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Nicole Coene
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you to the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Nicole Coene and I will moderate today's seminar. Today's topic is an Overview of MARAD'S StrongPorts Program.
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 five presentations, given by:
Roger Bohnert is the Deputy Associate Administrator of the Office of Intermodal System Development, he assists in developing policy and programs aimed at reducing congestion, removing barriers to the efficient movement of freight and passengers, and environmental sustainability. Roger leads the Agency's implementation of the new StrongPorts program aimed at helping the Nation's ports meet their modernization and expansion needs and is also the agency lead for the Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) Grant program, which has allocated over $500 million to port and marine transportation projects since 2009.
John Young is the Director of Freight and Surface Transportation Policy at the American Association of Port Authorities. While his primary responsibilities are covering freight and surface transportation policy issues, he also covers port security and the Department of Commerce's supply chain initiative. Previously, John acted as a legislative director in the U.S. Congress for two members on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where he created the bipartisan Goods Movement Caucus that developed the Projects of National & Regional Significance legislation that was considered and included in SAFETEA-LU. He has worked on and advocated for numerous transportation issues ranging from the reauthorization of SAFETEA-LU and MAP-21, to aviation, Coast Guard, port security and water policy issues.
Ben De Alba is Assistant Secretary for Rail and Ports at the California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA). He serves as an advisor to the Secretary on key freight-related issues. Ben also serves as the Secretary's representative on a number boards and commissions, including the Board of Pilot Commissioners for the Bays of San Francisco and the California-Mexico Border Relations Council. In addition, in collaboration with the California Department of Transportation, Ben guides and directs the California Freight Advisory Committee.
Robert B. Case is a Principal Transportation Engineer with the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization (HRTPO), where he leads a team of engineers who analyze the costs and benefits of mega projects, evacuation projects, maintenance, public transportation, and active transportation. Dr. Case is a licensed Professional Engineer in Virginia, a registered Professional Traffic Operations Engineer, and an ASCE Fellow. He is an adjunct instructor at Old Dominion University where he has taught transportation fundamentals, transportation planning, and preparation for the PE exam.
Jeffrey A. Florin is the Vice President of Port Development for the Virginia Port Authority. He joined the Port Authority in 2002 as Chief Engineer to lead the Port's largest capital development program, resulting in completion of the 50 foot channel, redevelopment of NIT, the Port's largest container terminal, and federal approval of the 600 acre eastward expansion of Craney Island.
Jeff's work at the Port Authority has focused on expanding capacity at the third largest port on the East Coast to accept the anticipated increase in freight coming through the expanded Panama Canal. He has led the way on projects designed to improve intermodal operations at the Port and to make freight movement more efficient while providing economic benefits to Virginia.
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.
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 Robert Bohnert of the US DOT Maritime Administration to get started.
Robert Bohnert
Good afternoon everyone. Thank you to our partners at the Federal Highway Administration, especially Caitlin Raymond and the freight team over there. We work hand-in-hand with those folks and it is a superb partnership.
Talking Freight is a great tool; we appreciate the opportunity to use it as a platform today. Looking at the sign-up list for today's call, it's impressive with a lot of ports and folks that I think are perfect for this kind of a dialogue.
We recently enlisted help of a firm to help us work on a new National Maritime strategy which is one of our agency's top priorities for the year, and as part of that they talk to about 60 different stakeholders and asked them what they think the Maritime Administration should be doing for the industry and for freight. We received a debrief from them a couple of days ago and interestingly the single strongest response we got was that they think the Maritime Administration should be an integrator. The subject of today's webinar is perfect because really it's all about integrating ports into the state and local planning processes, so we look at this as a system instead of the bunch of stand-alone activities as we move forward.
I will talk briefly about strong ports and the thinking behind how we put the program together and then turn the call over to my colleagues on the panel, and I think they will give you excellent examples of how they are integrating ports from the national level to state level to regional and the port perspectives. Before I get started, a quick public service announcement: I will likely mention the acronym MPO several times please consider that to be synonymous with counsel of government, regional planning organizations, rural planning organizations, municipalities, or any other planning organizations below the state level. So please do not use that as me singling out one type of regional planner but not another.
First thing we should talk about is why we should care so much about ports. You can see on this slide at the macro level that the gross domestic product or the state of our economy and prosperity, which is one of these two lines on the chart, and our international trade go hand-in-hand. You can see even when there is a glitch in one there is a glitch in the other. What this means that the national level is that international trade drives the economy. Anybody familiar with port network knows that something on the order of 99% of overseas trade by volume moves through our ports, and thus the ports are critical. 'Great macroeconomic being' what does this mean to the folks on the phone? We picked a couple of ports as examples and almost every single part of the country has done economic impact study and you can see the importance of ports to their own community, and to their state and region is substantial in both the numbers of jobs and in dollars. The ports on national level all the way down to local community are really significant. We kind of face a problem. The ports are really a silent engine. In spite of the fact that they drive productivity and drive economy and they drive jobs, most people don't know what they do unless they stop doing them.
So how do we make sure they are ready for the present and future? The ports face challenges. We see in the news a lot about the West Coast only part of that problem had to do with labor, and a lot had to do with various components that were causing congestion. On the East Coast a couple of years ago Super Storm Sandy created problems and our problems with terminal and gateways and other congestion issues. A lot of aging infrastructure and many ports in the US were built in the 1950s-1970s. Many of them are overdue for more than just a facelift. So if you look forward we had a couple of real challenges we are facing on top of that. One is the growing population - by 2045 our population will grow by 70 million people. The experts predict that will drive freight volumes of by something on the order of 45%.
How do we address that if the ports are already reaching their limits? In 2010 Congress directed us to address this through the Defense Authorization Act and they directed the Secretary of Transportation to establish a port infrastructure development program for improvement of port facilities. That is what we are calling 'Strong Ports' because it's easier to remember. How do we approach the task of implementing this program? What we learned was that any project has a continuum and does not matter if you are putting a new deck on the back of your house or building a large infrastructure project in import. You must start with planning and engagement with the colors and goes on to deal with financing and financial strategies and project execution. But we found that ports are unique and a lot of that in that we have opportunities in each of those categories that we will talk about separately to help ports kind of catch up.
