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Nicole Coene
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you in 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: Freight Coalitions.
Before I go any further, I want mention that we have been experiencing connectivity issues with Adobe Connect. DOT is working to resolve this issue; however, a permanent fix is not yet in place. If you begin to experience poor audio quality while listening to this webinar via your computer please private message me in the chat pod. Currently the most consistent sound is via the teleconference line.
If you are calling the teleconference line for audio, you will need to mute your computer speakers.
Today we’ll have three presentations, given by:
Marygrace M. Parker serves as the Program Coordinator, Freight Mobility, Safety & Security, for the I-95 Corridor Coalition. Mrs. Parker supports and facilitates communication and coordination of multi-agency /multi-state activities and initiatives and ITS (intelligent transportation systems) projects and planning studies related to the Coalition’s Intermodal Freight and Passenger Movement Committee, Travel Information Committee and Operations Committee. She has managed freight related Coalition projects such as the I-95 Corridor bottleneck studies for highway and rail, including the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Southeast Rail Studies, port and maritime related studies and led the efforts by the Coalition and its members to have the I-95 Coalition region successfully designated as the M-95 Corridor under the America’s Marine Highway Program. She led development of and serves as project manager for the Coalition’s nationally recognized Freight Academy professional development effort.
Prior to her work with the Coalition, Mrs. Parker served as Director of the Office of Traffic Management for the New York State Thruway Authority where her responsibilities included oversight of several bureaus dealing with Traffic Management and Operations.
Kevin Cole is the Executive Director of the I-81 Corridor Coalition under the direction of Dr. Tom Dingus at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI). Prior to joining VTTI, Mr. Cole served on and is presently a member of the I-81 Corridor Coalition Steering Committee appointed by Congressman Phil Roe. In this capacity, Mr. Cole was involved with the formation of the Strategic Plan and mission statement for the Coalition. Additionally, Kevin's lengthy tenure with the Johnson City, Tennessee Regional Planning commission along with his business acumen obtained through owning and managing a business provide for a diverse and enhanced background of experience.
Cheryl Ball is the Waterways and Freight Administrator at the Missouri Department of Transportation. Cheryl initiated MoDOT’s first statewide freight plan that was released in 2015. She is a civil engineering graduate from Missouri S&T and earned a JD from Saint Louis University School of Law. She is a licensed attorney. Cheryl is certified as a Mediator through Washington University School of Law and the Missouri State University Centers for Dispute Resolution. Cheryl serves as Missouri’s representative on the AASHTO Standing Committee on Water Transportation, the Mid America Freight Coalition, and the Institute for Trade and Transportation Studies Freight Coalition as well as multiple AASHTO working groups for freight planning and performance metrics. She is a graduate of the I-95 Corridor Coalition Freight Academy immersion program.
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 time allows, we will open up the phone lines for questions as well. 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 Marygrace Parker of the I-95 Corridor Coalition to get us started.
Marygrace Parker
Thank you, Nicole and good morning everyone. Thank you for allowing us to present today. I want to defer my presentation from focusing on challenges. I will pass that onto my colleague Kevin. Today I will give a quick overview of the I-95 Corridor Coalition and our Freight Activities. I will use a brief case study of a multistate freight project that will give you a quick picture of the activities that have great values from a multi-state freight perspective. I will talk about challenges, some lessons learned for Freight Coalitions and a quick overview of lessons learned in general as a Multi-State Organization. Just quickly for those of you who may not be familiar, the I-95 Corridor Coalition is a partnership of multi-state, and multimodal public agencies. We have been working together since the early 1990’s to address multi-state coordination of operations for incidents and events. We have the goal to create seamless and efficient transportation system and you can see from this presentation from the time we started until today we have continued to evolve.
To provide an overview of the composition issues in our corridors we have 16 states including Vermont and the District of Columbia but within those boundaries those state districts includes not only DOT's and transportation agencies, but ports, bridge authorities, and other toll authorities. We also have a large contingent of MPO’s and regional entities in the region. We have two affiliates in Canada because of our jurisdiction in New Brunswick and Qubec. If you look at our region we actually hold what I would call several mega-regions within this 16 state boundary.
We are a multimodal coalition served by all transportation modes including, rail, Marine, air, an extremely active highway system, not only I-95 but its associate corridors and arterials that connect to other major highway along the region including I-81. The region encompasses freight movements that are both domestic and international. We are a multi-problematic coalition. We have an executive board that is made up of State DOT chairs, major voting members, and also comprised of members of MPO’s and other organizations. We also have a steering committee which is a core team of our various program track committees. The three major committees that we service today are the Travel Information Services, Intermodal Freight and Passenger Movement, and Coordinated Incident Management and Safety. We are served by a small coalition staff that works directly for the coalition and on a full-time basis.
For our business model you can see that originally we are a member agency driven program. Our work plans are derived from issues that are important to our members. Our goal remains very much the same to accelerate transportation system improvements for long-distance freight movement and passenger travel. We are continued and recognized as a National model for multi-jurisdictional coordination. The big key in red is our funding source. When were originally established, the ISTEA legislation pushed us as one of the four private corridors. There was a small amount set aside and varied over the years until eventually it became of significance. MAP-21 essentially changed things and set aside earmarks and eliminated our funding source from federally funded to member agency support for our 16 State DOT's paying annual allocation. We have been successful by 100% in the three years since we moved to that new business model including the District of Columbia. Some things we have done focusing on freight transportation, we became a Freight Coalition in 1999 when we established our Intermodal Freight and Passenger Movement Program Track Committee. We continue to move forward to today to support freight and goods movement. They include things like our rail operations studies, bottleneck studies which were derived from the National Bottleneck Survey and then broke it down and looked at it on a corridor basis working on the early days of MARAD. We had a Port Access project which identified the potential for coastal sea shipping that were being used in Europe as a potential model. We were very pleased to work closely with MARAD in the early days and eventually being successful is noted in my biography to receive the designation of the Marine Highway System for the coalition and region.
