Jennifer Symoun:
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you to the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Jennifer Symoun and I will moderate today's seminar. Today's topic is Urban Congestion and Freight. Please be advised that today's seminar is being recorded. Today we'll have three presenters: Paul Belella of Delcan, Jeannie Becket of the Port of Tacoma, and Mike Meyer of Georgia Tech.
Paul Belella has 22 years of professional experience in project management, technical research, business process reengineering, special studies, and technical and operational testing and evaluation. His experience spans the areas of intermodal and truck-borne freight transportation, to include international borders and trade transportation. Specific expertise includes vehicle-based, roadside, and remote operations and administrative technology systems, freight security technology, decision support systems, and web-based communications and transaction media. He has significant experience in experimental design, evaluation, systems requirements development, and institutional coordination and consensus building. Mr. Belella is currently a Principal with Delcan Corporation, where he leads the Intermodal Facilities and Freight Practice. Current and recent significant assignments include managing the FMCSA Motor Carrier Efficiency Study, managing the delivery of program management and technical support to the FHWA Intermodal Freight Technology Working Group, and leading the development of a concept of operations for the Cross-Town Improvement Project for a partnership that includes Federal and State government agencies, Class I railroads, and intermodal motor carriers. Mr. Belella holds a Masters Degree in Administration from Central Michigan University, and a Bachelors Degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland.
Jeannie Beckett is the Senior Director, Inland Transportation for the Port of Tacoma in charge of transporting cargo from shipside to the inner United States and back. She has been at the Port since 1986. In the Intermodal Line of Business she is responsible for the oversight of the four Intermodal yards at the Port of Tacoma as well as developing strategies for local, regional and national transportation policies and solutions. Jeannie contributes back to the industry through her volunteer leadership positions. She is a leader in the FAST Corridor Partnership, a coalition of public private partners developing a rail corridor in the PNW and the West Coast Corridor Coalition. She has also been an active member of Transportation Research Board for the last 8 years. She currently chairs the TRB Ports and Channels Committee and is the Vice-Chair of the Cargo Handling Cooperative Program. She is active in American Association of Port Authorities and is the past chair of the Planning and Research Committee.
Dr. Michael D. Meyer is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and former Chair of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. From 1983 to 1988, Dr. Meyer was Director of Transportation Planning and Development for Massachusetts where he was responsible for statewide planning, project development, traffic engineering, and transportation research. Prior to this, he was a professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at M.I.T.
Dr. Meyer has written over 160 technical articles and has authored or co-authored numerous texts on transportation planning and policy, including a college textbook for McGraw Hill entitled Urban Transportation Planning: A Decision Oriented Approach. He was the author of Transportation Congestion and Mobility: A Toolbox for Transportation Officials, a book sponsored by the Institute of Transportation Engineers and the Federal Highway Administration that focuses on transportation actions that can be implemented to enhance mobility. He is an active member of numerous professional organizations, and has chaired professional committees relating to transportation safety, planning, public transportation, environmental impact analysis, transportation policy, transportation education, and intermodal transportation.
Dr. Meyer has conducted research on incorporating safety into transportation planning, and on the effectiveness of current practice. He has spoken at safety forums and national conferences on transportation safety and as a member of the Transportation Research Board Executive Committee has emphasized safety issues with respect to its professional activities. He has worked closely with state and MPO officials in better integrating safety into the transportation planning process.
Dr. Meyer has a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, an M.S. degree in Civil Engineering from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from M.I.T. He is a registered professional engineer in the State of Georgia.
I'd now like to go over a few logistical details prior to starting the seminar. Today's seminar will last 90 minutes, with 60 minutes allocated for the speakers, and the final 30 minutes for audience Question and Answer. If during the presentations you think of a question, you can type it into the smaller text box underneath the chat area on the lower right side of your screen. Please make sure you are typing in the thin text box and not the large white area. Please also make sure you send your question to "Everyone" and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentations, but I will start off the question and answer session with the questions typed into the chat box. Once we get through all of the questions that have been typed in, the Operator will give you instructions on how to ask a question over the phone. If you think of a question after the seminar, you can send it to the presenters directly, or I encourage you to use the Freight Planning LISTSERV. The LISTSERV is an email list and is a great forum for the distribution of information and a place where you can post questions to find out what other subscribers have learned in the area of Freight Planning. If you have not already joined the LISTSERV, the web address at which you can register is provided on the slide on your screen.
Finally, I would like to remind you that this session is being recorded. A file containing the audio and the visual portion of this seminar will be posted to the Talking Freight Web site within the next week. We encourage you to direct others in your office that may have not been able to attend this seminar to access the recorded seminar.
The PowerPoint presentations used during the seminar will also be available within the next week. I will notify all attendees of the availability of the PowerPoints, the recording, and a transcript of this seminar. We're now going to go ahead and get started. Today's topic, for those of you who just joined us, is the Urban Congestion and Freight. Our first presentation will be given by Paul Belella of Delcan. As a reminder, if you have questions during the presentation please type them into the chat box and they will be answered in the last 30 minutes of the seminar.
Paul's Presentation:
Thank you, Jennifer and thank you to everyone on line. I hope this is an informative session for you. I did want to encourage questions. My presentation, as you can see on the screen is intended to change the tone of the discussion and to try to accentuate what I think are excellent opportunities to actually partner between the public and private sector and take it to a new level. Hopefully, it is a provocative discussion and fosters some thought in your minds and raises questions and moves the discussion in new and exciting directions.
I want to talk to you on two different topics today. One is the idea of changing the nature of the discussion and how we are trying to do that in a couple different initiatives that we have undertaken. Hopefully, we will get a chance to expand that philosophy beyond the current stakeholders and current partners that we are dealing with now. But what I will talk about today is Urban Congestion and Freight. I want to talk about what we are up against, some of which the folks on the call probably already know, maybe in intimate detail. We will talk about how we have chosen to deal with it and why it is not enough. I will share with you some positive alternatives and specific examples to give some ideas as to where we can go from here to continue to move forward in this direction.