We realize ports are not all part of the integrated planning process. Much of this came out when we saw the ratio of ports that got Tiger grants, compared to other applicant's highways and transit systems and so forth. We realize that ports have not been planning under legislative mandates for 20 or so years. So for planning and engagement we really saw that we have a lot of opportunity to help ports kind of catch up on. Some ports are fabulous at it, and some of the bigger ports have great planning staff, some of the smaller ports less so. A couple of the things we are doing here, and this is with our colleagues with the Association of Port Authorities and John Young who will be speaking next, a part of planning and investment toolkit. We rolled out in November our first piece for the module which is on financing, and we're working on the second one now for planning. The others that are in the queue will be public-private partnerships and project execution and others as needs arise when we realize there was not a broad planning for dummies on different ports so working with APA we did that. Here in the Maritime administration and the last year or so hire part Nelson who is from an MPO so we can learn more of how service transportation planning works. Barden is putting together our ports talk program series which is one of the more formal ways we can help ports MPO fatalities and other stakeholders come together and get the ports into the transportation planning process. The second one is financing and what we're finding here is there are very few simple financing strategies anymore and they are all becoming joint adventures of one form or another where there is port money mixing with state regional ride in some cases and federal so we are working with the ports to a couple of mechanisms and obviously Tiger grants but that only takes you so far. We are also working with the new Build America Transportation Investment Center which is helping entities including ports put together these joint financing ventures and we have seven ports we are working with right now with several others in the queue on that to help identify funding mechanisms and we are trying to see if we can help with things. Some of those other mechanisms to be part of this sort of pie chart that can collectively help fund projects inside and outside of the port.
Lastly, project support. We are helping some individual ports with how to manage projects. We are working with about 40 ports or so involved in the TIGER Grant Program and we are helping them and that transportation investments in our ports and that is sort of a cradle to grave type of thing so we will work with them right to the completion of the construction project. A lot more we are doing with the Strong Ports program now and several new initiatives are in the queue for the future. I understand that we will have time for questions after the panel, so thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Robert. We will now move on to John Young of the American Association of Port Authorities.
John Young
Thank you. As my presentation comes up for those of you who are not familiar with the American Association of Port Authorities, we are the unified voice of the Seaport Industry here in DC. We have over 300 members including major seaports in the country as well as DOT as well as engineering companies.
We are active on the hill - on Monday we just did a ports 101 briefing for about 60 people including staff and press. Our ports that presented their work there were New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles, Houston, Virginia, and our board president this year was the moderator.
Along with the work we do as an association, we have two very active coalitions. On the waterside we have cover maintenance tax coalition for Hit the Mark campaign for funding for dredging and spending down the maintenance tax funds, and then on the land side we leave the freight or chair the freight stakeholder coalition and it's 19 national stakeholders and you can see by their logos who they are. It's a very diverse group and they are the planners and users and providers of the transportation system. We have weighed in on the last four reauthorization bills, and we work very closely with the authorizing and appropriation committees on freight issues.
Roger touched on most of these as far as the role that ports play in the economy, and we try not to be silent. Most of our numbers are very active in their communities we try to channel that here in Washington. But just quickly, the cargo will be to argue as ports generate 13 million jobs. Over one fourth of the US economy is a common four by international trade and 99% of overseas trade goes through the American seaports and then ports actively generating more than 200 million in federal state and local tax revenues. So these are numbers that are hard to ignore, and we find that when we have an audience people tend to listen. As far as the three phases of ports and what we do, we start with the waterside and this typically advocates for dredging and maintenance of the federal navigation channels that we have on the inside of the gates operational policies. For the land side we have is for connecting freight and the ports to the service transportation network and moving freight into the port for experts in and out into the country for imports.
Today I will focus more on the service transportation land site policies that we are looking at. Our footprint is getting bigger and expanding and there are a lot of reasons driving this. Most of you have probably heard about the larger vessels now coming in to our ports, and they are really testing capacity of channels, and also the terminal capacity. We are also pushing a lot of this increased freight movement out of the gate in terms of how we operate. What are driving this are the increasing populations in metropolitan areas of the overall greater trade volumes. Roger laid out some of the numbers and I will touch on that a little later, but I think at this point numbers do not mean as much and I think it's the pictures that are being created with increased trade.
Impact is moving beyond the port gates. By that I mean more than ever we are hearing from members that we need to be connected to the Service Transportation Network, and we need cleaner and more efficient connections. That includes highway connectors and on dock rail. 73% of our members have the on dock rail and they say it is a vital part of not only how they grow, but also how they are moving freight out into the country right now. We are also seeing we have a more integrated port network. This is coming in many forms. Marine highways are becoming more and more active. Roger mentioned a barge project that he is working on with Virginia and I know that Jeff will mention that and we are also seen a lot of reliance on distribution centers outside our gates and this is really kind of expanding our freight network and bring it up a little bit but also placing new demands on it.
In regards to the TIGER Grant, from import perspective we could not be happier with it. It really serves as kind of a catalyst for ports and brought us into the planning network with MPOs and Cox and since 2009 we have administered 39 projects worth $500 million, but there have been other projects that have been administered by FHWA that have been in a model and have helped with the freight network. One of the things that I think is very important with ports when we are investing in TIGER and building projects is the additional leverage funding. TIGER grant alone for the projects have leveraged over $700 million in additional funding. The other thing to remember about ports is that we are kind of like the incubator for public private partnerships. A lot of funding as a reported by the private sector, 46 billion over the next five years will be invested and not only in ports, but in the networks. Spoke which leads me to MAP-21. MAP- 21 took a lot of the good that TIGER has put up from and freight import perspective and really put an emphasis on the planning and it has been important for ports to keep engaging and I think it has been important for 21 layout this framework of state freight plans and encouragement to establish freight advisory committees and then also have that process kind of emotion as we approach next reauthorization bill.