We worked with truck parking and we have a real-time information truck deployment initiative that was federally funded and we have continued to roll that out today. Many of us have been involved with complementing the professional capacity development through the creation of the Freight Academy which I'm guessing there are a number of you running similar programs around the country. Just quickly why a multi-state and multimodal perspective? There are two key points that are given. We all know that supply chains and freight flows vary by commodity, industry, supply and demand, and origins and destinations and are rarely limited to a single jurisdiction. International markets continue to emerge for imports and exports, and with expansions of the Panama Canal and Suez Canals, the port-airport-rail-highway system in the I-95 Corridor remains one of the most critical components of the US freight network.
Accordingly, transportation freight plans are approached in a multifaceted perspective of trade lanes, key commodities, or key industries in the US and neighboring trade partners rather than simply from a state’s geography. Agencies can recognize and support the need for the collaboration within regional jurisdictions enhances not only through economic development, but through mobility at the local, state, multi-state, and national level. Some issues that we share in the corridor which many of you are also sharing and this is what you may be thinking about in forming coalitions: increasingly congested highways, limited freight and passenger rail and highway capacity to meet demand sustain growth, continued shifts in distribution centers and freight flows as a result of changes in it the trade patterns and logistics, energy production, the need to reduce greenhouse gases and mitigate climate change, and revenue pressure on transportation agencies and carriers to do more with less.
I mentioned the fact that freight corridors are interconnected and I wanted to use this slide to illustrate that so are the problems. This was taken from the Mid-Atlantic Truck Study and we looked at a series of bottlenecks in each of the six Mid-Atlantic States. If you see the dots on the maps some are from state to state and what is key to consider are those movements along the corridor that actually have a string of bottlenecks. So if you fix the problem in Virginia and Maryland but you don't fix the Philadelphia region from the perspective of OMD and what that costs from the beginning to the end and that for the shippers incurs becomes important because you have mitigated the entire problem. I think is this is a good case for why when you think about your bottlenecks you need to think about when are you making improvements to your state what happens. Are you simply moving the bottleneck up the chain? I want to talk a little bit about a fantastic project that was ahead of its time.
I think it is a great case to illustrate why freight corridors, coalitions, and planning can be important. What I am going to use is the Mid-Atlantic Rail Operations Study (MARops) which was a compendium of several studies to assess rail bottlenecks and choke points along the Mid-Atlantic region and to identify improvements. Why? The key issue was to consider at that time looking at freight projections from FHWA with the 20/20 Freight Projections which continues today. The highway alone wasn’t going to solve all of our freight capacity issues and to look at the ability to use rail to address capacity constraints.
I think part of the story that I want you to understand is that this is a story that has a narrative that all of you can consider. It has a cast of characters that are very important to the success. One is to champion to start the narrative. I always give credit that we have many transportation secretaries in the region at the time but it was the Delaware Department of Transportation’s Secretary, who today continues to have strong interest in rail. Some of you may know who brought forth the idea that we need to look at our rail system in the corridor and can we do something to improve potential capacity along that region. With her leadership she was able to reach out to other CEOs in the region to talk about this need and to bring them together. New York Department of Transportation followed this project along but they did not participate directly because there were other ancillary issues regarding bridges and tunnels that might have covered the scope of this project so they stepped back and continued as a monitoring partner. The big key here is that three Class I railroads were at the table and were very interested in participation. This was pre-SAFETEA-LU so of course there was a strong interest in hoping that we can do something and they understood the need to be involved and to make this point about why those bottlenecks and choke points are important. We had two railroads, CSX, Norfolk Southern and then Amtrak. Amtrak was involved because we had shared track with freight railroads so those problems on the rail system impacted them as well. And we had the coalition and we worked to be an honest and neutral broker to work with the states so we really could be a convener of the party.
We brought all the states together it was a lot of backroom work. Initially there was a bit of reluctance between the railroads and the states on what they were going to show, how much information, but they pulled together the railroads and spent a lot of time doing engineering work, looking at virtual points and bottlenecks and types of issues that you can see on this project. You will look at things like the connections; there was a capacity issue there. There were other things that had height clearances and we were able to identify capacity issues based on not having enough rail capacity. We were lucky to have several efforts, and working together we came up with a compendium of projects. We then moved on.
There were about 171 major projects in that first phase of the study. We then went on to the second stage and began to apply some attributes to provide some priority to the projects. The word I want to use here is “priority” not “prioritized.” We looked at a set of things like economic development issues, jobs, things like questions on environmental benefits and looking at some of the cost issues involved and what did it mean to work in certain projects as a priority. With that we set forth of list of critical path projects that would meet the highest near-term benefits so agencies had an opportunity to invest, what are some of those projects that I can invest in? And they did. We did not have grants in the beginning, some of them came along, but a number of those projects throughout the years have been completed. The one thing that we have learned was that it demonstrated that freight movements impact agencies, even if they don't originate in a jurisdiction or pass through, it is important to understand that. It improved relationships between states and private sector. I can tell you from the first meeting it was a challenge and by the end they were familiar and would call each other with questions and it really did improve one of the first really true relationships that I have seen in my work in transportation.
