of which rarely attend, but we do get feedback from them. We also have people who just show up on a regular basis, who are interested because the meetings are open to the public.
The next slide shows the large list of organizations on the freight advisory committee. The actual invitation to be on the committee and being selected is a cooperative discussion between Caltrans and CalSTA. We really tried to balance so we have, for example, Northern and Southern California included, rural areas, where we have on the private sector, such as the railroads, we bring in both class one railroads and the Short Line Railroad Association. For the ports, we have 12 deepwater seaports in California, 11 of them are public, and one of them is private. We have a lot of other marine terminals that serve things like the oil industry. We have to balance the need to have Southern California with their large ports at LA and Long Beach with Northern California's very large Port of Oakland and all the other ports, as well. It is the same thing with airports. Environmental groups being on here, we wanted diversity of environmental perspective and not just one. We have a number of other agencies that people don't automatically think of is directly related to freight such as the Department of Housing and Community Development and the Department of Public Health. However, freight goes through every community, and the impacts of the freight system are part of our planning process. We also have the very strong presence of dealing with air quality improvement, both for particulate emissions and greenhouse gas. So we have good representation there.
Initially, when we set up the freight advisory committee, we intended to try to meet on a regular basis. We typically say to meet quarterly, but we found the needs of delivering a freight plan didn't really fit with the quarterly schedule, so we've done them as needed. Because we have such a large committee and very strong regions that have their own freight planning activities there is a substantial amount of collaboration that happens outside the freight advisory committee among the subgroups. The formal responsibilities are to assist in developing the freight mobility plan and to do an update every five years. That's current state law that we do that. To facilitate discussion on freight related topics we have a lot of other things besides freight mobility plan. We have issues, air-quality, which I already mentioned, community impact, dealing with economic competition, a lot of things for them to deal with besides freight plan. On the bottom of that slide, the last bullet point about educational collaborative, network and capacity building, with a committee as diverse as we have, we have members who have never been to a freight facility, or a major port, and they haven't been in a warehouse to see it operating.
Part of the goal for our committee meetings is an educational foundation for committee members, themselves. We get a good diversity of understanding around the state and the broad issues. I'm going to go through four quick slides on CFAC. Our first meeting was in April last year, April 2013. We held that first meeting in Sacramento, the state capital at the California Energy Commission's boardroom. We selected that location for the Energy Commission because it reflected a look toward the future that we recognized the freight industry and all transportation is moving in new directions, upbringing new technologies, fuel types, operations practices and we looked at the energy commission sight of being symbolic of that. They are a member of the freight advisory committee, as well. We moved the committee meetings around the state to expose members to lots of different areas and to have them see facilities they wouldn't have otherwise seen. Also, some of the members cannot travel, so this enabled us to get close to them so it makes traveling easier. It's not all about the big freight centers and power players. We've heard that quite a lot from the state not close to a big urbanized area. Our previous freight planning efforts did concentrate primarily on urban centers. It does require travel by the members and we do not reimburse them. We did provide lunch, but it is on them to pay for their cost, so that is a burden, particularly to those that are not large funded organization. We try to address that by webcasting our meetings, not all of them, but we succeeded thus far, but we cannot receive feedback from those for listening because they then become active participant and under the open meeting laws we need to make the computer, their office, a public meeting site. The logistics of doing that are beyond us.
As mentioned earlier, we've had nine meetings thus far. They are open to the public and we have public comment periods. Sometimes it's toward the end of the meeting, sometimes scattered throughout. It depends on the nature of the discussion. They are typically hosted at partner agencies and not always freight industries. We picked the schedule of 9:30 until 2:30. Sorry for these details, for those that don't have committees, this could be helpful. We try to structure so that with long-distance travel, people could reasonably get to wherever the meeting site is and we typically tried to be in a major urban area where air travel is relatively simple. A 9:30 start means you can get a 6:00AM flight and get to the meeting locations. Then leaving at 2:30 you can get home in time for dinner. Try to make it easy on the committee and we have a working lunch. We don't want people to break and go off on something else. Would provide a lunch except for when the lunch doesn't arrive on time. This is entirely Caltrans staff driven. It is our staff in the Office of Freight Planning that does all the work on this. We do have a webcasting crew at Caltrans, so we get their assistance, but it does strain us when we get ready for a meeting, it takes all our time and energy to make that happen. It also enables us to tie very closely to what we are doing. The facilities we use, we look for a facility that will hold at least 100 people in a non-auditorium fashion. You want people to sit in a collaborative way. It is a very difficult thing to find buildings that have open for space for us that are free. We also don't pay for meeting spaces, thus this is a shoestring budget thing for a very large committee.