I just want to put this in here now, because I mentioned earlier that population numbers do not matter as much -- they matter because freight numbers are important numbers that do matter, but when you look at this picture and just think about how you will move this freight out into not only through or around the community, but open to the country, how can you not plan for that? Planning provisions have been important matter what the numbers are and just seeing a port and day-to-day activity and amount of freight that coastal all of our ports really give you a greater understanding and perspective of where we need to go with them with planning and funding of freight network.
Building off the picture metaphor, we have conducted at the American Association for Authorities have conducted a survey on infrastructure needs. We have surveyed and basically got almost 100% of response from our members and we focused on three main areas: planning, investments, and financing. The purpose is to kind of set the course for the next three authorization bill and layout what from import industry perspective kind of where the needs are and what we need and how we can move forward. From a planning perspective, and these are preliminary results, 67% of our ports have worked with MPOs or Council of Governments and 75% of our ports have developed or participated in development of our states freight plan in my understanding is that right now US DOT has 42 state freight plans. 69% of our ports have worked or are part of local freight advisory committee. Which leads us to intermodal connectors and one of the things that our members are very interested in is how do we really kind of still efficiency into the freight network and usually starts with intermodal connectors.
Many of you may have heard the last Talking Freight call where we were given an update on a freight connector study that MADRAD and FHWA is conducting and a lot of changed since 2000 . It grew by 50%, and at the same time we have seen record population growth in metropolitan areas where parts generally are, grew by 33 million people so the connector system we have right now is connecting our ports needs to be updated and really being used, or abused I should say.
As far as investment in our framework in our connectors, over the next decade we are looking at investing in intermodal connectors or needing to invest. One of our survey questions asked what kind of investment we need. Nearly 81% of our import members said that a minimum investment of 10 million connectors is necessary, and 31% said 100 million is needed. But 35% of port authority said congestion on connectors negatively impacted their port connectivity by 25%. We also asked about projects and again these are preliminary, but basically from import industry perspective looking outside the gate were looking from import, we have about 18.7 we have about 18.7 million in project and regional and national projects and 6.7 million in projects in almost 2 billion for TIGER projects that the industry is looking at to fund or to build.
In regards to financing gaps, one of the interesting things about the survey that we found out is that as much as on dock rail is a key piece for ports, in the future, only 13% of our members have really accessed or utilize RRIF. Even more surprising is only 8% have access and utilize TIFIA. We did see there is a strong interest in Petri and you could almost categorize ports as a Petri incubator. These 34% are using or planning to use Petri, and 14% are identified private activity bonds as a source that they have used in the past and 61% said they are using other and that is yet to be defined but I think as Roger said with the build America, initiative, that there has been a great response to that from ports.
Investment is going to continue to be critical and I think just to summarize ports are already investing 46 billion over the next five years and certainly need the government to uphold and be a partner as we build out the freight network and we have seen that the private sector certainly has a role to play in P3 for ports and I think there is a good opportunity going forward to leverage additional funding, not just typical the funds. From an AAPA perspective, here is what we are looking at as we move towards the next three authorization bill designation of gateway and corridors. Identification of connectors and primary freight network and expertise in maritime freight planning should be a part of every DOT and I think Roger touched on that and it's important to have that understanding or expertise on the state level.
Dedicated funding we feel is vitally important. Success of TIGER really illustrates that are more level not just funding but planting just planning. Spoke with also think that port authority should be able to apply directly for funding if there is going to be a free program and then funding for connectors intermodal projects first and last month, those are continuing to the top priorities around the country with many of our members and then also funding for projects and national and regional significance or a larger discretionary program that can hit on some of those gateway projects, and then finally the TIFIA program certainly keeping that but making it more port friendly port accessible and then other strong financing options that ports can utilize.
That is my presentation, but there is just one other thing I want to touch on as a question to the group. I think there is also a lot of state work being done on freight on and I know Louisiana and Texas have programs and I would be interested if anyone has information on a state program when there are freight funds available that could leverage potential in federal funds. I would like to hear more about that. And with that I will hand it back to Nicole.
Nicole Coene
Thank you John. We will now move on to Ben De Alba of the California State Transportation Agency.
Ben De Alba
Thank you that was a wonderful presentation from John. I will touch on some of the state funding programs in my presentation here. I would like to say thank you for inviting me to participate on this webinar. It is an honor to be here speaking to you today. I have learned a lot from these webinars over the years so it is an honor to be getting back to the webinar today.
I am Ben De Alba Assistant Secretary of Relative Ports and my objective today is to provide some insight on how California has integrated maritime to its overall state planning or California Freight Mobility Plan, as well as touch on some of how the strong ports program sent to California and policy this is possibly how to get into your program as well. I identified some key points that really explain how California was able to integrate maritime into state wide planning. One is our new transportation agency, California state transportation agency, as well as a mission for the California Department of Transportation. Secondly, it was important that we involve the maritime industry as we went through the planning process for our state freight plan, and then thirdly I will touch on a history of successful maritime investments that really propelled and provided a foundation for the plant we just completed the freight plan we completed just at the end of 2014. For the end I will touch on a few things that I think play a strong role in or how Strong Ports had a role in California as we move forward for planning sort of integrated system that has been touched on in the two presentations earlier and how do we integrate maritime into the broader picture of transportation as a whole in California.
This is a picture of the San Francisco terminal or the transmission center and it is in the downtown San Francisco and it is not complete and this is clearly a rendering of what the finished product will look like and when it is complete. It will house 11 transit operators within one facility including the California high-speed rail. Right now it's a big hole in the ground and some people refer to it as the Big Dig, but this facility represents the thinking here in California. What this really means for maritime and it's integration and this facility is the quintessential terminal or multimodal terminal that integrates multi-modes of 21 facilities. At the top you can see people in an outdoor park and the level below there is a bus terminal and just below them is a robust retail facility, and then below underground you have intercity high-speed rail as well as commuter trains all coming into the same terminal. This is really the movement California or in the past California is taking on transportation and how do we really plan a system to work as a whole and to be seamless and integrated for the citizens of California. The task for the lead on taking on this effort of integration is the California State Transportation Agency, and this is no easy task but the governor really recognizes the importance of having a single integrated agency that is responsible for coordinating all of our transportation entities into one agency. We are a new agency just created in 2013 and prior to the transportation agency, were a large cabinet agency that was not solely focused on transportation and had a number of other portfolios. This is a welcomed change here in California and this agency that really brings a much needed voice to transportation at the cabinet level here in California. The mission of the agency is to develop and coordinate policies and programs of the state transportation entities to achieve state mobility and safety and air quality objectives of its transportation system.