We also pleased to see that it supported not only the work that we did at that table but it went on to become the heart of many strategic plans that went into the railroad. So if you were to pull out a map of the Heartland Corridor or the Crescent Corridor or the National Gateway or Liberty Corridor, you can layer those projects into the strategic plans and that was also true as Amtrak went forward to do the Northeast Corridor passenger plan so those projects were identified and improvements in Amtrak were also layered into their plans. It also increased the profile of rail projects at the state level and helped the states to understand and make the case at home why they needed to address state and regional freight needs. I think it also helped make improvements and additional freight capacity in the corridor.
Quickly regarding challenges, agencies continue to face pressure to solve problems at home. Understanding that need to look beyond your borders and why, but also being cognitive of the fact that there is still work to be done in their own agencies. That leads to the agency staffing issue; they are doing more with less and having the ability to manage projects. Establishing the multistate project lists; I suggest you don't use the word prioritize because it can often be a showstopper because people would get down into the weeds. Really focus on what are the projects, what kind of benefits can be derived because you will get into questions of who pays for improvements and what is the private sector share and what is the public sector share and also determining who will pay for a project when it is within multi-jurisdictions. Those issues we are still facing today as we try to think about how to make investments in multistate projects for the benefit of all. This allows you to have the challenge of establishing freight performance measures and that is something we are facing today because freight doesn't just necessarily have its best measure in one state, we need to look at measures in all states. Determining who pays to fund the studies in the coalitions and studies and projects. Right now, a significant part of that burden, hopefully that is now changing, looking at other legislation have often times fallen disproportionally to federal highway and the states in the development of these projects.
Quickly, what is the value of a freight coalition? One, is when you establish the freight coalition you are maintaining the system perspective. Two, you can begin to focus attention on bottlenecks and how to implement capital operating pricing and other strategies. You can provide a portfolio approach to transportation investments that considers all modes. So it optimizes your ability of expanding throughout all projects. It also allows you to figure out which investments will give you the most benefit. And it definitely increases the potential for investment in transportation systems. In some of the states we were able to go together in some cases with this or at least to be able to agree that these were projects that had common value and that helped in discussions with the legislature. The other value in the coalition is when projects come out you have a list of projects that are already defined to some capacity.
From coalition lessons learned, the ability to advance and maintain a coalition you have to have commitments from top leadership of an agency whether it is the existence of the project or the ability to do an overall larger operation and freight program like the coalition. That leadership has to come to the table to talk about. But you also have to maintain key staffers because as leadership changes they help to keep the focus areas on the programs and projects that are relevant and provide continuity. You also have a dedicated public sector based coalition staff and I will simply say that it provides somebody to manage the full-time study day today and also an employee of a public agency while taking the burden off of the agencies and the multistate coordination it also addresses some concerns that may arise in terms of ethics and other issues. We were able to undertake projects. We don't know when things will come again but certainly having that funding and that appreciation for the state DOT's allows you to be thinking about what we are going to be doing and what projects should be we be working on as opposed to just thinking about where the money is coming from. And finally having a common set of interests, visions, goals, and outcomes for any coalition is important, whether you are looking at operations coalitions or a larger coalition that is looking for a broad-based group of issues looking at environment and others. I will conclude with that and say thank you.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Marygrace and I will now move on to Kevin Cole of the I-8I Corridor Coalition. Kevin?
Kevin Cole
Thank you, Nicole. Welcome everybody. Good afternoon and good morning. They say to deliver a really good speech you should tell people what you are going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them. Today I will violate the first and third step and we will get right into what we are here to talk about today.
I will begin with the origin of the I-81 Corridor Coalition. Marygrace mentioned that everybody needs a champion and our champion if you will is Rick Rovegno who is a County Commissioner in Pennsylvania. Rick was sick and tired of seeing all the accidents outside of his office window and finally a secondary incident occurred that was the last straw for him and he was moved into action. He approached the respective DOT's of the Corridor from all the various County Commissions and Economic Development groups and received a commitment for funding from initially three states and a handful of county government and economic development folks. This funding enabled the formation of the coalition, website and initiation, and the hiring of the director and an assistant.
We began with being safety focused. That was essentially the whole purpose of our organization to begin with. We organized with the steering committee which was comprised of three people from each state. One, from the DOT executive or their representative, two, a local official along the corridor or their designee, and three, a federal official such as the appointee from the Congressional US Senate office. We originally headquartered at Shippensburg University and subsequently moved to Virginia Tech Transportation Institute where we reside today through an MOU agreement. We communicate essentially through emails and conference calls and newsletters. We formed three standing committees which had a focus on freight, safety and the environment. Today we have reduced that to two groups and one is public safety/management and the second is transportation infrastructure/economic development. These committees are compiled of various DOT personnel, state police, transportation officials, and private practice, as well as in University setting and other interested parties.
When we began we wrote a mission statement and I think this is critical so that you always look back and determine whether or not a project or a program that you are looking to implement fits within the mission of what you established. Ours is pretty simple. The I-81 Corridor transportation network, supporting both freight and passenger movement, will be safe, efficient, and environmentally sensitive, seamless, and intermodal. It will support economic development and encourage coordinated land use policies.