If you're going to do something like this and have your staff do it, make sure you have enough staff and you give people enough time to get these things done. This is the meeting itself, we have an introductory presentation by the site host, very informative to our partner agencies to take a look at what's happening in the region we are visiting. We have a standing agenda spot for the Air Resources Board at every meeting. They have a very important, sustainable freight initiative that they are developing that looks to reduce the emissions, particulate emissions criteria pollutants from the freight industry. That's an important part of our overall goal as a state to meet targets. Because of that important work, we make sure we have them on the agenda at the beginning of every meeting. We have a wide range of perspectives, as you can imagine, from the list of members and often, our committee members are not an agreement with each other, we get a lot of interesting discussion and sometimes we purposely try to arrange them. We've had assigned seating in the past. We kind of force some conversations, so we've experimented with how to organize the meeting to try to get input and get to consensus or as close to that as we can. We don't have formal votes, but we do seek broad agreement and will ask if anyone objects to this such that we can't move forward. Sometimes we do get that objection and we try to work through it. We have a core discussion action item and it could be identifying the network, a list of projects, prioritizing the network goals, things like that. We try to do that in the morning before lunch so we don't lose people who might have to travel back early and then in the afternoon we have an overview of the key facility within the region or followed by a field trip to that facility.
If we go first to the maps, this is the CFAC meeting location. We've concentrated in Northern California and Southern California and that is due to air travel. It's very difficult to reach other parts of the state within the same day travel for a one-day meeting. When we met in Stockton, which does not have the kinds of passenger service available to the metro areas, we had a much lower turnout for the meeting. We work there in August and Stockton can be a bit toasty, which could have been an affect as well. We will continue trend of having meetings in major urban areas. We can go to the next slide, focus group regions. Tiffany mentioned the importance of the public and stakeholder involvement and we recognized this early on, so we organized and we did get consultants help on this, focus group that identifies communities heavily impacted by freight and traditional environmental justice communities. We held focus groups with them, with their community groups to get an idea of what their concerns and issues where related to freight. This information is included in the freight plan and we see it as an extension of a freight committee and having a broader conversation besides those that are formal stakeholders. Native American tribal governments and the tribes they represent are important to California. We have the most Tribal governments of any states and the largest Native American population. We held four Tribal listening sessions around the state which were very well attended. We would get a couple of dozen in each to listen about their lives and they are different and it is important to specifically reach out to and engage Tribal governments, as well. When we had the first draft of the freight plan and something we could reference and talk to the public about with information, we held public workshops around the state and were able to go more broadly geographically. We got up to North State, Central Coast, and down into San Joaquin Valley. We held a number of these public workshops, which were an open house format with displays that folks would come and talk with speakers from Caltrans about. Those were rather successful and we help those over the summer.
One of the few things we managed to get unanimous agreement from the freight advisory committee is the vision you see before you. It's split into two pieces and it talks about the freight system itself and how the system works with the society we live in and the environment. We addressed these two very different and important into related topics on that. We did get unanimous in agreement on the vision statement and with the six goals that align almost perfectly with the national goals. All of our freight advisory committee materials, the agenda, materials, and webcast recordings are posted and this is on the last slide with a thank you posted at the website there. If you have difficulty connecting to that link type California freight advisory committee and it will take you to the website and provide all of the materials. Within there is an opportunity to provide feedback, as well. With that, I will conclude.