What we are up against: What you are seeing up on the screen now, we have all heard the statistics. Maybe we have only heard pieces and parts of these. There are a couple that I want to point out that I think point to the root of the problem and give some sense of how significant it is. If you look halfway down the list there, the one that stands out first is that the actual travel times exceed ideal travel times by 20 to 60%. It is astonishing when you think about it.
This is data derived-if you have a trip that should take you an hour, you have to plan between an hour and 15 minutes to an hour and a half or more to get there, just because of the uncertainty associated with the trip. When you factor in that you are driving a truck through an urban area, it might be worse than that because of the operational nature of the truck. The one directly below that says that expenditures for new capacity are running at about 4 percent of what is needed. Obviously, as much as we would all like to make things happen and smooth the flow of freight, it is not likely to happen in our professional lifetime. As a result, if you factor in the expected growth, both in international and domestic freight, the numbers are dramatic. It paints a scary picture when you look at these things in a combined form. Closing that out, if you look at the latest statistics, and this is not the latest, it is January of 2006, bottlenecks are causing truckers $8 billion each year. That is a staggering amount of money and does not factor in the other players who are affected adversely by the delays they are incurring. The reality of it is that you think of all of these things together. What some of us tend to overlook is that we are not just talking about inconvenience and maybe paying a little more for goods. This congestion is really a direct threat to both of our global competitiveness and domestic economic vitality. If we think about all of the ancillary effects of trucks sitting in traffic, for instance, or freight sitting still at any point, the cost associated with that are dramatic and multiplied when you propagate those costs out throughout the supply chain.
How have we chosen to deal with it? If you believe and agree that this is a major issue and concern for the future and our economic vitality is tied to it, I think we need to take a look at how we have dealt with it and really start to get creative about how we will deal with it in the future, recognizing that we have that 4% investment rate and terms of adding capacity. This is a very compressed list of some of the things we have done. Some of them have had significant affects. Any one on its own is not going to make a great deal of difference. We have seen some things take place. I have been dealing in the ITS area for quite a few years. It has been interesting to see some of the things that have happened, particularly in the commercial vehicle domain. Quite honestly, my argument would be that they have made more progress than a lot of other areas. I will leave it at that.
There has been a great deal of technology implemented, especially with weigh stations, prescreening, and location tracking. Those kinds of technology employed in the commercial vehicle arena really have made some dramatic differences in overall freight efficiency. There is still some more to do, obviously. That is the point of this presentation. Some progress has been made. If you look across the board with a relatively small exception of what I mentioned with the CVO, freight is often looked at as an adversary. It is looked at as a congestion generator and something that adversely affects roadway congestion and quality of travel and overall travel time. The reality is that it is more than offset by the fact that it is a key component of an economic engine that provides a lot of jobs and income, a lot of wealth and quality of life for a lot of people across the country.
The basic theme of this presentation is that I think we need to spend a little more time thinking about how we can partner with the industry and government agencies together to work towards ensuring our economic future. Why is it not enough what we have done so far? In reality, we have to deal with trucks that will always be needed to complete the overwhelming majority of first and last mile good movement. Jeannie will share with you interesting things that they have done in her part of the country with dock side rail. It is more the exception than the rule. They did some great things there. In the end, you will always need trucks to make the first and last mile of goods movement. They provide essential flexibility and speed. Unfortunately, depending on the type of the operation, as much as 50 percent of truck trips are made without anything in the back. (I will share a little bit more about what I mean by truck trips a little later in the presentation). That is an unacceptably high percentage of truck trips that are made without anything in the back. Setting the stage for moving forward and talking about what we are trying to promote here, I thought it would be useful to touch on what I call the key freight axioms.
The first one, a full truck that is moving, that is an action and it equals economic vitality. That is something that someone needs moved from one place to another and is moving along at a reasonable speed. The resources that are being consumed to move it on par with what they should be for getting goods to market. The second one, a truck that is stationary is pure cost. Nothing is happening and the freight is not moving. A stationary track is pure cost and that equals economic harm. Quite a few people are losing out in that proposition. An empty truck that is moving is not that much better. It is great that he is moving, but they are not moving anything. It is pure cost and creating congestion costs for everyone, everyone who uses the system. Some other things that I will throw out there that you might or might not agree with, pay-as-you-go facilities, and toll lanes in general. You are adding a direct cost that in most cases, based on the feedback that I have gotten, that exceeds, far exceeds the benefits they would accrue from having that facility being put in place. Whether you agree with that mathematically or not, the general perception from folks that I have talked to is the benefits do not equate the new cost that they are going to endure. In the end, if we look at reliable performance and strive for reliable performance and reduce the cost of operation, there will be far-reaching benefits for a lot of folks.
I will be more specific when I talk about that later. So, when we take all of these things into consideration, what are we talking about here? I am trying to turn the discussion a little bit, particularly for those who are in the public sector or work with the public sector, we really need to encourage efficiency and do it in new and different ways rather than focusing on things that penalize inefficiency. I do believe there is a fundamental difference in those approaches. I will talk more about what I mean by that. It has to do with turning that-and I hesitate to call it adversarial, although I did on the previous slide, but turning the discussion from one where there are forces pulling in different directions to pulling together. The benefits are substantial.
What are the alternatives to that? I talked about working in partnership. I will give you an example of what I mean by how-who all the players are and how they can benefit from working in partnership and where it would take us. If we are all in agreement that reducing the number of trips that it takes to move goods on the network, whether it is on a truck or on rail or any other mode where goods are moved, it makes a lot of sense, and if we are focusing on highways here, if you continue to move the goods but do it with fewer trips, that makes sense. No one can argue with that basic principle. I am trying to take the discussion to the next level, not only should we agree that it is a good thing but contribute to make it happen. There are obvious benefits for freight carriers, if they are reducing trips and moving the same amount of goods, their efficiency is good and it will be more profitable and provide better labor conditions for the people that work for them. That is a no-brainer. Everyone can understand and draw the connection. If you extend it a little bit to the supply chain, if you are improving your efficiency, then you should be able to reduce transportation costs which improve the overall supply chain. Again, it does not take too much of a stretch to understand that. The public benefits. If we are talking about taking trucks off of the road while still providing for the same movement of freight, at the conclusion that you can draw from there is that there should be less traffic volume which should lead to reduced congestion, which should not only improve overall quality of life conditions for the people that have to use those roadways but should improve safety and environment by reducing the number of trucks that are operating and the amount of fuel that is being burned by trucks. Not a great stretch to understand those.