We are all about safe and efficient movement of people and freight along the corridor. We developed a budget. Our original operating budget was $300,000, and today we continue to operate at less funding than that. Once we had developed the budget, we went out and asked for funds. We had expanded the sources of funding and we also picked up grant money from some work that we did. We asked initially for a three-year commitment from our stakeholders and everybody accepted. Because of the large impact Interstate 81 has in the eastern US, due to its proximity to population, many intersecting interstates, and parallel rail lines; we had to define the area we were to focus on. And through a grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission, we went out and defined in the area which we considered to be the Interstate 81 Corridor. It is not just an interstate. I am sure Marygrace will say I-95 is not just an interstate. We have to deal with an area that is impacted by everything within it. So we set that out and we had that defined and once we had the definition of that we created our work plan with the director and the steering committee working in concert, and then we went to work.
I want to talk about some challenges that we have within the coalitions. First off, and Marygrace hit on this and everybody else will as well: the lack of dedicated funding. Being funded as we are by the state DOTs and the handful of county and economic development groups, each group has their own challenges in getting their budgets approved. Essentially we asked for an extremely small contribution from each state's overall transportation budget, but it is a challenge to get all to participate and when all do not, the ones that do are somewhat taken aback. Fortunately we have been able to work through that and overcome but it is very important initially, especially in the establishment of the Corridor Coalition that everybody is in. It is an all-in situation. I think Marygrace hit on this too: state personnel and leadership transitions. Consistency is very important to the smooth operation of the coalition and each state has a different operational structure. A chief transportation official is often replaced when a new governor is elected and state personnel move jobs and get promoted and move to other areas within government or leave the field altogether. So maintaining a nucleus of people familiar with the coalition and its work is critical. These people, as Marygrace mentioned, can inform and educate others in the transition into new roles and there can be a continuity of understanding and relationships. As mentioned: 100% participation. It is paramount that everybody believes in receiving the benefits and that they are not in it alone.
One challenge that I have noticed is that as a coalition, we are not able to apply for grants on our own. We have to have a DOT or an MPO/PPO and sometimes a university partner to make that application on our behalf. With some grants being limited to a certain number of applications or have an aggregate award limits per state, it puts us as a coalition in a tough spot to be able to get into the mix since most states will fill their quota allotments with their own projects and what we are generally seeking his funding for a multistate project. So it would be great if we had an opportunity to actually be the submitting or applying entity when it comes to grant opportunities.
Defining membership in the coalition may seem a little odd perhaps. Basically, we need to define who has the say-so in the coalition and that can be a challenge but it is not impossible. There really is a tight rope that must be walked when the public and private interests come together, especially when the public entities such as the DOTs are providing the resources. There is a great value in private industry involvement so one needs to be cognizant of their concerns, needs, and objectives in order to keep them involved if they do not have a direct financial stake.
Staying focused but open-minded; it is easy to begin to get too far afield and away from the original mission when some shiny new project comes along or somebody has a great idea. Always be mindful of your mission statements and your objective and always analyze whether or not a proposal fits the objective of the coalition. It is impossible to be all things transportation to all people, however situations and opportunities to make an impact do evolve over time so be open to those possibilities and alter the mission if necessary. Let's call it focused, but flexible.
Benefits; there are many and I think we all see these pretty clearly. Collaboration of expertise; technology is changing at the speed of light and staying abreast of the latest tools and trends is a monumental task. Many times there is someone from one area that is an expert in a certain field. This person’s knowledge and expertise can benefit all of the states and the coalition as a whole and likewise someone from another area may possess different skills and talents and can collectively use this for the fit of everybody involved. And speaking of pooling of resources, in my mind this is the benefit that is a no-brainer. While we have the tendency to be territorial at times several states or agencies working together can accomplish much more than all of them working independently and this is the case in our coalition, all six states wanted to do a truck parking study along the corridor and it was easy to apply as one body rather than individually. There are opportunities for collaboration in truck parking locations and alternative route planning just to name a few.
Improved communication. Established and agreed upon protocols for information sharing helps everyone. It is important to understand that people and businesses many miles away and in some cases many states away are impacted by closings. We have to be mindful of getting the information out so that everyone is operating from the same playbook, if you will, and this impact can be lessened for those who travel the highways and rail lines. Opportunities to reduce the cost of equipment, software and other technology can be obtained through the economies involved. You can see that as a bulk purchasing or likewise a single operation center can handle truck parking reservations for the entire corridor rather than each state having a separate system and operations personnel.
Whenever there are projects that need to be piloted across, many times it is better to do it across a broader length of highway or broader segment so that you can bring in other factors such as weather or elevation changes into the mix that one part will not have. Perhaps there are urban and rural situations that need to be viewed. So being able to jointly go together and pull the entire corridor together can be a tremendous benefit long-term. In information sharing we look at as having a database or library of information from each state. Being able to access accident protocols, long-range plans, approved alternative truck routes, and operations center coverage areas would be helpful to the coalition community as a whole as well as for those who regularly transport goods along the corridor. That list obviously is certainly not all inclusive.
Lastly bringing multiple groups to the table. No one has a monopoly on all the good ideas. The coalition has the ability to bring public, private, and institutional groups to the table collectively for the benefit of improving transportation efficiency, safety and for listening sessions where needs as well as wishes can be communicated directly.
Some of the projects that we have been involved in; I mentioned we started with a focus on safety and the very first thing we did involved traffic incident management protocols. We included anyone who could possibly find themselves at an accident scene: police, fire, EMS, tow truck operator, local and state police, as well as DOT personnel. These daylong sessions identified how to properly protect the scene, individuals, and equipment in the event of an accident and how to keep as much traffic as possible safely passing by so as to reduce the chance of a secondary incident. We conducted this study and conducted these programs all up and down Interstate 81 and each of the states and it was very well received. In fact we were very proud of the fact that federal highway saw what we did and we partnered with Jack Sullivan, the Director of Safety, and they took that and made it into the Train the Trainer Program and spread it throughout the country so we are very proud that we were able to be involved in that. While we don't have any empirical data we are pretty certain that what we did saved lives somewhere.