Jennifer Symoun
The final presentation is by Jakub Rowinski of the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority. If you give me a second, I will bring up your presentation and turn it over to you.
Jakub Rowinski
Thank you for this opportunity to talk about our freight initiatives committee. Before I get into the details of the committee, I'd like to provide a little bit about the NJTPA. It's the MPO for Northern and Central New Jersey and you see on the slide the coverage of our MPO. It goes all the way from Ocean County down south all the way to Sussex in the northwest part of the state. We cover roughly three quarters of the state's population and about the same portion of the state jobs.
This is how we are organized. What you see here is our board of trustees. The board of trustees is made up of elected officials from each of the 13 counties in the region plus the Mayors of the state's two largest cities: Newark and Jersey City. The New Jersey DOT Commissioner, representative from the government's office and the heads of New Jersey Transit and Port Authority are on the board. There is an additional seat for a citizen's representative selected by the governor. The board essentially gives local officials a seat at the table with key statewide transportation policymakers. They make very important decisions for our region. At the bottom of the slide is a number of standing committees that make recommendations on action items to be considered by the full board. You will see number three is the freight initiatives committee. The committee is part of the organizational structure and it does make recommendations to the full board.
To provide a little bit about the freight activity in our region and why this is so important for us to have the freight initiatives committee and why we do so much in the area of freight planning at NJTPA. First off, roughly 900,000 regional jobs are directly related to or highly dependent on freight. That represents about one third of all jobs in the region. We are in the middle of the major consumer market, New York Metro area, and in the larger mega-region from Boston to Washington DC. We are right in the middle of all of that. It's a major Port gateway that generates a lot of goods movement that goes into and through our region, same for the Newark Liberty International Airport. It's a major air cargo facility that's located here in northern New Jersey. When we look at our major highways, and some may sound familiar, things like the New Jersey Turnpike, I-80 and I-78, when you combine those, they carry roughly 100,000 daily truck trips. We are home to a number of major rail and intermodal terminals that connect to points throughout the US. Class I railroads operating here are CSX and Norfolk Southern. We have close to 1,000,000,000 square feet of warehouse and distribution space. That represents about 7000 individual facilities and commercial buildings. About 500 million tons of goods move to, from, and within the region. By now, you get the picture of how important freight is to us here in northern New Jersey.
This slide gives an overview of the types of activities that we do as part of freight planning. There's outreach and coordination, planning studies that we conduct and all various regional initiatives with our partners, public and private. Outreach of coordination, the freight initiatives committee is the key part of this. Also, this includes our public and private sector partners, we are constantly talking with them, making sure they know what we are doing. We are very active with a number of industry organizations in the state. We try to get out to as many site visits as we can to understand what's going on and how things work.
Now, finally, the NJTPA freight initiatives committee. One way to put it, it's many things to many people. It's at the heart of our freight planning activities, where our freight planning studies, white papers and other activities originate, are guided through and finally presented once completed. The FIC supports the development of the RTP and TIP. We've had special meetings of the freight committee just for the purpose of identifying the major issues and strategies that should be included in the long-range planning. The FIC is also for stakeholder dialogue including public, private, all of the above. It provides an opportunity to coordinate and collaborate on freight initiatives, identifies regional issues, and works to find solutions. One other thing that it does is outside of our formal meetings and the agendas, it's become a place where a lot of the stakeholders set up meetings around, knowing they would be here in Newark for this, and they try to meet with their partners before or after the FIC. It also helps facilitate some of that activity.
As far as the FIC structure, which we started in 2002. The committee was started by Somerset County Freeholder Peter Palmer who is still the Chairman of the committee. The co-chair is also a member of the NJTPA Board of Trustees. On the right is the makeup of our voting membership of the FIC and this is, essentially, a section of the Board of Trustees, which we find works really well in advancing recommendations, actions, and resolutions. Because, once they get to that part of trustee level, half of the board members are very familiar with what's happening at that point and can lead the discussions on what that issue might be. In addition to the voting membership, we have a very large stakeholder membership list, which is roughly at 550 members, right now. I will not list all 550, but to give you an idea of the types and the diversity that we have in our membership, on the rail side: Norfolk Southern, CSX, and shortlines in New Jersey are very active members, participants at all meetings. On the trucking side, very active has been New Jersey Motor Truck Association, drayage companies like Evans. And on the port side, New York Shipping Association here in the port, steamship lines, terminals, harbor pilots, as well as warehousing both under the developer side with companies like Matrix and operators like Wakefern. Also, labor, academia and consulting.