We execute that mission to our transportation entities and departments here in California. As you can see the Department of Transportation at the top Caltrans is one of our constituent agencies and we also have a plethora of others that we work with.
As a whole the secretary here is responsible for about 40,000 employees and an annual budget of about 19 billion. Kind of going on this integration theme, one of the first efforts the new agency took on was to give an external review of the Department of Transportation here in California, and it was to take on a fresh look at how to really make the department more effective and better able to serve the people of California. Prior to the review, Caltrans has been largely focused on one mode and that is highway building and expansion and the maintenance and operations. They had not really taken a larger look at the bigger picture in California in terms of integrating other modes of transportation and how that may affect California mobility. As you can see the old mission statement for Caltrans was "Caltrans improves mobility across California" and something that came out of our external review which was completed last year, suggested creating a new mission. Caltrans adopted the new mission, and now it reflects sort of this new path the department is taking to provide a safe and sustainable and integrated and efficient transportation system to enhance California economy and livability. That means encompassing highway and real maritime and airports as well as pedestrian, and integrating them all into one system.
Not surprisingly enough but pretty important, the first plan that was completed under the new mission from Caltrans was the California state Freight Mobility Plan and it was the department's first stab at really developing this multimodal plan that encompassed and incorporated all of the modes represented here in the pictures. As you can see the rail and highway and air cargo and many may be aware of our plan and I am sure the US Department of Transportation is because we submitted it to them early in the year but may not be so much aware and eight workings or insights that went in an effort into creating the plan.
I would say probably the biggest accomplishment here other than just completing the plan, is that it was written in-house and done within the Department of Transportation. It was written by our freight team and I think you may have heard from the gentleman in December who is a fantastic and really knowledgeable in this area. This goes on to the fact that the staff if you will write in house you have to be educated on the supply chain and during the process and even before of the drafting of the plan the staff within the department visited supply chain facilities, key intermodal facilities and reports within California to get better understanding of how the system really works and how to interact with one another and I think that was key. They also educate their staff by holding annual workshops or sort of week-long training and they just focus on freight and supply chain so they can better equip them for planning in the future. We have consulted our California Freight Advisory Committee and they were a key player in the whole planning process and I want to get into that here a little bit deeper in my presentation by showing you the meat of the plan and what it means to have this multimodal plan here in California and accomplishments of Caltrans in developing it is we had to identify all of the key freight facilities. This map represents that minus the highways. If we included the highways it would be a mess, but this is a rail network to the ports and airports as well as the Marine Highway which was a huge feet for the department considering the path to being focused on highways. They had not considered Marine growth in the past so be identified along the pointer here, which goes into our inland ports and the port of Stockton and West Sacramento. I lost a bit of my conductivity. We also identified the letter implies highway off the coast of California. We did that because it's important that we identified where the cargo is coming to our gateways so we can adapt and plan on the land side.
That is when we really got into identifying our court order and important corridors that connect to these gateways with the seaports as well as to the rest of the nation and internationally and to Mexico. As we heard from John, we have these larger vessels calling at our ports and dumping larger amounts of cargo which is putting an increased strain on our transportation system. I believe as John said, it is difficult and how can you not plan for such an increased volume and cargo on the land side? We have to be cognizant of what is taking place in our global gateways and plan accordingly to the rest of the infrastructure and that is what Caltrans has done really well here. They went ahead and to the most important are the key interregional and interstate connectors for dark connectors on both the highway system and rail networks. I will not get into a whole lot of detail here, but feel free to follow up if you want to understand a little bit more on how we to the system but that is pretty much the meat and potatoes of the California Freight Mobility Plan and the importance for connecting how we work with the maritime ports. Continuing on how we get there is the bigger question and that is working through the California freight advisory committee and with our regional metropolitan planning agencies and MPO and regional transportation planning agency, we have a couple or a handful of very large MPO in California representing Northern California, Central California, and Southern California regions. Spoke individually they can put together their own set of three plans and identify freight projects within their plans and they participate in the freight advisory committee and we also have individual seaports participating on the committee as well as the California Association of port authorities that is represented there as well.
I think the important connection between all of these entities at the freight advisory committee is that we put our chief deputy at the California Department of Transportation as the chair of the California Freight Advisory Committee, so he is the central hall if you will between all of these organizations and collecting the input through that advisory committee. Really disseminate that through the department and down into the planning staff. I think that is important and one that could be noted through the rest of the states of the union, but to have someone of that prominence to rate the freight advisory committee I think speaks volumes and increases integrity of the committee itself. We work with all of the stakeholders and there are more than just their time industry on the freight advisory committee. We have environmental justice communities, so on and so forth.
I will mention that after the majority of our committee meetings we do a site toward much like we had with Caltrans who educates their own staff. When writing the plan we make an effort to educate our freight stakeholders who may not have opportunity to visit some of these freight facilities to go out there so they can see what is actually taking place and the importance they have on our economy. This is our bread and butter for freight investments and it took part in 2006 when California voters passed general allocation bond which allowed 20 billion and which 2 billion went into a fun call the trade corridor improvement fund with supported over $7 billion in freight investments. That was a leverage of about $5 billion just by putting 2 billion into the program and a lot of those projects that we funded leveraged TIGER funding as well as other sources of funding. We had tremendous success in this program and the corridor improvement program. As I said it was really the catalyst for the work that we are doing today because of its success. This was prior to our freight advisory committee because they had to work together to get funding priorities in order when receiving these funds. We actually did a survey with a quick raise of hands in our last previous meeting of those who were in attendance that worked on the previous allocation of these funds and there was a good strong representation of people who work in this past program still working today on freight issues in California. Then of course we have the TIGER funding success here in California, not only working to fund infrastructure projects at our ports but also supporting some of the air quality objectives that are being worked on here in California.