We just finished up a truck parking study and we proposed initially a three-phase approach, with the third phase being the implementation of the consolidated freight information system along the corridor. We received funding for the first two phases which includes mapping out locations and evaluating travel times in distribution areas. It also included the design of the consolidated freight information systems which enables real-time information sharing of incidents, weather, traffic congestion, and the availability of truck parking. We have an application in for a grant seeking funding for the third phase which is the implementation of this AFIS along the entire length of Interstate 81.
From some discussions that we have had with trucking companies and with some states and local officials, we are going to embark on a project to place in one location all of the state approved alternative routes should one need to be diverted from the interstate. In our case some states are different in that most or all of the roads are owned by the state in one situation while just about highway another state has many county- or local municipal-owned and maintained roadways. It is important for the freight movers to be able to know and have identified routes available to them to ensure reliable delivery time, safe passage, freight clearance and adherence to service requirements. There are too many stories of a driver employing his GPS unit and ending up stuck in a cul-de-sac in a residential neighborhood. So we look forward to getting that started and getting that out and available.
We just finished a conference a few weeks ago in one of the universities and one of the outcomes was conducting a corridor-wide freight shed study. It will be a massive undertaking with I-81 being the fourth most heavily traveled in the country with many segments consistently having between 30% and 40% of the vehicles on the road moving freight. We think we need to get involved in this and in fact the study from five years ago suggested truck traffic on 81 would double within 20 to 25 years. Capacity is a real issue for us and being able to encourage and expand intermodal usage is critical. Connected vehicle technology will help create some capacity if that comes along quickly. So understanding the flow of products as well as raw materials would be helpful, and I'm sure I don't need to expand just why that would be. We are getting into defining ourselves into three planning regions along 81. And we will have these regions cross state lines. New York and Northern Pennsylvania will be one. Southern Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Northern Virginia are second. Southwest Virginia and Tennessee are third.
We are expanding to include corporate and medical interest. Corporate partners, especially those in manufacturing distribution and construction, have a vested interest in the safe and efficient flow of goods and people along the corridor. Likewise, medical centers are impacted. We can envision emergency room utilization due to accidents as well as whether medical needs can be met as they come up. It also impacts the ability of emergency vehicles to access and depart a scene. We are a freight corridor and that is obvious from the percentage of trucks on the highway. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is the largest single point of distribution in the eastern United States. 10% of the entire US economy passes through Harrisburg. Harrisburg alone cannot solve the capacity of the corridor and neither can Pennsylvania. However all of us collectively working together and planning for the future growth of the code corridor can and will have a positive impact on expanding the life of roads, protecting lives, and providing reliable travel times. With that, Chairman, I yield my time here.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Kevin. We will now move on to Cheryl Ball of the Missouri Department of Transportation.
Cheryl Ball
Good day. I am Cheryl Ball with MoDOT. Take the corridor discussions we have just had and double or quadruple or 10 times and now we will look at how we handle multiple corridor's impacting each other within state boundaries. I will discuss regional coalitions; state DOTs who have joined together by multiple corridors, common trading partners, and other levels of freight interdependence. Freight does not stop at state corridors, so neither can our planning efforts. We are going to talk about three elements of our regional coalitions from our experience. Who are our partners, the benefits we experience as part of these regional coalitions, and what elements we consider crucial for the coalition’s success.
Missouri belongs to two regional coalitions, the Mid-America Freight Coalition and the Institute for Trade and Transportation Studies. Both groups are freight focused but vary in focus. We find a benefit from belonging to each of them. Our membership in each has allowed us to see practices from each group share with each other and allowed both groups to get better as time could progresses. There are many benefits associated with belonging to a coalition. I have grouped them into six categories. Coalition staff expertise, partner expertise, peer network, coalition staff assistance, regional solutions and having one bigger voice in the country. We will discuss each one of those a bit more.
Coalition staff expertise; we draw upon the expertise of coalition staff for quick responses to questions impacting many states. Examples include state legislatures discussing funding. We ask Mid-America if they could give us a quick analysis based on engineering to assist us in responding to this question and Missouri has been going after a funding package for several years and we get hit with this question a lot. Now we have a seven page document that was turned around within one month's time that we can use as a baseline for these discussions. It has graphs and pieces that we can show that the answer is not as simple as what legislators may want us to have but we can use it as a guide throughout the discussions and other states can use it because it is posted on Mid-America's website.
How do they impact freight? Over the past few years operations and safety groups love putting these in place of at-grade crossings. They are much safer. They are getting much fewer T-bone incidents occurring at high speeds on 4-lane divided highways that are not access limited. What are the best practices? What should we avoid for this type of freight movement in this region? What we saw was ourselves. In Indiana at the time they were looking as though we had done a few of them and we produced videos working with local carriers. They used those videos. How did we know about them because of our experience and exposure within our coalition and the bridging between our executive staff? How have our new business practices, hours of service and other elements impacted how our traditional model for truck parking locations? What should DOTs look at before citing new locations? We had a quick turnaround study from ITTS that was helping us figure out what we should look at. We all have this national study, and now what do we need to do to start addressing that particular problem? And we can do it as a region with the guidance of our staff.