This next slide is a sampling of the meetings that are on the same day as the other standing committees and we meet every two months. The meetings are open to the public. Those that cannot make the meetings in person, afterwards they are provided with all of the materials, all the presentations and so on that were presented at the meeting. We also have been offering AICP credits for those who attend our meetings. That's a couple more things on the structure and how we run the FIC. As you can imagine, 13 years, six meetings a year, we've covered it all, pretty much. Some of the issues you see on this slide are some of the issues that come back time and time again. The area of freight rail, we are always talking about concerns about the capacity of the rail network, the bottlenecks, what can be done to address those. Infrastructure constraints include a number of locations throughout that cannot accommodate 286k railcars. There's been a lot of discussion on those locations and how we can best address them to meet that industry standard. Also, safety and quality-of-life issues. We looked at all of the crossings along our major freight rail corridors. We also looked at quiet zones. We developed a quiet zone publication that provides information to the stakeholders. That's freight rail. Again, this is just a sampling of things that we discussed in the past.
Trucking and truck parking, which Tiffany mentioned earlier. It's a really big issue in our region. We've done a couple of studies on this. We've worked very closely with a number of our public and private sector partners. We actually held a truck parking summit that included a number of participants from, I believe, from Washington DC up to Boston. These issues are common to all of us. We've had a number of discussions on truck parking and how we address the significant shortage that exists in northern New Jersey.
Drayage is a big issue, particularly lately, in terms of the chassis issues and the driver shortage and so on, basically making sure the port operates as well as it can, in terms of getting containers in and out of the terminals. On the port, we are always looking at how fast it's growing. What the projections are. What direction it's going in and so on, and also, very concerned about the access to port. This includes not only the land side access, how the truck gates are operating and how you get from the port to the major highway. Also, on the water side, in terms of making sure that the channels are deep enough to accommodate all the vessels, as well as, the Bayonne Bridge clearance that's been the topic discussed. It's currently a project that's under way and being done by the Port Authority and it's going to allow the larger ships to enter or harbor and serve Newark and Elizabeth.
Finally, warehousing and land use. We are always looking at where new warehouses are going. They are moving further and further away from this urban core location and moving down the Turnpike, moving out West, even outside of our MPO moving across the river into Pennsylvania. We monitor that very closely. How they operate, and all the technology advances. Essentially, the idea is to get an understanding about how all these factors impact the demand on the transportation system. We've also looked at brownfields development. There's hundreds of brownfields in our region that are very well suited to be redeveloped as freight facilities, freight support facilities.
I had mentioned the bridge navigational clearance issue. We held a panel discussion on the Panama Canal expansion, a joint meeting with NYMTC. That was a very good meeting, very well attended and a great conversation of how the Panama Canal expansion will impact our region here. Norfolk Southern, they've made a number of presentations and have led a number of discussions, such as on the Crescent corridor, before the FIC, basically seeking support for this initiative. It was a lively discussion as far as how this project will impact our region in terms of what we can expect as far as the demand on the freight rail network. Going green at the Port of Newark New Jersey, this is something that the port authority has been very active with at the port and I believe this presentation a few years back started a good partnership between NJTPA and others, namely the port, the New Jersey DOT and some private sector partners from the class one railroads. We used CMAQ funding to help retrofit some locomotives in the port; we are currently participating in the truck replacement program at the port and our participation in these originated with some of these discussions a few years back.
As for truck parking, I already mentioned it is always a hot topic. We have a shortage of 1300 spaces in our region, which is a significant number. We are always looking for ways to address that. The Turnpike Exit 8A is an issue and how it developed into this significant hub for warehousing and distribution. But some of the support facilities such as truck parking were not really considered at the time. Those were some lessons learned in that presentation.