The one that we have ignored for too long and we need to spend a little more time thinking about is what all of these things mean in terms of local, regional and competitive issues. If all of the stakeholders are benefiting from them, you have an improved business environment and a region that is more attractive to businesses that want to locate there because they can move their goods in and out and move raw materials in and out, or whatever their situation is much more efficiently. That makes it much more attractive for businesses to locate their which increases the tax base and it creates more employment and better pay, better living conditions. It overall enhances the quality of life for that region. This is basically a backdrop and a justification for building taking an aggressive approach and partnering with business and government.
One way that we started to do that, this is a group that has been around for a long time is the Intermodal Freight Technology Working Group. I want to talk about one of the concepts that we are promoting. It is a public/private partnership that has been around since 1998, quite some time. All of the modes are involved here. They all have been meeting on a regular basis since 1998, actually started in 1999, we have been meeting with these folks and trying to understand what different needs are and try to come up with what we think are mutually beneficial solutions to common challenges. We really promote inclusive collaboration. Anyone who wants to collaborate can. We encourage the people to participate to take on roles in making things happen within the group, creating new projects, meeting those new projects with the idea being that not only are we trying to create and apply new merging and existing technology solutions to those challenges but to also spur and catalyze adoption of this technologies and standards and best practices that can be applied to make those happen.
If you think about what we are trying to promote in terms of that partnership and the fact that we have a vehicle in place to make that happen, you might be thinking to yourself, what have you done? Give me an example of something that tells me how you will go about doing this. We have been working on that lately and the one person involved in this project is on the line and I am glad to see that. Maybe there are a few that I have not seen. It is a project called the Kansas City Cross-Town Improvement Project. What it is about is trip reduction, truck trip reduction and applying technology and business practices in a location where a lot of freight interchange happens. In this case the initial premise has to do with a place where you have a number of different freight terminals around the metropolitan area and have the truck containers between these back and forth. The truck trip reduction solution uses a collaborative approach to provide business and public benefits by putting in place a web services based application to coordinate with cross towns.
Those of you involved understand what cross-towns are, they are rubber tire interchanges that move goods and containers from one railhead to another. They often happen in places like Chicago, Kansas City, up and down the Mississippi Valley and a number of other places. I will get into how this concept applies in different locations. That is basically what this is about. The idea here is to provide coordination for those movements and to add into that applications like advanced traveler information, monitoring of network conditions using live freight data and improving access to information regarding shipments of concern, particularly hazardous goods. The basic precept is that this is an application that can be applied anywhere where multiple repetitive intermodal trips occur. It is good for use in andaround major freight centers. In Kansas City there are four Class-I railroads, three trucking companies, a terminal operator and five different public agencies all working together to make this happen. It is an unprecedented partnership and a lot of people have committed themselves to making this happen. I have to give a lot of credit to the Metropolitan Area Regional Council in Kansas City who has been the major anchor in helping pull this all together.
What does that mean and how does this look? This looks like a highly technical and diagram. We will not go through it in detail. What I want you to focus on here is the fact that we have public agencies, private businesses and various systems that all serve to connect and provide information exchange among all these different players. I will point out a couple of them to you. Up in the top you have commercial trucking companies, terminal operators and railroads all connecting through existing systems or web interface. You have on the left-hand side a Regional Traffic Management center. You have other agencies like the Regional Council, Federal and State agencies. You also have different private data sources, different private companies all involved. You also have what we call access points for people that are interested in getting information, where they can get information, whether it is radio, television, personal communication devices or the web, for instance. What this project is about is creating new connectivity routes for information to be exchanged and shared that can produce the amount of empty trips it takes to move goods through a major urban center. In this case, specifically, and I will describe this quickly, the idea is for all of the railroads to provide their information about load requirements and move requirements and have an information broker (probably by a third-party managing it) link that with what the truckers have in terms of capacity. Through a system of business rules that are agreed upon by all of the parties, loads are assigned so that it trucking company A is moving goods, they should be able to make a two-way trip with other goods.
You see a map of the Greater Kansas City area. I will show you how this is supposed to work through a scenario. There are two loads that need to be transferred, one in each direction. Those are indicated by the red stars. It will encompass two railheads in the Kansas City area. There are two carriers with trucks available to pull each load. Which one should pull which load from what point to what point? The idea here is to use a collaborative approach in connection with this what we will call it the C-TIP Web server, which assigns loads to the carriers. You have information from KC Scout. There is an incident on this segment of roadway and some construction here on this roadway. All of that information is combined and provides information to the C-TIP server about road conditions and travel time. Based on all the information available, C-TIP assigns the load to the first carrier who dispatches the truck to the terminal and continues from that first terminal. It takes the load to the second terminal, picks up a load and brings it back to the first, all within the parameters of the load move requirements. By using C-TIP, you were able to avoid one trucking company having to make an empty trip back to the first terminal or an empty trip home and have the second record do the same thing. This is about trip reduction and this is what this is intended to show.
What I am showing in this slide now are some calculations that we did to try to determine what the potential was to reduce the number of empty trips. This is strictly for the Kansas City area. It is not nearly as complex or involved as Chicago, where cross-town volume is much greater. We can reduce intermodal truck trips by 22%. That is a pretty significant number. That translates into a combination of cross-town trips and local delivery trips, which are from a terminal to a delivery point and back. The potential there is to reduce the number of trips by more than 1500 per week or approximately 82,000 annually. Applying travel demand management Practices, we have determined that it provides benefits equivalent to removing about a quarter of a million personal vehicle trips annually from the roadways around Kansas City and that the annual truck vehicle miles traveled could be reduced by more than a million based on an average trip length of 12 and a half miles, which is what we determined was average for the Kansas City area. Those are some pretty significant benefits. Focusing on that alone, and you would think that this would be an interesting thing to undertake. The thing to keep in mind is that Kansas City is not as busy as some of the other places, certainly not as busy as some of the port Cities.
What happens if you apply it to a larger location? If you do it in Chicago, the C-TIP application has the potential to reduce annual truck trips by 1.35 million, which is equivalent to more than 4 million personal vehicle trips annually. That is a huge number. It explains the potential that this application has.