The Panama Canal, that opening will impact many of us. We had a quick turnaround presentation made for us with a study about what it will do to Missouri economic development and freight transportation. What will it do along the Mississippi River? What is real and what is fiction? We saw that come out of this group as well. This research is much more action oriented than those we typically see with other research, such as our NCHRP or the prior NCFRP. Those are broad-based looking at how to excel programs overall and the topic overall. These research projects include turnaround papers that address quick needs that we need right now and cannot wait for the long process. It answers your specific questions and it is something you can implement immediately. And what is highly important to us: by pooling our resources, we get the tailored research for fewer dollars than if we had had to hire somebody and go through that process. Most DOT freight staff are small in number. Here in Missouri we only have two people doing both freight and inland waterways. But each state is unique and organizational structure varies.
Freight staffs have different backgrounds and skills based on the needs of that individual state. Examples include water, rail, truck and air. They may be all in one group or separated by divisions. Within those, each mode, including highways, there is policy, economics, planning, and operations. Depending upon how staffs are in different places for the learning curve, depending upon their background and what is the focus on one particular state. However, there are times we need to understand things outside of that background and outside of our comfort zone. Being in a coalition allows us to have a network of people with different expertise to draw upon. The regional coalitions helps round out our staff knowledge limitations and allot knowledge that is close to your state situation so it has a close correlation to what you need and you can understand the complete picture with less staff in your direct office, so it is a good value for the state DOT as well. We alight rely upon each other to throw out questions. “Drones are a popular topic today as an example and how will it impact and how will we deal with that?” And sometimes it is, “how did you do that?” We’re starting our freight advisory committee here in the state of Missouri and I have been asking others, “What are you doing? What can I draw on?” This creates for us a peer network. We use this network to share those best practices.
I have a group of 16 other states I can call for advice. I know more about them than is what on their website so it narrows it down quickly for me to contact on a specific subject. J turns; I have discussed how we shared information and now we are seeing them implemented more and better for freight across our state. The freight advisory committees, I have talked about those. How are we implementing them? Who was on them and how do we handle the MPO's that cross states? The same thing is happening with our critical urban freight corridors and our critical role freight corridors. How are we making them seamless when it crosses a state line? How do we make those happen together so that they are seamless and they make sense for freight movement? I am taking things from many practices and I am tailoring them to Missouri. Freight is a fast-moving, ever-changing world. How long ago would we have thought of a 3-D printer or a drone or autonomous vehicles? Currently our legislatures and constituencies and our directors and the secretaries are hearing about them in other places and they want to know what we are doing and what others are doing about it. With our peer network partners, I generally know what is going on in their states and may be able to quickly answer a question and if not I can always call Bruce or Ernie who are the directors and they will know the answer or know who can answer my question.
We share our freight plans and our rail plans. We offer guidance on what we would do differently and what we would do again. These discussions help each state’s plan get better so I can benefit from all of my 16 year experiences. Coalition staff also assists us by gathering information on our plans for quick reference guides that can be accessed by each of us. Mid-America did this for our freight plans, comparing timelines, costs, and how compliant they are to see where we are and where we need to go and who is slightly ahead of us that we can call for advice. In addition to the other DOT freight staff, each of these coalitions has an annual meeting that is paired with another freight related group, most likely a private group. This past year we have seen things where we paired with the Critical Commodities Group in Louisiana and with the Ohio Freight Conference. At these meetings we learned not only from our DOT peers, we learned from private-sector, commodity experts, site selectors, economic developed professionals, and modal experts. This extends our peer network even further beyond our public sector peers. Costs for these meetings are included in our annual fees, so it is also a value for the DOTs. While we may be able to get some of these networks just from cold calling people back and forth, through these peer networks we actually get to know each other pretty well and by doing these things together it is a comfortable call and people tell you things that they may be more reluctant to share if they don't know you very well.
We also get coalition staff assistance. We are looking at how to bring the region together to plan for freight. Each of us think daily about our daily freight issues within our borders but they help us remember the regional impacts of decisions and actions we take in our own borders. What am I doing that may affect other states? They help bring that to the table. Each year the state comes to gather to identify what items we want. It is a flexible scope of work. Unlike consultant contracts, we can unilaterally change a task immediately to meet our regions’ needs. For example, fast act was a great place for this to look at. We altered our work plans as we requested information to help identify a new provision and how they fit into the work we are currently doing it where we need to be. It changed a lot of things we are doing. Having that coalition staff allows us broader connections with national groups such as Corps of Engineers, DOTs, some AASHTO, federal highway and the American Ports Association. These groups are open to anyone but having someone who has worked with them and is respected can get answers quickly. As DOTs and US DOT is changing and evolving, having someone to serve as a guide saves me time so that I can work on other freight issues. As each state brings their expertise to the table the coalition staff is able to synthesize it into something representing the region. While AASHTO typically has to balance 50 states plus territories and opinions, this work by the coalition is focused on our regions and focused on common goals that we have agreed upon.
As a result of the work with the regional coalition, there have been several solutions that probably would not have come together as easily, if at all. These include a freight study for the Mid-America freight coalition region including origins and destinations of freight and modal distributions and analysis of the regional freight network when proposed by US DOT. Does this make sense for our region? Does it keep us connected? There is a movement to get containers on barge on the Mississippi River inland water system. Through these groups we were able to use the partnerships that we had to get the states with common interests quickly brought together to support both the merit project designation and a dredging needed in Louisiana as we moved forward looking at the new water resources bill. The Mid-America freight coalition states were awarded a tiger grant last year to develop a common truck parking information architecture. This project allows all the states to share data and make regional decisions. This would have been very expensive if only one state had done it and by doing it as a group together we are sharing administrative costs and are able to share data so we can see how things are happening just across our border and we are not having to figure out how to make data sets talk to each other, which has been an issue in the past.