We have a close working relationship with the MARAD Gateway Office here in New York and they've been in to present on a number of initiatives over the years. We've heard presentations on the future of New York region's airports. I mentioned Newark is a major air cargo hub. JFK on the other side of the border in New York is an even larger air cargo hub. Finally, on this list is the freight rail capacity and needs study and that's something I alluded to on the previous slides, looking at the capacity and bottlenecks in our region and had very good involvement from CSX, NS and shortlines and everybody else. Providing great information and allowing us to really understand where we stand as the region, in terms of freight rail capacity. Not on this list, but I would highlight a couple of other success stories over the years. Some of these go back further than others.
Liberty Corridor was a large initiative that looked at a $100 million grant, that at the time Congressman Menendez brought to the region. FIC was an active player in identifying freight projects that could be advanced as part of that grant, working closely with Class Is and others to identify two very important freight rail projects that allow double stack moves out of the port. That was very significant, not just for the Class I, but also for the port. Liberty Corridor was a partnership. Again, Port Authority, Class I, DOT, NJTPA, and others.
One final highlight I wanted to bring up is the freight committee has been very instrumental in helping us find a way to advance some of the smaller scale freight projects that we identify through our planning studies. We are going to do a pilot freight concept development program, under way right now. This is going to involve not just to the FIC, but also our private sector partners, Norfolk Southern and one of the shortline operators, among others. We've been very active over the years and hope to continue that.
Moving forward, we will continue to grow our stakeholder membership. We are always looking for new representatives to participate on the FIC and come in to talk about whatever issues they are dealing with. We are very open and inclusive, as far as the meeting topics go. Very often, we get calls or emails for example, a Class I may give us a call and say we'd like to come in and address the FIC on this topic or that topic. We are very open and accommodating as we develop the agendas. Really, the mission of the FIC is to continue to support the economically vital regional goods movement. That's what this is all about. Finally, with the increased emphasis on freight in MAP-21, the freight committee will be addressing those issues as they need to be addressed. We're working with the New Jersey DOT as they get the freight advisory committee under way. Hopefully, we will be able to work together on all these issues that we share in common. With that, thank you. I turn it over to Jennifer.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. We will now move to the question-and-answer portion. Please feel free to continue typing in questions as you think of them. We will start with questions for Jakub. This presentation is fresh in everybody's mind. Let me scroll up. The first question is does your MPO have dedicated freight costing? If so, where does it come from to support that, such as dedicating the time needed for all of your outreach visits?
Jakub Rowinski
We have. Currently, there are two of us doing freight at the NJTPA. All of our funding comes from Federal Highway and Federal Transit. There is no additional or different source of funding to support the freight activities.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. The next question is are industrial land developers/real estate brokerage firms like Jones Lang LaSalle, Cushman & Wakefield, and/or CB Richard Ellis committee participants?
Jakub Rowinski
Yes. Over the years, some of them have presented at the FIC. Also, they are represented by the New Jersey Chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties. They are an active participant in the FIC.
Jennifer Symoun
All right. Thank you. What year was the freight plan developed? Also, does in include strategies to reduce the environmental impact and carbon footprint of freight movement? Why or why not?
Jakub Rowinski
We don't have a separate freight plan here at NJTPA. We have a very large section of the RTP dedicated to freight. Yes, we do consider environmental issues. But, even though we don't necessarily control it, we advocate for locating some of the distribution centers and warehousing facilities, the ones that generate the goods movement closer to the urban core to the center where everything is going on. From that standpoint, we address environmental issues.
Jennifer Symoun
With recent apparent climate change, has the FIC discussed their plan Bs and Cs to accommodate the recent weather patterns?
Jakub Rowinski
At the FIC, we had presentations following Sandy on the damage that was caused by that storm. We haven't done that yet, but we will be. That's a very important issue.
Jennifer Symoun
Another question related to the environment, what is the level of interaction with New York and how do take into account greenhouse gases?