What does this all mean? When we integrate maritime into the state wide freight plan, we are trying to get projects like this one that you are looking at now. This is what we call the Oakland local project at the Port of Oakland. We are looking here at the highway to the Bay Bridge and San Francisco and the city is off to your right, but this is a prime example of a project that involves stakeholders.
This takes tremendous coordination and we also have the highway connectors mentioned previously. This type of project takes a lot of coordination and this is why we have to put it in our planning so we can plan for it and then get similar projects throughout the rest of our maritime ports in California. As an example of some of the partners we are involved with, this is pretty much it at every level including the Department of Transportation with the TIGER funds. The Metropolitan Planning Commission, which is the original MPO in Oakland, played a humongous role in securing some of the state funds and that comes from the trade corridor program I mentioned earlier and then the Port of Oakland also is a partner obviously as well as the city of Oakland and then we have private stakeholders and maritime is really a feeding ground for P3 and working the team public and private industry so it's a wonderful example of Oakland planning at every level in order to get successful projects that will advance industry and allow for a smooth integration between the shipping and rail and tracking.
To touch on where Strong Ports can really help particularly here in California, really connecting the stakeholders and I think they had done some wonderful work like that. The port of Stockton and the Port of Oakland when working on a part service on the inlet. I know MADRAD played an important role in putting it in the right stakeholders who would do such a service to make it happen. I think similar efforts like the strong ports can be a huge help as well as focus on ports with your resources. I had a conversation with one of our partners here in California who works at an import, and we were talking about the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland and how all have had robust planning stuff but the other ports may not have such large planning step back into all of these forecasting and I think the Strong Ports program can really be beneficial to those ports if they are proactive in reaching out to them. I think MADRAD has done some of this in the past, but I can't really think of the national and international perspectives into state and regional planning where sometimes we become too focused on what is happening within our borders and I think that can open up a picture and give us the right tools to plan for the global supply chain and what is taking place on a national level and where the nation is heading and in which direction.
There is a relatively new challenge and I want to bring this up that we are taking part here in California. It is freight policy integration, so now that our transportation agency has a freight mobility plan focusing on infrastructure, we are looking at ways to incorporate that plan into a broader policy discussion with our sister agencies and the California Air Resources Board Inc., California Energy Commission, and economic development agency here in California. The question is how we coordinate all of the policies within those agencies into one freight policy that touches on air quality and public health and increase energy security and system resiliency and supports logistics growth and job creation, as well as enhances mobility among freight corridors. I'm interested in how MARAD and a strong ports program can play a key role as we move forward with freight policy in California. With that I ask you if you have any questions to please feel free to reach out to me.
Nicole Coene
Thank you Ben. We will now move on to Rob Case of the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization.
Robert Case
I will be talking about how MPOs help freight move forward. I will be talking about the four points introductory and how we identify and test projects here at the MPO. I will then be talking about rail and highway interaction and promoting freight projects. I work for the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization, which is the fuel for Hampton Roads Virginia in southeastern Virginia. You may be familiar with folks in Newport News and Virginia Beach who are all included in that area. We had one of the largest container ports on the East Coast, which Jeff will talk about in a minute, and almost 2,000,000 in population with the largest naval base in the world. I think also the largest coal loading facility in the world. One of the things we have done recently is created this Freight Transportation Advisory Committee (FTAC). It advises the board that I work for and it is comprised of freight professionals. On the private side you have trucking companies like Givens and then railroad companies like Norfolk Southern, one of the largest in the nation. Then you have Canon and Walmart who need to move a lot of freight in order to stay in business. As far as tapping the FTAC, it's a little different than other committees. Jeff Florin has to do the stuff that we ordinarily do, which is to prepare agendas and provide meeting space and find new members. One of the things we do here as MPO staff, is identify and test all kinds of projects including freight projects. Here is something we did a few years ago where we looked at the highways that have the highest volumes.
We forecasted traffic and analyzed intersections and make recommendations. Another thing we have done to help the port is a larger regional freight study, which we do about every four years. Not only do we look at the amount of material that is imported and exported to the port, but we enumerated chart delays and then recommended a major highway project to address those trucks delays. Another project that we had done, and all these are available on our website and you will see that at the end, is we built on the previous study by looking at future truck volumes 20 years down the road so to speak. We were able to do that because our transportation model includes trucks specifically and separate from models, and also to do a time of day analysis as opposed to 24 hour analysis. Through that process we added the ports as a special trucks generator because they produced more trucks than your average industrial area. We went through that and we were able to forecast trucks and see where the problems would be in the future. We did that for information for long-range transportation plans, and that is what the LRTP stands for - Longer Range Transportation Plan. I'll talk more about that in a minute.
We don't just do these studies so that they just sit on the shelf, but we use their output as input for this tool which selects projects and promotes them in that way. Before I get to that, I want to talk about the study we did of a hypothetical inland port. We have one here and we were thinking that it might be valuable to build another one on the edge of our metropolitan area. That way containers that ordinarily would go by truck to and from the port, could go by rail to the edge of the metropolitan area and therefore would keep trucks from the highway congestion. Although, there may be many other reasons to build such a project, we found the impact on regional congestion would be small.
Here is the participation total I mentioned. One of the ways the project has promoted as being a long-range transportation plan and or tool, measures all kinds of projects on all kinds of things such as: economic impact, congestion impact, and safety. We also get projects if they improve access to the port. That is what you can see here in the three bullets, the way that projects will get more points if they do that. When we tried to do this for Map-21, we were trying to get ahead of the curve on the national freight network, which you may have heard about and the national freight strategic plan.
We did some advanced work on that at our goal was to position ourselves for future freight infrastructure funding, which was mentioned by one of the previous presenters that may be in the new legislation. Now I will talk about the FTAC specifically. They advised us on all of those projects that we did the studies on, and they also have done several other specific things. The first thing you see there is a freight video which the port managed and funded. They hired somebody to create this professional video which promoted and teaches about the importance of freight. As somebody said earlier, this is sort of a "silent freight" and doesn't really speak for itself. The second thing is the Virginia Freight Transportation Summit which brought a lot of people together and was managed and funded by the Virginia Port Authority. Third one was working with us in our process for long-range transportation plan process which was mentioned in identifying freight beneficial projects for us to consider and then finally we are in the middle of a study done by consultant to determine tipping point for toll amounts and their impact on trucks and economy.