While many of these projects may have come together eventually it would have required many more hours of finding the right people and getting them together. The regional coalitions were an existing forum where the ideas could be tested and move forward in a quick and organized manner.
Being part of a regional coalition also allows you to speak with the strength and the backing of multiple voices. Using the expertise of all and the synthesis of all of the staff, we were able to quickly respond to emerging topics such as the Fast Act and policies coming out. The coalition submits one set of comments and the states can echo those comments in their own letters while adding things particularly connected to their state. This is where we also use the expertise of all of our individual members because some folks, like myself, may have more of a policy background while others may have operational or modelling or economics background to make more sense of how that all comes together.
Aligning with the executive teams with the DOT's. This work plan will also help get executives the answers they need to consider moving the entire DOT forward. Executive buy-in is very critical to what you are doing and when you can say I am doing this and the other states are in agreement, it usually helps propel that discussion forward much more quickly. Being part of these coalitions has helped our state be a part of the national voice. By having a basic understanding of all facets of the issues we are able to look at comprehensive solutions easier than having to know all of it in depth individually, and, as a result, that has helped us take the lead on some issues that are coming out and around and be the voice that takes that further.
Our experience with coalitions has been successful, but it is only as helpful as you are willing to participate and help guide those work plans which are the building blocks of the coalition. There are common elements of success that I believe our best practices for any group starting out. Some of these you have already heard from Marygrace or from Kevin but I will reiterate. Our regular meetings; once per month we touch base with all of the members. How is the work plan progressing? Is there anything that we all need to start looking at? Is anything different happening in your state that others may need to be aware of? Have a few smaller working teams that can look in depth at trending issues. The issues generally hit one or two states first. Let them look into it and report back to the larger group. Modeling is an example. It divides the work and allows you to learn more with less time invested. Have an annual work plan that is fiscally constrained, similar to the consultants’ scope of service. It provides a baseline for where you are going to go this year and if things change it gives you a basis for the trade-offs that you will need to make to change that work plan.
Having an energetic coalition staff with expertise in organization; they will be the person or persons who keep your team running in a straight direction. They will help guide you and keep you on a straight and narrow and they are absolutely invaluable. And last but not least engage your secretary or director in what is happening. If possible, get the AASHTO sub-region engaged as well. The Mid-America freight coalition and MAASTO, which is the Mid-America sub-region, are closely aligned. Our directors have groups looking into the freight coalition. It gives our group more influence and support for the projects you find critical. Overall we have found our regional coalitions to save us staff time and money and many of us are seeing staff reductions and money dry up where you cannot travel as much or do a lot of things, this gives a good value because you can learn a lot by a few travel trips and having a great network of expertise. Thank you for your attention today and I believe Nicole is going to open up for questions.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Cheryl. That is correct. We will start off our question and answer session with questions online. In addition I would like to open up the phone lines for questions. If you would like to ask it a question and make a comment over the phone, please press star one on your keypad to be placed into the telephone queue.
Our first question is for Marygrace and Kevin. How much coordination do you have with your fellow coalitions, especially in overlapping or bordering areas of the country? Do you combine efforts with other coalitions on some issues that cross coalition area borders or that are of common interest to two or more coalitions?
Kevin Cole
Marygrace, you want to go first?
Marygrace Parker
Sure. It varies. We don't do a lot of work currently day to day with Kevin, but in the early days of forming the I-81 coalition we did a lot of work with the original folks that were involved and shared best practices on the freight side. I had a lot of interactions with his predecessors who are a subset of our states, not all of them. In our early days we shared in management training programs in those regions when they were getting their startup time. I think there will be greater collaboration now that the states are commonly funding. In the early days you had your funding with the private states. We have a lot of interaction with ITTS. Obviously with Cheryl and her folks in part because my agency is representative of both corridors so he brought us into things like talking about some issues and understanding some of the truck parking issues more, from the current demand areas of where are we looking as opposed to roads we build 50 years ago. In one or two weeks I believe Kevin and I will be heading out to Arizona to talk with the I-10 folks. I have had interaction with the folks setting up the Washington state coalition so we have done some good peer exchanges and I think the key now is that most of these models are state-funded and it will be harder to look at how we can work and leverage with each other, particularly where we had DOT's plan. I welcome the challenge.
Kevin Cole
I will echo what Marygrace said. We are a much younger, more youthful organization and as we have grown we are getting to the point now where when we sit back and look at it, I-95 and I-81, we impact the eastern third if not the eastern half of the United States and we are going to be in Arizona together and have already decided we are going to talk about how we can begin collaborating on things and maybe even possibly jointly be involved in particular projects and those types of things. But in the past, there has not been a lot of coordination other than at a very high level. I know that George Shiner and Rick Marino were talking about how to go about funding the coalition and what type of formula and what type of approach in particular after changes at the federal level so they all seem to be funded in similar fashion although not exactly identically. As we grow we have an opportunity to coordinate efforts particularly when we are involved in many of the same states.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Marygrace and Kevin. Cheryl, with regard to the TIGER truck parking grant that MAFC applied for, who was the lead agency for the application, and what decision-making process was used to determine who would be the lead agency for the application?