Jakub Rowinski
We have done a greenhouse gas inventory. We are doing an update right now. It's not strictly a freight effort, and looks at all greenhouse gases produced by all modes and all sectors, but it does have a freight component. As far as working with New York, yes, we work closely with the MPO on the New York side on a number of things. We hold some of these Freight Committee meetings together jointly, either here in Newark or on the New York side. We also worked closely on the truck parking effort in the past. So, the short answer is, yes, we work on a lot of these issues, as we do with the MPO in Philadelphia, the DVRPC.
Jennifer Symoun
This is for both Bruce and Jakub. Do any of the FAC's discuss today vote on anything or in other ways make decisions as a group?
Bruce De Terra
We do make group decisions, but not through a formal vote. We look to see if we can reach general agreement, essentially, consensus. It is very much a discussion item since it's an advisory group and doesn't have any particular authority. We do look to see if we can come to a consensus decision.
Jennifer Symoun
All right. Thank you. Jakub, same question for you.
Jakub Rowinski
One of the early slides I had showed the organizational structure, as far as the committees are concerned. Yes, FIC does vote on resolutions, actions, and some of them are in support of projects. Some of them are saying that this planning study that was conducted, let's move the recommendations forward to the responsible parties or parties that should be responsible for implementing whatever the recommendations may be. Then, that gets voted on and it goes up to the full board for their approval. Yes, there is a structure like that here.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. Bruce, a question for you. Was any thought given to including fuel or energy providers?
Bruce De Terra
We do have representatives on the committee very interested in fuel. I imagine those topics come up in their advisory groups that they have. Is the question related to having organizations represented on the committee that are fuel providers?
Jennifer Symoun
I believe that was the intent. It was around that slide when this question came up.
Bruce De Terra
This is a real challenge for us. As we started developing the freight committee, the breadth of it kept expanding and we were, as I mentioned earlier, trying to have a committee of approximately 25.We got up to 60, to the point we thought we could manage a discussion and have good representation, so we stopped accepting new members. Instead, we wind up having people who were interested. Other stakeholders that come to the meeting to provide input, as needed. Thus far, we haven't received any inquiries from the fueling side of the industry. As we move forward into some of the collaborative planning that's coming up, and it's already started among the commission, the Air Resources Board, Caltrans and others, that these issues will bring additional voices to the table.
Jennifer Symoun
Do your activities fully provide enough substance to assist the MPOs to write the freight part of their long-range plan? Or do you need to do further work to accommodate enough detail for their plan?
Bruce De Terra
Good question on that. We have the assumption within the development of our plan, that there is a multi-tiered planning effort where the MPOs have a much deeper understanding of the freight industry and the system within their areas. They will delve in more deeply. We'll be looking at a higher level, still interested in the details. But, not so much that we are engaged in identifying, for example, the last mile connector to the primary freight network. Also, we go even deeper than that where the regional agencies are then dependent on freight facility planning at the sub-regional level, such as we have with the Gateway Cities COG in the Southern California area, or at a port facility. We really see a tier of freight planning and coordination across all them. What we hope is, through the structure that we are providing and the direction we have in the draft freight planned that's responding to MAP-21, that we have a framework and can get consistency, at least in addressing the major goals. And, addressing the larger pieces of the freight network work we understand that much more detail has to be done at the local level then what we can provide.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. Jakub, maybe we will turn the question around for you and ask you how the NJTPA's efforts are tied to the New Jersey DOT's efforts?
Jakub Rowinski
We do work closely together with the freight group at the New Jersey DOT. Very often, they come to make presentations and address the committee whenever they start one of these plans or are concluding it and want to receive some final feedback on the direction of the plan itself. So, yes, it's definitely a two-way dialogue I would say on all issues, not just plans and studies, but everything such as projects that are moving forward or not moving forward, things like that. Now, as I mentioned in the presentation, we are working very closely with the New Jersey DOT and the other MPOs in New Jersey, DVRPC that covers Philadelphia and part of New Jersey on this side of the river and also the South Jersey Transportation Planning Organization. We're meeting on a very regular basis to coordinate all kinds of items and assisting the DOT in developing the statewide freight advisory committee, and looking at the primary freight network.