I know that I am coming toward the end of my time. I want to show you a couple things to keep in mind. The idea behind C-TIP was that we wanted to really show that this was an application that can be applied in locations other than rail. What we are showing here is like what you saw earlier. The main difference is that we have applied the same principles to a sea port, in this case Baltimore and have changed a few of the names. This is State Highway Administration now. We have made this generic and called it the state DOT. The architecture and conductivity is all identical if you are in a port location. How would it work? It is basically the same. There are two loads that need to be picked up at the port before the gate closes. One dispatcher has two trucks available and another has one. You apply information from the traffic management system in the area. Based on all of the information that you have from all of those sources, what C-TIP would do for you is identify which two trucks can make the trip, off so that you do not waste the trip with a truck trying to get through a construction area to the port to make the cutoff to retrieve the load. You have two trucks that are able to take care of that, even though they are not necessarily the two closest. You save an empty truck by a truck that will not make the cutoff.
Where do we go from here? What we are trying to do next is obtain funding to conduct the Kansas City demonstration. The idea is to deploy the system and conduct operational test and evaluation and try to analyze the output from that and see how it extends to other locations, particularly in Chicago. That is our first priority right now. We would like to explore applying that concept in a port city, like I showed you in Baltimore, for instance. It could be any port City. Baltimore is local to us so we used that as a model. Finally, like I talked about earlier, we want to change the tone of the discussion here and really focus on how government and business can partner together to help improve overall business efficiency. We have seen that doing so has a potential to have a great effect. Want to try to identify mutually beneficial options, whether it is through us or a local partnership. We want to see how far this concept and this principle can be applied. Most importantly, I think what we really want to do is get a mind-set, a new mindset towards freight. We want to remind people that we really are talking about the fact that more freight is a good thing. It means there is an opportunity for more economic development and more wealth to be shared and more people to have jobs and all of that that comes along with it. More efficient freight means improved quality of life for everyone. It is not just a business decision but a community decision to improve the efficiency of freight. When you have more collaboration, and you will have better solutions. Because more people are involved, there is more knowledge at the table and hopefully more commitment at the table. That pretty much wrapped up what I had to present today. I hope that it was informative.
Jennifer Symoun:
We did have a few questions posted. We will get to those at the end. I do encourage you to think of questions for Paul or any of the other presenters. We'll now move onto our next presentation given by Jeannie Beckett of the Port of Tacoma.
Good morning. What I would like to do is talk about as Paul suggested, the solution that we have in Tacoma. We use on-dock rail as a congestion mitigation solution. We want to look first the congestion and then the opportunity of using more rail. Paul talked about 50 percent of all truck trips are empty. We want to really concentrate on the efficiency of moving the cargo to the end user.
Let's look at the challenges. What will the future bring? We know that there is a lot of cargo demand out there. We know that our communities are concerned about the quality of life as we bring this up cargo and move it and what are the opportunities? We know that China will continue to grow. Not only The folks on the west coast, but east and west coast are looking for alternatives, to how shippers move their cargo to the market. The shipping lines are looking at different possibilities and how to move the cargo to the market. Can they use rail to reduce their truck traffic? We know that the Panama Canal is expanding. And all water services will expand with the expansion of the Panama Canal. You probably know that the Pacific Northwest and East Coast ports are being sold as alternatives to the Los Angeles and Long Beach as well for their Chicago traffic.
Let's look at the projection. This is an industry slide that has been used in industry presentations. The yellow line is the 2020 is a totally unconstrained and is compared to the 2004. You can see that in the Los Angeles, Long Beach area, 13 million TEU which is a 20-foot equivalent, they are the small containers that you see on the back of a truck, 39 were moved in 2004. The projection, unconstrained is that 60 million will move in 2020. Most of the other ports on this chart are currently slightly less than 2 million TEUs per year. New York and New Jersey combined are 4 million, the same as Seattle and Tacoma. They are the third largest load center. As we look at that 60 million TEU goal, where are we going to be able to move that cargo if Los Angeles is not able to reach that number with the constraints that they have on them? As I said the gateways will continue to grow. These are the top 10 (gateways) in the U .S.. LA is projected to grow very large. Oakland growth, Tacoma Road, Houston, Florida and New York/new Jersey. The regions are where our current populations live. In the Northwest there is Cascade region, down in California, both Northern and Southern, you have the Arizona Sun Belt, the Texas triangle and a huge area in the Midwest, the upper Northeast, the Atlantic and Florida. The challenge is that the growth is uneven. Infrastructure does take 10 years to build, it usually about 20 years from concept to actual shuttle. It is a challenge of who will pay for that?. And a challenge of who benefits?. There is never enough money.
If we look who is growing, and you can see on the right side of this chart that China is continued for projected growth, but the growth will not be even, as with ports and with cargo, it will not be a constant 10% or constant 5%. For the West Coast, Asia and Ports, again, it is the biggest. We project an average of approximately 7 to 8% going into the next five years. The other challenge is the large ship. This is a 6800 TEU shipped it is under 1,000 feet long. This is a comparison to what it looks like compared to the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower is a thousand feet tall. These ships, and this example is over 1,000 feet. If you think of a football field, that is three times the average football field. The ones that are being built right now is the one on the right side of the picture. It is 12,000 TEU. We believe that she could be up two 14,000. We lost a slide 'let's move on. Ships this size generate a lot of challenges for the infrastructure, whether it is the container yards or the road infrastructure or the--there is also the environmental capacity. As we look at consumption, - consumption will follow our population growth. This is an example from 2004-10 where the projection for the population will be on the coastal areas as well as the Midwest. If we look at freight and what the answer is, we look at one of the studies the annual congestion and relief index showed that 25 percent of our freight will shift from truck to rail in the urban areas by 2025, on average each consumer would save 43 hours a year. We would save $965 in congestion costs for that commuter. We would save 95 gallons of fuel and would reduce air pollution by 934,000 tons.