Cheryl Ball
This Mid-America application actually evolved out of two separate groups working together. The MAASTO standing committee on planning in the Mid-America freight coalition freight partners said this is something we want to do. So prior to even the Tiger event coming around we started asking Mid-America to do one of those quick turnaround papers saying whether this is viable. So they did some background work for us as a staff. Once they brought that staff work into both of our groups and we started talking together, Candace chose to be the lead on this from an administrative standpoint and it was pretty much, “Does anybody have a desire to be the lead?” And everyone signed on as co-sponsors for that particular application. By working together so much and so often I think that there was an easier time in making decisions. We said okay so this is what we will do and how much this is how much everybody will have to put together to provide the match and once that was determined then it was just a matter of who has staff time they can expend on this.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Cheryl. Kevin and Marygrace, can you identify the private freight carriers and other private entities that participated in their respective coalitions?
Kevin Cole
Well, I can. But I will take up the rest of the time listing them. Let me just suggest for anybody interested, on our website which is I-81coalition.org there is a tab at the top for membership and if you will click on that tab there is a lengthy list of the number of participating entities private, public, educational, and federal. I would just suggest taking a look there rather than me trying to read them all.
Marygrace Parker
This is Marygrace and I will ditto that. Go to our website i95coalition.org, you will see our membership. I think the key thing is there are two types of membership. You will see larger organizational members on the private side and entities that are on the broader organizational of Northeast Governors and different entities like that, but when you get into the program track level whether it is the intermodal program or the vehicle probes then you get a whole variety of public and private participants. I think the key is that you are going to find that there are two things you need to think about and one is you want to have the private sector at your table.
It is very important you also need to be very careful between the difference between stakeholder input and final decision-making. The reason for that is when you have a coalition you want to make sure that your agency is the final decision-maker. Otherwise you run the risk of issues that may not be resolved whether it is private sector or in some cases local jurisdictions. If they are not resolved that the state level I would argue that the place to not resolve them is at the corridor level because you have people using your coalition. You will see there are a lot of people involved at the committee level using them and this is an excellent way to do it, but when it comes down to the final determination of expenditures it is ultimately those 16 state DOT executives that are making the final consensus.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Marygrace. Another question, would you share the performance measures of the I-95 Corridor?
Marygrace Parker
My answer is no. And I don't say that we can’t, I say that is something that we are working on across the board. We do not necessarily have the ability to establish set performance measures and there's always been a little bit of concern on how these scorecards pit states against each other. What I will say is we have general performance measures in terms of the deliverables annually and being sure that we are spending our money properly but when you look at establishing the kind of proposed performance measures that are going to rulemaking, that is at the table working with organizations in our corridor, agencies planning, and looking at how we set performance measures based using real-time data. So we are in the process of establishing them but we are waiting to work with the states because the states need to understand what their performance metrics are to hold them up to a corridor level. I wanted to find the difference between assessing performance versus establishing actual performance measures.
Nicole Coene
Thank you. We are down to our last question but we still have about 10 minutes remaining so please, if you have a question please type it into the chat box or press star one on your phone keypad to be placed into the queue.
For all speakers, to what degree are MPOs, especially MPOs that function as freight hub locations, involved in the multi-state coalition efforts?
Kevin Cole
We have multiple MPOs that are involved. Some to a greater degree than others but all certainly have an interest and participate and many of their directors or executives participate on our committees, so we have a considerable involvement.
Marygrace Parker
I guess I will also say we have very strong metropolitan organizations participating from more than probably the last decade and a half. Definitely freight brings MPOs to the table. Actually some of our early involvement with MPOs was looking at things outside of freight including shared transit information and shared travel information, but particularly with the freight role that has brought a lot of the MPOs whether it is Washington DC Metro or New Jersey or Delaware Valley. All of those major MPOs participate. And typically what we don't see is every MPO because we have such a widely large MPO region in our corridor that it tends to be the bigger MPOs with a larger geographic area that come more routinely to the table.
Cheryl Ball
On the statewide regional coalitions what we see is that a lot of ours are still working with their State DOT counterpart and we are bringing them to our annual meetings so there is information sharing for a lot of the issues, but when we have our monthly phone calls and things of that nature tend to be just the DOTs alone. But we are working with those MPOs and the TMAs in those areas through information sharing so that we are extending their peer contacts out to other states as well. Missouri has multiples that are crossing state borders so it is very helpful to them to get to know who is across the border.
Marygrace Parker
I just might add to my point earlier of not having issues that may be unresolved in your state. One thing that I have been very impressed with in regards to MPO's, there have been times when we had issues with MPOs and state DOTs where they are not on the same page but they have really good rules of order of putting those issues aside as they work with us again and not trying to compromise the forum to try to leverage an issue they may not be able to agree upon themselves. That rule of order is very important and I'm very appreciative of the way the DOTs and our MPOs, even when they had challenges between them, have come to the table as partners.
Nicole Coene
Thank you. Marygrace we have another question for you. Who in your I-95 coalition created your website and was funding required?
Marygrace Parker
So our website, we actually just did an updated version, and we have had our website for quite a while. We initially funded it out of our set asides with from our annual ITS research program. I cannot remember how we built the first one but it is maintained by the University of Maryland because the coalition is actually housed by Maryland DOT Maryland State Highway Administration at the University of Maryland right now. So they were good enough to do our updated version and we did just expend some funding expenditures this past year and a half to do some updates. So we currently maintain the cost of that out of our allocations that we received from the state agencies, so it comes out of our current operating budget.
Nicole Coene
We've gotten through all the questions and I don't see anything else coming in. I think we will go ahead and close out. 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 June 29, 2016 and the topic will focus on Oversize and Overweight Freight Shipments. Registration is currently available. I encourage you to join the Freight Planning LISTSERV if you have not already done so. Thank you to our presenters and to everyone for attending. Please enjoy the rest of your day.