Jennifer Symoun
How are freight projects in the freight plan prioritized for funding?
Bruce De Terra
We have approximately within the freight plan, 698 projects identified with a total of investment or cost, whichever way you look at that, of $138 billion. That's in the current draft plan. We don't prioritize the projects within the plan. We have proposed, essentially, tiring the freight network, particularly the highway network in terms of identifying which route are the most important for freight. That is measured by the volumes on those routes and the connectivity they provide to key facilities that serve as international gateways, interstate connector such as Interstate 15 and Interstate 80 connecting all the way to New Jersey, which starts in San Francisco. So, we propose a networking of three tiers for that. In theory, if your project is on tier one, the highest priority, that project would have a higher priority for funding, potentially than a tier two project. At the same time, there may be tier two or tear three project or an off-system project that may be very important to meet good movement. This is a discussion process with the sponsors and it's going to depend a great deal on the funding programs. We don't currently have a dedicated freight funding program at the national level available for funding. However those programs have criteria for selecting projects, our expectation is that this would be another layer within that decision-making process, where on the network it appears.
Jennifer Symoun
Are the Tribal planning listening sessions summarized in the draft plan? I would be interested in reviewing the Tribal listening session findings as well as the environmental justice findings.
Bruce De Terra
Yes. There are links within the plan and our website for the freight mobility plan includes links to these documents. One could type in "California freight mobility plan" within your web browser and it will take you to a wide array of documents associated with it. The Tribal listening sessions were conducted to address a set of plans. We heard from the Tribes that they appreciated we brought the California Transportation Plan that's currently under development, the California State Rail Plan that was under development, the Freight Plan, and another highway plan. We took all of these and the State Safety Plan. We've took all of these to those listening sessions to have a broad discussion with them. They really appreciated hearing about that. The material coming from that it's not just freight specific.
Jennifer Symoun
I believe this question may have been for Jakub. During the discussion on the freight plan when he talked about parking and located near the city, was there discussion about localized impact on surrounding communities where you might encourage idle-free parking?
Jakub Rowinski
We didn't develop a freight plan. There is a freight component in the long-range plan that addresses truck parking. We did conduct a two-phase study. The local concerns in New Jersey for those who are not from New Jersey, it is a home rule state. The local support is critical to advancing anything like this and the impact, not just in terms of truck traffic, but noise and everything else were discussed with stakeholders at the local level.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. This question is for both of you. The staff consultant board member dynamic seems to accordion with elasticity. What would each of you say are their proportions of how the agendas are driven, that is, the extent of deep engagement by committee members or other items driven by a few, from either or several of these participants? I guess, is that a few members who seem to drive the agenda, or is it altogether that the committee works together on it? Jakub, we start with you, first.
Jakub Rowinski
It's a good mix in our case. It's a combination of the membership. When I say membership, we go back to our membership, it is state agencies like the, New Jersey DOT, and the bi-state Port Authority that drive a lot of the FIC activity. A lot of the counties are very active in the area of freight as well. As members of the committee, they contribute ideas and suggestions for possible topics. In addition to the actual voting membership, we also get a lot of good idea topics for presentations, discussion items from wider stakeholder membership. Again, I would say it's a very good mix in our experience, here.
Bruce De Terra
For the meetings we've had thus far, Caltrans that the agenda because we have been task driven to get the freight plan and get comments on that. In terms of participation and discussion that happens, I would say we have a good mix of participation. Our MPOs have strong representation and they are good at expressing their viewpoints. Our major freight facilities, such as seaports, they speak up well for themselves, same with railroads, other public agencies, and the advocacy groups. We sometimes get quite a dialogue going among them. Again, as I mentioned, we don't always get agreement, but we get the issues aired. I would say it's working very well and no one perspective or group dominates. There's a real back and forth.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. Another question for both of you. Have you had any major controversies the subject of advisory committee input? Bruce, we start with you first.