I would like to spend some time looking at on-dock rail and Tacoma as a solution. I just identified rail as a solution. I would like to follow up on that. At the Port of Tacoma, we have three guiding principles. One is to grow our current customers, prepare for the future and be a good neighbor. Of our philosophy is that we can grow in harmony with the environment and that ships travel and salmon swim in the same Waterways. When we look at the benefits of rail, a single intermodal train can remove up to 280 trucks from the roadway saving lives, fuel, congestion, pollution and greenhouse gases. If we look at the benefits of the freight rail, you can see from this chart that the highway congestion caused by rail is minimal. Paul stated that each rail move does have a truck at the beginning or end. You can see that if we move trucks to rail, that will be a great help in our congestion. At the Port of Tacoma, our number one goal is to be the most efficient and reliable intermodal it with. We are one of the few (ports) that have that high of a number. Although, Seattle matches ours. I believe that in LA they are trying to reach between 25 and 30%. The East Coast also struggles with the local versus the long haul. This is what we look like currently. The Port of Tacoma has 600 acres of container terminals currently. We do approximately 2 million TEUs and above 600,000 intermodal. This is our forecast on the future. Currently, we are here. Our projections for 2025 are approximately 10 million TEUs moving approximately 3 million lifts by rail.
We believe with land purchases and pretty much doubling our port, we can have the capacity of an access of 9 million TEUs, moving at least 3 million lifts. We will do it through redevelopment. On the left side you can see that we have some old industries that are either defunct or have moved to other areas. We will replace those by cleaning up those lands and replacing it by a container terminal. When we look at increasing capacity we have to make sure that-you have the right amount of container yards, and in our model and intermodal on-dock and what is the right combination? A combination inTacoma is much stronger on the rail proportion than the current model in LA or the East Coast. We have to balance with the densification of storage with the velocity of the rail. What I mean by that, you can either increase your dwell, and decrease your dwell. A dwell is how long it sits on a dock. If you decrease it by moving it faster, you gain capacity. You can increase your densification by stacking it higher, but if you stack it higher and move faster, you gain in both areas.
At Tacoma we have four different options, moving it faster, density, not trying to serve every community out of the Northwest, reliability, making sure that the cargo moves when we say it is going to move, and it gets to its destination on time. We are now building visability into making sure that we are able to follow that container, somewhat like Paul said, to track the container and know when it is safe, secure and that it is moving efficiently. When we do that, we add velocity and density. This creates capacity. When we create reliability we are providing better service and all three of those together provides the ability to grow. When you look at capacity improvement, it is not just all building rail or a new facility.
You start with the process of identifying current things that could be improved by exchanging information, maybe not using the technology but just exchanging information. Paul highlighted how exchanging information between the rail, port and truck drivers could increase our efficiency. You want to look at the operational changes that can improve your financial returns, (lowering) some of your costs. The third level is to implement technology such as Paul referenced, doing some more web-based decision tools and looking at bringing and newer technology, cleaner equipment and the final thing is actually building more at rail, whether it is an intermodal facility. The final thing you will do is what I am going to talk about next. We all have to be it team players. It is a team sport. We have developed the regions singularly as all separate silos. We all need to work together and build it as a regional perspective and look at the demand and how we can grow together. We need to engage our main lines and local DOTs as well as our national DOT and understand their plans and share ideas. We need to continue to define what is public and what is private and what the benefit to each is. We need to investigate and develop new funding options. We need to engage our neighbors locally and nationally to prevent the deterioration of those relationships and quality of life. We need to have more than a framework at the national level. When I talk about a national freight policy, all of the partners, in this case I am referencing the railroads, they are trying to be good neighbors. They are trying to minimize their environmental impact. If we look at Southern California as an example, they are trying to build on-dock and near-dock yards. It is primarily environmentally and solution driven and not related to the efficient movement of cargo. None of us want to give up our local decision making, but we think we can work from the same playbook by having a national policy. I will take questions at the end of the seminar. Thanks very much for your time.
Jennifer Symoun:
Thank you Jeannie. We'll now go to our final presentation given by Mike Meyer of Georgia Tech.
Mike's Presentation:
I will try to speak as fast as I can so that we have time for the Q&A. In 2005 Georgia conducted a feasibility study of high occupancy toll lanes. I will talk about the results of that particular study. It is very important to understand that this is what we called a proof of concept Analysis. When used an existing drug table and database. We did not have the time our budget to do much modification. We were trying to see what the potential benefits might be of doing a truck only toll lane networks or some form of Net work in the Atlantic Region. It was on the available truck that that we had available, the HOT analysis that preceded it and we assumed at least an one alternative that facilities could be billed. We did not do a detailed engineering study to look at the feasibility of adding lanes in some of these corridors. It is important to understand, as you have heard from the other speakers, there are very important representations that need to be a part of studies like this. We had the Atlanta Regional Council, state agencies. It is also important to look at the bottom three that we had representatives from the trucking industry and the industry in Atlanta itself that would play a very important role in advising this particular study. I will talk about that in a bit.
The purpose of the webinar is to talk about urban congestion. Atlanta is the epitome of urban congestion. For those of you not familiar with Atlanta, I will be using terms later. This is Interstate 285 known as the perimeter. I will be talking about Interstate 75. Interstate 85 comes from here and back down this way. Those are the two or the interstates that I will be referring to when I talk about the potential trouble spots. This will suggest that we will have significant congestion on the general purpose lines in the future. We will be looking at HOV vehicles. Which looked at the peak and that the year 2030 and saw that there was potentially a lot of access capacity available in the HOV lanes that were already in existence and those that were being proposed. This led to an alternative, which I will talk about in a minute which is a bit controversial. We were looking at the 523 as the target analysis year, inside of Interstate 2851 lane in each direction and outside, two Land. The concept was to manage the Performance of those lanes themselves to maximize the demand on those. This is what we meant by manage. Want to maintain free flow conditions by Global Service D on the managed lanes themselves. Free flow conditions for the regions, the buzz of rapid transit network. They could use them as well and the overall objective was to maximize the use of the capacity on the road system.