That is some of the stuff that we are doing to coordinate with the port, so you can find all of that stuff on our website. I can answer questions by email. Thank you.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Rob. Our final presentation will be given by Jeff Florin of the Virginia Port Authority.
Jeff Florin
Hello everyone. It's such a pleasure being part of this seminar as a partner with everyone who has spoken so far, with the exception of California who I'd love to partner with to get into some of their paid offers of money that they have out there. I will start by talking about the port of Virginias master plan as this slide comes up. Every port has a master plan, and what ports do is they look at cargo forecasts at the national level, coast level, and regional level, and then bring it down to the state level to see what would be a reasonable expectation that cargo will come into the port.
We look at the demand and see where we want to develop plans to develop capacity so we can stay ahead of demand. However, we cannot do it alone. The theme throughout all of the presentation so far has been Strong Ports which are required integrated planning among a vast array of stakeholders and partners. Here are the three elements to be a successful port. Deep water is essential and when the water is not uniformly deep across the port, the staff on a budget decides how to create these channels, which could be long. Our channel is 18 miles out to open water and from there to where the hardships are going.
We report infrastructure to facilitate the efficient transport of cargo from the ship to the inland transportation system, into a truck or a train or in some cases to a barge. Then finally good in length transportation connections only cargo can get from the port to destination port in the reverse from origins in the United States to import. We are talking about integrated planning which is a key element to being successful. Ports used to primarily focus on what was going on inside the gates so we went to make sure that our infrastructure was built with plenty of capacity in it so that we could handle anything that was done at us and then look at the side, the channels, and our primary focus. As we are talking to be successful now ports required broader planning and a lot more outside the gate coordination if you will. The MARAD Strong Ports Program encourages partnerships to help with these matters. Partnerships leverage those three elements that I talked about: deep water, poor infrastructure, and inland transportation connections. P3 projects and then port and then transportation connections will partner with the various federal agencies and MPOs with the Hampton Roads Metropolitan Planning Organization.
This is a close up slide showing the Hampton Roads area which is located in southeastern Virginia. Just to help orient you, this structure right here in the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and to the right of that is the Atlantic Ocean. 18 miles from our terminals which are located here and the channel goes up to Newport News. As it gets further inland up towards Richmond, it gets shallower and goes down to 25. It then goes down into Chesapeake in the southern region here, and there that connects with the Intracoastal Waterway. The channels are busy but deep. We are starting the process to deepen them to 55 by partnering with the Corps of Engineers. Terminal improvements often require innovative financing mechanisms and ports are never shy about spending other people's money. With TIGER grants we were fortunate to have one and then the stimulus program back in 2009. We spoke with regional financing assistance and we partnered with the TPO and various grants which are briefly mentioned here. The Port of Virginia Operator Program is a very similar to the program cash for clunkers for trucks. We were fortunate to receive a CMAQ grant that would allow us to offer up to $20,000 to a trucker if he would scrap his older vehicle and replace it with 2008 or newer technology.
In Richmond we were successful with the MPO and they are to receive a grant for a mobile Harvard training, which is a large piece of equipment to transfer cargo from the barge to the port of Richmond. The rail enhancement fund program is something we have been successful with and a number of grants and can demonstrate the public benefits. John talked about how that rail down here on the lower left is an IT facility which is a on that rail facility that takes cargo to record from the ship and put it on the train and to the gates. I talked a little bit about the TIGER grant which we were fortunate to win last year. This is a classic last mile connection project that will connect to a new interstate connection being built at Norfolk International Terminal and will double the gate capacity at that facility. I mentioned the stimulus program back in 2009 which was used to build the median rail line which is shown here. You can see is in the middle of the state highway planned 20 years ago, we are still waiting for this rail connection to be funded and built. Finally in land transportation connections which I will show you some specific projects. It's been challenged by increasing congestion and more cargo coming in, but communities around us are also growing so it becomes a challenge to move back cargo to the communities without disrupting them.
The benefits of our economics to the localities but the average citizen doesn't always realize the economic benefit if he has tuck with a train across the road or stuck traveling amongst a bunch of trucks on the way to his home. One of the things that I have learned it being here for the past 10 years is there is no easy formula for a project but I have learned that every project needs a champion. Every champion needs multiple partners and a large measure of persistence because most of these projects take a decade or more to get through the system.
First project is the heartland corridor and the lower right is the part of Virginia and this was a cold route going to Virginia and this was a partnership between the entities between multiple states, federal government and project trends. There are 230 miles off the distance between Chicago which is a major hub as you all know. The James River Barge is another project with multiple partners. This is a barge and call three times a week in Richmond and three times a week at Hampton Roads and removes tracks off of I-64 and it's a great way of transporting cargo to Richmond as opposed to the highway.
The I- 564 connector is the trouble connector that was talked about and again 64 connects out to 95 which is the major interstate north and south of the East Coast. 64 comes out and connects up to 564 which goes to the database and the internal connector comes from 564 right to the front gate of the database, which is the largest database of the world shown here. Rob talked about the FTAC. It's 100% private freight movers that provide advice and recommendations to be TPO to the decision-makers through cross organization. The future projects of Virginia in the way and this is one that we have been working on for 4-5 years. It's a real connector which will tie into one of the state routes that mediate rail project I showed a couple of slides before , the railroad continues on tell out to the heartland corridor and then a couple of great separations in Suffolk . It has a billion-dollar plus or minus project and it will take several years to get that one into the system.
Final project is the I-44. It has multiple partners from TPO and FTAC and goes from there and connects so there are two municipalities that are fairly unique on the East Coast and that we are the only large municipalities are still to have one interstate connection coming in and out of them. This connector will provide secondary interstate and it provides a good connection between the port and northeastern North Carolina which is a large market for us.