Bruce De Terra
Yes, there has. I've been at the center of several that have caused it. We have controversy, as I mentioned earlier, we have some air quality and environmental goals. We have a bit of a challenge in drafting some of our goals and what we say as a whole committee on that. We do have good, strong representation with industry, regional governments, and state governments agencies, some who are in a regulatory position. So, those discussions have been rather frank at times, which is very good, part of the intent of the committee.
We have controversy, a lot of controversy, actually, the first time we rolled out the proposed "tiering" of the freight network. That did not go over what was some of the committee members and they objected strongly to it. The view was we should keep that decision-making at the lowest level possible so that all of the projects are eligible to seek funding. We structured the plan so they are eligible for funding, but the state will likely have priorities for the projects they oversee.
Our initial call for projects had well over 1000 freight projects, which was over $200 billion. I went through and personally went through the entire list and identified projects that I determined we're not strictly freight or not real projects, they were "wish list" kinds of things. I decreased the list down to 300. The committee did not like that so we had another call for projects and are up to just under 700.
Then, we had another controversy over funding. We see that as a central tenet of our freight plan, the needs to be dedicated funding. Without that funding, the planning effort is not useless, but certainly not nearly as valuable as that would be. We're trying to get funding recommendations and could not reach consensus pursuing funding recommendations.
There is tension between some of the rural perspectives. They look at the big urban areas that have massive freight industries and the rural areas have needs as well. But, they sometimes overshadowed by the big urban areas and similarly, Tribal governments are often not getting the opportunities to get engaged in these matters. We've made extra efforts within our committee meetings to make sure they have that representation and the opportunity to speak.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. Jakub, I will ask the same question of you. Have there been major controversies?
Jakub Rowinski
I wouldn't call them controversies, maybe heated discussions is a better way, in our case, to put it. Some of the ones that stand out in my mind, we had a couple heated discussions on the idea of employee versus owner operator contractor drayage driver at the port. We had labor on one side and the companies that hire the drivers on the other side. We also do get some local residents, at times, coming in and voicing their concern for the number of trains going through their town, especially recently with the increase in the movement of crude by rail into and through our region. That's created some good conversation. I wouldn't say controversy, really, but just, you know, good debates and discussions, whatever you want to call it.
Jennifer Symoun
Another question for both of you. Have either committee started considering impact from truck training or driverless technology? Jakub, we start with you, first.
Jakub Rowinski
The committee has not looked at this issue, yet. We have internally a little bit. At the last meeting, which was a week ago, a week and a half ago, Monday, we did have a presentation on the truck driver shortage. So something along these lines, certainly, is on the horizon as a potential, I don't know if it's a game changer, but certainly something that would have an impact on some of those issues that we heard about at the last FIC.
Bruce De Terra
We have not had a discussion related to this topic, yet, but I'm sure we will in the coming year.
Jennifer Symoun
We have gone over everything that has been typed in to so let's see if there are any questions over the phone. Operator, could you please give instructions to ask questions over the phone.
Operator
To ask a question over the phone, please press star one on your keypad. We will pause a moment for questions. Again, to ask a question, please press star one on your keypad. There are no questions.
Jennifer Symoun
Well, it looks like we will go ahead and close out a little bit early today. I do want to thank everybody for attending today's seminar. I also want to thank all of our presenters. The recorded version of the webinar will be available online within the next few weeks. I will send an email once it is available. It will probably be about two or three weeks. I will send an email with the recording, and the transcript posted online. You can download the presentations on the screen.
The next seminar will be held on January 21. The registration is not yet available, but I will send notice to the LISTSERV once registration is open. If you haven't joined the LISTSERV, I encourage you to do so. It's the primary way we share information on Talking Freight, as well as a way to communicate with close to 1,000 freight professionals from across the country and internationally. One other thing I will mention, if you are applying for AICP CM credits for the seminar, the seminar is on the calendar now, so you can go after the seminar and apply for it.
With that, thank you to all the presenters. Happy holidays everyone and happy New Year and enjoy the rest of your day.