But why were we interested in this? Atlanta is, whether you define it one way or another, the fourth or fifth largest logistic center in the country. They take up a lot of space on the road and our look at the growth in the national economy suggests that we will see many, many more trips in the future than we have today. We experience a number of truck and auto crashes. If we could separate the trucks, there might be some significant benefits on the state side as well. This is an important assumption which came from the industry representatives on the study. The value of time that we assume is $35 per hour for heavy trucks and $18 per hour for light truck. The industry representatives came in and suggested that this is what they believe they think is the value of time. We used those that know that they are conservative assumptions. The fees would be charged when needed to manage the lands and the performance of the lanes. If it got more congested, they would go up. Those are the variable fees. One truck equals two cars. We also did not go through and rate code the network for truck only interchanges. Where the HOV was going to be where we would have trucks access and egress as well provoke this is a high level assumption. As I said before, buses could use HOT lanes as well.
Alternative one was not looking at the engineering feasibility of it but assuming that you could build lanes on existing HOV lanes or highways. The second alternative was the same as that but inside 285 where trucks are not allowed except by permit during the middle of the day, we would reserve the HOV lanes for light duty trucks per we felt that there might be some feasibility and some motivation for trucks to use those inside 285. Alternative three, which could be the most controversial was instead of using the proposed HOV system in the networked, what if we turned those lanes over to HOT and the HOV would be put back into the general purpose flow per you will see the results of that in a moment. This is alternative one. We were looking at two corridors in particular. One was the number/south Road which was from Interstate 175 going on long 85 and down 285-1075 this direction. We also have the east-west from 75 to 85. The selection of those was primarily based on high truck volume and projected by truck volume. We believe they were the most feasible, at least from the initial start. We would do the analysis to see what they meant. This is alternative to inside of 285. Which in the existing HOV lane to light trucks during the day. The third alternative was we would turn it over to a HOT.
The study itself looked at many different measures. I will talk about a couple of them, truck productivity. If you look at the North/south Road, if you start on Sunday five north and go on 285 and end up on 75 South, then during the peak period, the difference between traveling in the general-purpose lame horses being in at the TOT was in a savings of 70 minutes for that truck flow. On the east-west, coming from 75 North, coming down to 85 going up 85, comparing the general purpose travel time, with the HOT, travel time there was a savings of 80 minutes that would factor in the HOT. This figure looks at a comparison, if you will of what we call the percent--in terms of a given certain conditions whether they were free flow segments or near capacity segments or at capacity. We were looking at the HOV two plus days as a comparison and another alternative in the HOT. What you see, not surprisingly is because we are managing the lanes, they have little to ingestion. On the right side you will see 0 percent contestant in terms of those particular alternative. What is interesting is if you look at the network level and not surprisingly the VMT does not change. It did not change very dramatically. What we did see with HOT was a significant decrease in terms of the pickle hours travel. In essence, the productivity, if you will, going with HOT employees showed a substantial gain. Looking at the general purpose lanes, this is in the Peak hour at this case. The percent of the land that were at near capacity, they are at capacity, what you see is the percent of free flow goes up dramatically. At capacity is between a 17 and 24 percent reduction in congested purpose directional miles, which looking at the other things that we are looking at in Atlanta, we are trying to figure out how to reduce congestion. This is not one of the biggest reductions that we have seen.
The other issue was, what happens to the other arterial is in the Network? The Atlanta road network, it does the HOT ring trips into those land and take trips off of the arterial? Legacy and green is a production and truck trips and everything and run back and orange is an increase. What is he, at least from this is a pretty substantial decline in number of truck trips to go there seems to be trucked diverting to the HOT. This figure shows the percent that operate during the peak hour with free flow near capacity or at capacity contested segments. What you see is a 10 to 50% reduction in the suggestion, if you will because of the existence of some form of a HOT lane. Air quality is an important issue. We have the commission model for good because there was substantial change in the VMT and other aspects of this, they did not find any significant change whatsoever. We did not do a detailed safety analysis of this, because it was difficult for us to find out the change, if you will, in terms of trap catches that would occur given the HOT lanes. We think there will be significant if the benefits by moving them from the general purpose lane to general traffic flow. Another big issue is revenue purpose is of great concern to the toll authority, and the to do their part of this is at about potential public and the pub/but the partnership. Because it is a much more extensive network, it showed a much larger annual revenue expected, about $200 million based on the voluntary use of those lanes by trucks that were facing condition and the smallest amount was about 90 million for those two quarters, not surprisingly.
What did we learn about his experience with regard to HOT lanes? We do believe that there are some pretty substantial freight and passenger Movement improvements. The general purpose lane suggestion goes down for the ability of the trucks to go through the network if they are using the HOT lanes, goes up. There is greater reliability in terms of the HOT use. We are managing them for the level of service. We believe that it is a much safer travel condition. Truck operators save time and increase productivity. As I said before, the number of vehicle miles traveled stays the same but fewer hours. We believe that from a cost effect in this basis that there is some substantial benefit in using some of the revenue generated to put in place as well as possibly capitalize the construction itself. Looking at not only the different types of HOT lane perhaps, but the toll authority was also interested in India HOT lanes, or versus a HOV system, which received an capital or operating costs if you cannot build out as much as you can, what would you put there? There was a whole series of measures of its effectiveness that we looked at. This shows, not surprisingly, for the TOT lanes, you get net revenue over operating costs of 157 million versus 18 million for the HOT and a negative for it the HOV. You did not get that much revenue from them at all parts of the regional value of annual time savings, again, from the comparison of the high occupancy toll--being turned over to HOT lanes, D.C. It is very similar to what we saw before in terms of analysis. A 20% increase in the free flow performance on the general flow lines by taking the drugs out of them and putting them into their own lanes.
We looked at implementation very carefully from the institutional perspective as well as some of the other elements that we thought would be important in terms of implementing something like this. Those highlighted in red on this slide, steps are being taken or have been taken to implement some of these things. I will talk about them in a minute. The implementation includes looking at a whole range of organizational responsibilities on who should do the planning, development, operate, maintain, and force, a lot of discussions on those issues. What are the basic principles for putting something like this and please? What is the pricing strategy in terms of different strategies for different corridors, one region wide strategy, what should the fee per mile the? You do it corridor by corridor. To look at it at the regional level purpose and steps have been made by the door to Department of Transportation and not looking at not only regional but statewide possibilities of HOT. The plan, up until this study said we should do managed lanes but there was not much discussion about what that meant. The study got people talking about the use of these four tracks. Incorporating a HOT alternative and quarter studies. The initial steps have been taken. Looking at the potential for public/private partnerships permit it has been designed and in discussion with regard to the private investors in terms of investing and potential HOT quarters and expanding them to HOV.