In conclusion Strong Ports really highlights many of the things that report has been doing over the past number of years to be successful. It's a model that is absolutely required for any of these projects to make into this system. That concludes my presentation.
Nicole Coene
Thank you Jeff. I'd now like to start off the Q&A session with the questions posted online. Once we get through those questions, if time allows I'll open up the phone lines for questions. First question from Chuck back for Roger Did you ever serve as CO CEU Prov?
Roger Bohnert
I'm a former Coast Guard officer and Chuck is trying to figure out exactly where we cross paths and indeed it was in Miami.
Nicole Coene
Next question Have you consider making your port training online?
Roger Bohnert
We are trying to understand and I think that is poor planning and investment toolkit. Actually the toolkit we have is on the website I think on the website as well tested AAPA. This is an interesting question about turning it into training modules which we will go take back and think about because there might be opportunities that we had, so thank you for the question.
Nicole Coene
Can you provide more information on the 'Port Talks' series you mentioned that Barbara Nelson is heading up?
Roger Bohnert
Yes, and I have Barb Nelson here to make sure I got it right, but there was a lot of the discussion today and it was really well put together because it was virtually every level of government, but it talked about how the ports need to be part of, as a matter of fact in Virginia's case, they have a seat on the MPO. Other ports we have found don't know what MPO stands for, so those are the two goalposts and all ports fall somewhere in between. You have seen the importance of those relationships. But what we have done is put together this port talk program so that whatever level of current sophistication the relationship between the port and MPO and state duty and municipality and even congressional representation is, our program is aimed at increasing the to a higher level so you get from knowing what the and feels transported to be on the MPO to actually having them having a poor integrated planning. Basically we have three levels of doing that and the first is a fairly brief consult with remote unit with my phone or the port and try to understand what the current state is and the second is sort of a port talk light which is about half a day that we do at the ports or MPO or whatever the case may be. That is to take the relationships to the next level. Once we are at the highest level, we can bring the ports from the MPO and the OT and hopefully a fairly decent into DC and we spent an entire day with that group you're hosting them and working on the issues that the ports and planners have. If they have dredging issues we will invite the Corps of Engineers and our progress from AAPA and perhaps other federal funding mechanisms that you've heard discussed so it will be custom tailored to them and sort of like the graduate program for port talk.
Nicole Coene
How is the Grow America going to change what we do with MAP 21 and the ports?
Roger Bohnert
The goal of America has a pretty robust great element to it. It does not carve out specific ports or maritime funding programs were told but within the larger umbrella of freight it calls for additional planning mechanisms and all of that. Probably most important is it has provisions for 10 billion-dollar grant program that is sort of like TIGER grant but over like a four-year period of the proposed legislation. A lot more dollars per year and it does include port and maritime projects.
This is done with AAPA. To add on, I think that growth America takes a strong step in the right direction in that yes it is a 10 billion-dollar freight program, but it really grows. for example there is the half of the 10 billion is for discretionary program which is like TIGER but then the other half is like formula program because every state which I think will be useful to ports and the freight network in general. And it's really driven a lot by the state freight plan laid out in Map 21. The work that states have been doing is the work that the state advisory freight committees have been doing with the MPO and US DOT would really come to fruition if something like rural America were passed into law.
Nicole Coene
Next question: would the Association consider allowing a small set-a-side, from the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund and/or the Inland Waterway Trust Fund, for port planning initiatives that could bring state DOTs, MPOs, and private enterprise together for P3s and other local and regional development?
John Young
First of all it's not our decision unfortunately. Our policy on the HMT has been expended for what it was intended for and that is for maintenance and dredging and keeping the federal navigation channels clear. Provided the owner equity pots, what I mentioned at the beginning of my presentation is one of our correlations we is kind of heading appropriation marks of HMT funding that is typically collected and should be going to maintaining our channels and enhancing and maintaining infrastructure and making sure it is used for that, that has been our priority and our focus
Nicole Coene
How do we make the case for maritime freight? How do we shift more long haul goods movement from trucking to the waterways (and rail)? In NYC many elected believe that the highest and best use for our land is housing development. This threatens existing port facilities let alone any hopes of expansion.
Roger Bohnert
This is Roger. We are starting to use the phrase assignment engine for ports because it is really hard for them to sort of get their visibility. The land use issue we are seeing more and more of. A few years ago it was San Diego to the specific Northwest and certainly a place as we push for identification of an agent. I think some of the things that Ben is doing with elevating freight within the state are also things we need to do at the city and municipality level and I think that the partnerships between the municipal planners and the ports and then getting the story into the headlines on their value is really important. Ultimately in San Diego that was what kind of health of the sports arena and at least now it's still a container terminal.
Ben De Alba
This is Ben from California Transportation Agency. San Diego is a fine example of how the port has become sort of surrounded with in land development. It is important to elevate the issue of freight within your state as we try to do here in California and sort of integrate freight planning into all aspects of planning whether it's land use or air-quality or energy , even in highways. So our freight mobility program informs a number of other efforts here in California on the state level. Raising the issues having those champions in the state is important and we have one important person here mentioned earlier Christian Deaconess the port director of port of anemic here in California and she is a prominent advocate for ports and a member of the national freight advisory committee works with her California freight advisory committee and I believe she is now the president of the American Association of port authorities.
Jeff Florin
This is Jeff Florin from the port of Virginia. Not always easy to shift freight from mode to mode. The sweet spot if you will for a trip to rail it is based on economics and generally 500 miles so to go less than 500 miles and there have been cases where it does work , often times there is an incentive involved to cause it to shift from all one mode to another and then likewise when you're looking on the website with Marine Highway barging, there really needs to be kind of an amount of freight that needs to move between those two points . In our case there is quite a bit of freight that wills between Richmond and Hampton Roads. I-64 is somewhat of a congested route so in some cases the shippers prefer to put it on the water because it is a much less congested route. But it's also a route that is a bit more expensive so there are incentives that are involved to cause that mode shift to occur.
Rob Case
This is Rob Case. As far as the lady mentioned, elected officials in New York, invite look at the video that Jeff produced which put the URL in the checkbox there, that sort of thing may be effective in reaching elected officials.
Rob Bohnert
This is Roger. We have been working with Jeff and his team for some time on the 64 express service between Richmond and Virginia ports. The 580 the one between Stockton and Oakland was mentioned a couple of times and we have on our website a product that is titled factors for success. The 580 service has been suspended at least at the moment, we learned a lot of things about what the elements are that are sort of necessary to be present and just kind of touched on the. You might find that helpful.
One of the challenges we see is that the benefits derived from shifting freight to the water, often not methods to the operator but rather benefits to the public. Like Jeff mentioned, the added benefit of reduced emissions especially if you are in a non-retained the area. As a matter fact the 64 express they put off a widening of the interstate that was on the order of $500 million for something that was a public position that said kicking and literally decimal ductwork of money to move some of the freight to the water was cheaper than widening.
The trick is how to monetize public benefits all the services are a going concern and they've been more successful in Virginia than other places an interesting if you use an analogy of a Metro system, almost every system and bus system is subsidized because that is just cheaper than widening the roast to bring them in my car. If you would picture some of these marine highways as sort of a freight Metro, all of a sudden we have got the model in place and just to move into freight . Couple of the challenges but also opportunities to address case are different on the water and helping mitigate some of the congestion.
Nicole Coene
Apparently there was a "short-sea" shipping operation (barges) that were transferring containers to/from the Port of Oakland to the Port of Stockton since this wasn't a viable short-haul rail intermodal operation (not profitable for the Class I carriers). Most of the outbound container hauls (out of Stockton) were supposedly hay and other ag. products for export? Is this short-haul marine movement still going in the Bay area?
Ben De Alba
This is Ben. The Park service was suspended but I believe it is still working on a demand pay sort of operation so there is the demand and they will send the parts down the middle or vice versa back up to Stockton . But again using those routes it is important to make the case when they are so important and I think we are try to work on that and we included some good key point in our freight mobility plan.
Taking X amount of trucks off the parallel highway and that reduces congestion which leads to reduction in GHD emissions as well as reduction in maintenance costs as you do not have heavy trucks for as many heavy trucks going up and down the same highway corridor as the containers and parts so that is an important route to reroute into our overall network freight network and is there and we are doing whatever we can hear to bring the attention it needs to a higher level.
Roger Bohnert
This is Roger. Some of these that have been tried and were not quite striking the economic balance in the past, in several cases we think they be approaching the tipping point where they make sense and the one that was just talking about they are struggling to manage emission issues which the Marine Highway can help that one of the ports there has increasing delays at the gate with trucks going to the front gate so moving some other sort of out of backdate SST if you will can be helpful of and so some of the ports including those are also running into challenges because a lot of those trucks go right to residential communities is a mistake it to the gate so some of those called frictions as they increasingly get higher costs for fuels and things like that can bring a sort of closer to the to the point where the to make sense or need a little less public investment to get to so over time there may be more of them have become feasible.
Nicole Coene
Do the speakers support increased attention to stronger last mile connector definitions, prioritization and preservation by FHWA, states, MPOs and in particular, the local governments that host/operate the last mile segments?
John Young
This is John with AAPA. I would have to know what the languages but I think overall what we hear from our members is increasingly first and last mile projects are important not only to catch up to where we should be but also handling of projected growth and increasing Metropolitan populations. We think it should be a priority.
Roger Bohnert
This is Roger. National freight advisory committee and linked with Christian thinkers was mentioned earlier and the DOT had was me for a while at the titled first and last mile. And made a significant number of recommendations that were ultimately adopted by the full committee and the first and last mile connectors especially as they relate to parts are certainly among the top opportunities and challenges in just about any freight expert discussions.
North East diesel collaborative is speaking with stakeholders on development of clean corridors along East Coast main transportation corridors that would help promote adoption of alternative fuel technologies with infrastructure located at strategic locations. We are looking at how we can better coordinate with the old and key frame partners on development. Interested to hear from speakers on thoughts on important partners in the to be around the table to help promote clean transportation corridor's that only in the fourth East that's just not only in the Northeast but across the country.
Roger Bohnert
This is Roger. Certainly at the federal level we work with the clean diesel collaborative participate in some of their webinars and I think we have more opportunity to further integrate that as well as some of the other like diesel engine replacement and all of that and that is one of the things that Strong Ports is endeavoring to do is try to be a little more of a one-stop shop because it could be pretty baffling to the OT's which applies to their scenario of that going back to the port talk mentioned well, of Mack is some of those programs present opportunities to import or region we would reach out to them and I think we have something like 20 federal agencies that agree to participate in a stash of coming for talks with other program.
Jeff Florin
This is Jeff Florin I think there is an organization called the coalition for responsible tracking CRT and I may have the acronym wrong. I think they are all about that with clean corridors and clean fuels. If you contacted me I could get you some more information on that. I would say they would be a key partner.
John Young
This is John with AAPA. There is also the diesel emissions reduction act and that is a program that is run out of EPA but it's been very port friendly. I think that is certainly a place to start and I believe the present as the question is familiar with Christian general. And then there is CMAQ funding from the transportation bill that has been used to help kind of clean corridor port type of projects but I think helpful integrating the various tools that could be used to kind of push eight clean corridor concept forward.
Roger Bohnert
This is Roger. For the internal DOT funding mechanisms and I will drop the acronyms because most folks are probably with to be a moped predatory bonds that the building the transportation center that I mentioned is starting to be the one-stop shop for those programs and for us I mentioned a couple of the pilot project the seven points we are working with our sort of bringing them to that group so that we can sort of in code federal funding mechanisms and help them navigate that. Sort of the next step beyond that are federal mechanisms not necessarily within the Department of Transportation. That will be one of the future things we do hopefully in the near future under the Strong Ports umbrella.
Nicole Coene
Thank you all for attending today's seminar. The recorded version of this event will be available within the next few weeks on the Talking Freight website.
The next seminar will be held on April 15 and the topic is to be determined. Registration is not yet available but I will send a notice out through the Freight Planning LISTSERV announcing the topic and the availability of registration.
I encourage you to join the Freight Planning LISTSERV if you have not already done so.