How do you reach out to the public? How are you going to be consistent with your collection of fees? If you have a smart card, could it be used for transit and parking at the airport as well as using the lanes in the Atlanta area but the travel demand model although it was not modified in any way for this, we believe it was a useful tool for showing the proof of concept, the whole issue of technical analysis and political advocacy, it had a significant impact in terms of local decision makers in terms of looking at this possibility and a little more detail. It was mentioned before by Paul that it was viewed as adversarial. I do not think people here thought about free movement and truck movement, although we are the fourth or fifth largest logistical center in the city. There are a lot of decision makers that were realizing what this could mean for the freight industry and the economy of their region. Including truck representatives was important and tying them to the bus and the transit system. It has not been resolved and is still an issue with regard to this one corridor I talked about on wood and 75 North, are they mandatory use or voluntary? Mandatory use will get more benefits from the perspective of the intestine relief on the general purpose lanes. That also runs into all sorts of issues with regard to the trucking industry.
I have already mentioned quarter results and trade-offs between a HOV and fill in the blank. Some extensions since that study, this is the web site for those interested. Since 2005 we have done some interesting work on the research side from their. Remember what I said before is that we chose the alternative one on the basis of major troubles on not, south, east, west. But how would you go about doing a regional analysis, if you will with the judge how do you identify the corridors that are feasible for something like this what he came up with five criteria, used the geographic information system, and you will see how that came together. Criteria one is where is there a level of service that is pretty bad. If you have a lot of congestion, there would be more willingness to avoid that. Would see on the left side is where you see the congestion. On the right side, want to have a fairly high level of trucks on the road that would be willing to move over. What is seen on the right side and red are descendants of the freeway network that have high volumes of trucks parked on the left is the daily truck presented in terms of percentage of tracks both medium and heavy in each direction. You want to have some concentration of trucks and certain periods of time. On the right side is where there are high drug related crashes on the network in the Atlanta freeway system compared to the regional and state average. By me, on the left, there was a willingness to pay a survey that was done on the and the state Senate by a quarter where we got information about what truckers would be willing to pay to avoid some of the congestion. When you see on the left-hand side is in red where in fact, there seemed to be enough benefits in terms of the congestion that would be occurring and trying to avoid that suggestion. Truckers would be willing to pay to avoid the. On the right hand side is putting those criteria on top of one another and what comes out in the turquoise there are those segments of the freeway network that satisfy all five criteria, which would suggest that there would then be those corridors that you would look at in a little more detail with regard to potential HOT lane application.
In the study, what the individuals looked at was, was are the steps that one follows to look at HOT lanes and the identification of potential corridors and then get into issues of where you place them, where are the access point and what type of vehicle eligibility are you talking about.
J. Symoun:
Thank you Mike. I hope everyone enjoyed these presentations. 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.
The first question is for Mike Meyer. What did you use to derive the value of time used on slide nine? Did you consider any effort to divide a value for the opportunity cost of delay in addition to the hourly direct cost?
M. Meyer:
What we used for the value of time was that we've looked at other studies across the country and the value of time that they were using and relied on our industry representatives. We did not have the willingness to pay the survey at this point in time at the beginning part of the study were not able to use that information, if you will, to derive a value of time. The value of times were very much employers by the industry representatives, a part of our group that looked at it and said, a year is what we believe the value of time is for the movement of our trucks on the region. And Lott were not intercity tracks. We know it is higher than for local distribution. As I said, it was a very conservative assumption. We realize it was a conservative assumption but was bought into by the industry representatives on the steering committee.
J. Symoun:
Thank you. I will go back up to the top as we had a few questions for Paul Belella. I will start with those questions proposed. What was the source of your statistics on your first slide?
P. Belella:
It is a conglomeration of statistics from multiple sources. There is one input together that you are interested and that's what I will do for all of the folks, there are probably a couple of questions that are better answered offline. I will put up my e-mail address so you can email me with specific questions. There were probably six or seven different sources on their and some of them wherefrom the FHWA Web site.
J. Symoun:
The next question for you is, you mentioned TDM theory/methods in assessing truck trip reduction estimates. Can you describe specific TDM strategies in this context?
P. Belella:
This will sound a little bit like a cop out as well, but what my recommendation there is if you e-mail me, I will send you the actual report. We did a case study as a follow on to the development of a concept of Operations four at the C-TIP. Within that case study, we explain the approach we took to identify what potential benefits were. It is not something that I think that we can do justice to by giving you this answer here. My suggestion is that you e-mail me and I will or the staff person I had the most of the analysis for the study or both of us will be happy to talk through that and answer any questions you have. Seen the report is the best way to start with that rather than trying to explain the methods right here off the top of my head.
J. Symoun:
Okay. The next question for you is what institutional barriers have you encountered so far with C-TIP?
P. Belella:
It is interesting. When the a hundred pound gorilla in the room decides that they want to try to do something, it is amazing how many other people step in-line. I have to give a lot of credit to the railroads. The railroads provide by the Business. They are there to serve those railroads. That tended to reduce the number of institutional issues that you might encounter otherwise. I think that carries over to what I think the next question is which is about Data sharing. When the primary players are all at the table and the risk of the folks there tend to be more in the support role, you tend to get past a lot of those issues. As I mentioned before, we had them for railroads, Union Pacific, Kansas City Southern [ indiscernible ], and I feel terrible. I am trying to recall the fourth. Norfolk Southern. That is what it was. All of those folks were at the table. Union Pacific spearheaded this effort. We are experiencing some challenges with railroads being able to provide connectivity. What you require is-not necessarily a live feed but a timely feed about load requirements. It is not as much about not being willing to share the data as it is needed to defray the risk, the cost associated with providing the connectivity which has been a challenge in this case. I think that when we get some federal funding, I believe it is Kansas who has already committed money or is matching, I noticed the other partners have committed matching efforts, once there is a commitment in terms of real money that is put out there to make this happen, I think a lot of those concerns will be alleviated, because the risk associated with providing the connectivity will be reduced because there are other folks contributing to the effort and it will not be something looked upon as a segmented effort. It will tie everything together and address some of those. In terms of some of the other institutional issues, if the railroad said they wanted the trucking company to specifically say, even if we do not buy into the concept at first, we can see why we are trying to do it. In fact, the resistance to participation is in proportion--the more sophisticated carriers see this as a real potential boon to their operation, because they can plan their day and reallocate their own resources internally away from moving and the lows that you do not get paid for to moving real live loads that you do get paid for. It tends to vary with the degree of enlightenment with the carrier. Bose said understand the proposition are more than willing to sign up and make it happen.
J. Symoun:
Okay. We have a question for Jeannie Beckett. Do your growth projections include container diversions to the newly opened Prince Rupert container port in B.C. Canada?
J. Beckett:
Our projections are based on building terminal by the terminal with discussions with our terminal operators and the shipping lines that they have or forecast to have and additional land that we are currently purchasing or read developing. The second point is, you saw a slide that was unconstrained for LA/long beach that showed the demand for LA/Long beach if they are only allowed to grow two 35 or 40, that the someplace between 20 plus million that other ports have to be ready to move, whether that is West Coast, Mexico, Canada or it U.S. was coast or moving water through and to the east coast. We have to remember that LA/Long beach grows a whole port every year. They grow about 2 million TEUs every year. Based on that data point, I guess that, we are very aware that Prince Rupert could cause deversion from the Pacific Northwest into our prime markets to Chicago and beyond. I think there is plenty of cargo for all of us to prepare for and that none of us should hold back and concerns that there is other competition. We need to move forward with our construction and preparation for the next 20 years.
J. Symoun:
Thank you. Another question for you is, how have you engaged the MPO in your port planning, implementation, and decision making?
J. Beckett:
Very regularly we meet with our regional council, which is our MPO. We have active discussions in our committee levels, whether it is through the end assignable corridor Coalition or the west coast coalition or our other committees, such as the prosperity partnership. I think that the challenge for the Regional Council staff is for the freight division, the MPO is primarily the planning emphasis is on moving people, not on freight. As they see our need to move freight, the challenge is to make sure that because we have all heard the adage that freight does not vote, that trade is part of the process. We have been actively involved with them, but it is still primarily moving people.
J. Symoun:
This is a question that I will open up to all three presenters and give you a chance to comment on. The recent Bear Stearns survey of shippers showed that about 6% of volume will shift from rail to TL in the next 6-12 months due to price/service concerns. Does the panel have any comments on this shift? Paul, we can start with you.
P. Belella:
I do not know much about the context of the study who or what kind of freight they are talking about moving. The service concern--within the it real community about the ability for them to match it schedules and delivery on time. I think I would be interested and would reserve comment on that until I understand what commodities are likely to be and shifted. I think that you generally see a fluctuation back and forth with based on on-time performance, the variation in demand coming through at certain access points into the U.S., certain ports. It might be that it is related to our program being moved from one port to one that has little or none. I would like to know the context before I comment on that.
J. Beckett:
I think Paul gave a good explanation of some of the challenges. The other challenges on the west coast within the next 12 months are renegotiation of a contract. I am sure that all shippers are looking at alternatives in preparation after the last contract in 2002 where there was a lock out. They are looking at multiple ports, multiple countries, multiple vehicles, whether it is-they are using rail and looking at more tracking. What they learned last time is that if they were not using a vendor before the lockout, the vendor had no capacity for them when it occurred. I am not familiar with the study. 6% is a lot with the economy as soft as it is. Rail is usually less expensive on the long haul than truck. Without knowing the study, it would be hard to say, yes, I agree or, no, I don't.
M. Meyer:
I certainly agree with the previous speakers. We were talking about bottleneck perhaps before. My presentation is looking at the future. Even with a 5 to 6% shift to rail, you will still see a huge amount of trouble on the nation's Rhodes. I think as the nine mentioned before the idea that the rail system could handle that very easily is questionable, at least in some markets. Even if you do have some shifts with regard to that, the issues that we are looking at in terms of bottlenecks on both the highway network and rail still have to be addressed one way or the other. I just returned from an international scanning program and try not looking at freight movement in China and what is expected to come through those ports coming our way. As many people know, there is a huge flow coming at us. Even if a large percentage of that goes to rail, we will still be heavily relied on trucks and truck movement to get that freight where it needs to go.
J. Symoun:
I did not see any other questions for but did any of the presenters have any questions that were sent to you that I might not have seen.
J. Beckett:
I have one on the freight policy on national land ports. These ports are bearing the cost whether it is environmental or congestion meeting of the Midwest. How do you make sure that communities are willing to grow? I am assuming that Texas has the same issue as cargo goes into the country. We need to move it to another community. How do we spread that with the local cost?
P. Belella:
I did have one that was sent to me as well. How do trucking companies react to C-TIP? It seems like they could lose freight. The key there is that you would have to do a couple of things. You would have to build business rules and to the algorithm and make sure that you distribute those equitably. The other thing is that not one of the things that the truckers would do is provide input into the system that tells all of the railroads with their capacity is to move loads during a given time frame. The contracts that have to be in place, the agreements between the railroads and the trucking companies to move the load, there would have to be it-something that has not been worked out yet, some negotiated solutions. There continues to be an equitable distribution of loads among all of the participants. That you would be exactly right, if there is not a way to manage that so no one got screwed out of their loads, then it would fail. That is one of the things that will have to be decided upon as the system gets developed and implemented.
J. Symoun:
Thank you. We are about out of time. We will close out today since there are no more questions typed in. If you do have additional questions, please feel free to contact the presenters. I have their e-mail on the slide. There is also the Freight Planning LISTSERV. There are over 600 people interested at this point on the freight. Thank you all for attending today's seminar. The recorded version of this event will be available within the next week on the Talking Freight website.
The next seminar will be held on November 21 and is titled "Monitoring and Measuring Freight Mobility." If you haven't done so already, I encourage you to visit the Talking Freight Web Site and sign up for this seminar. The address is up on the slide on your screen. I also encourage you to join the Freight Planning LISTSERV if you have not already done so.
Enjoy the rest of your day!
