View the October 19 seminar recording
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 talk is Regional Models of Cooperation – Regional Collaboration in Freight Planning.
Before going any further, I do want to let those of you who are calling into the teleconference for the audio know you will need to mute your computer speakers or else you will be hearing audio over the computer as well.
Today we have 4 presentations being given by:
Chip Millard is a Transportation Specialist at the FHWA Office of Freight Management and Operations. He currently manages the FHWA Talking Freight Webinar Series. He sets up monthly webinars to highlight current and emerging governmental freight business and other freight industry related topics of importance and interest to public and private sector freight professionals. Additionally, Chip provides situational awareness about freight issues for the FHWA staff. This includes providing information about current freight economics, emerging freight industry trends, freight infrastructure development, and other freight related topic areas. Finally he is involved in FHWA livability efforts working to ensure freight needs are appropriately considered when promoting livable communities. Chip is a member of the Council of Supply-Chain Management Professionals and participates in the Transportation Research Board Urban Freight Committee.
Jeffrey Sriver joined the Chicago Department of Transportation in 2009 and currently serves as the Director of Transportation Planning and Programming. CDOT’s planning activities encompasses all city streets and highways, sidewalks, bike lanes and trails, bus and rail public transit and passenger transportation infrastructure and truck and freight rail facilities. CDOT’s railroad related planning and project development initiative include its participation in the CREATE program, a 4.8 billion region wide freight and passenger railroad infrastructure improvement plan. Jeff also leads CDOT’s award-winning Union Station Master Planning efforts in cooperation with Amtrak and Metro. Prior to joining CDOT, Jeff has led strategic planning and construction activities for the Chicago transit authorities. He has also been a consultant on urban transportation initiative in the U.S. and international. Jeff has a Bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Purdue University and a Master’s in transportation from MIT.
Chris Gutierrez is the president of Kansas City SmartPort Inc., a non-profit economic development organization that promotes and enhances the Kansas City region’s status as a leading North American logistics hub. SmartPort is an affiliated group with the Kansas City area development council. Chris has been active in logistics and international business for more than 25 years. He has worked in the public and private sector in the international business of logistics. Chris’s community involvement includes his positions as a Board member of the following organizations: Board of advisors of the University of Kansas supply chain management program; CSCMP, International Trade Council, World Trade Center – Kansas City and Park University’s Civic Advisory Board. He is also alumni of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce Centurions.
Reza Karimvand has been serving the Arizona Department of Transportation for over 20 years and currently holds the position of State Systems Technology Manager. Prior to joining ADOT, he worked in the private sector in transportation engineering field for more than 10 years. Mr. Karimvand served as a regional traffic engineer for Southern region for 10 years and served as an assistant State engineer for the Arizona Department of Transportation and led the transportation technology department at the traffic operations center, which directed all aspects of intelligent transportation systems statewide from design to operation and maintenance. He spearheaded the redesign of the traffic operations center, a multimillion dollar project, to bring active traffic incident management and travel time expansion to the forefront making Arizona a national leader. Mr. Reza Karimvand is also a co-Program Manager for the AZ Tech, a partnership of all local agencies with a goal to integrate transportation systems across jurisdictional boundaries through traffic management and ITS solutions. Mr. Reza Karimvand graduated from the Louisiana Tech University and is a registered professional engineer in the State of Arizona.
Today’s seminar will last 90 minutes and 60 minutes for the speakers and final 30 minutes for audience Q&A. If during the presentation you think of a question, you can type it into the chat area. Please make sure to send your questions to everyone and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during the presentation but they will start off the Q&A 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 the time and unable to address all questions, we will attempt to get written responses from the presenters to the unanswered questions.
The PowerPoint presentation used during this seminar is 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’ll 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’ll include more detailed instructions in the file share box on how to obtain credits after the seminar. Those of you who are not AICP members but would like to receive PDH credit for this webinar, please note that FHWA does not formally offer PDHs. However, it may be possible to receive PDHs for your participation at “Talking Freight” if you are able to self-certify. Once you received the PDHs please download the agenda from the download box and submit the agenda to your respective licensing Agency.
Finally, I encourage everyone to please download the evaluation form from the file share box and submit it to me after you filled it out.
I am now going to turn it over to Chip Millard of FHWA to get us started.
Chip Millard
Alright, thank you, Nicole. And thank you to everyone for joining today. I will begin today with a quick review of what the regional model of cooperation initiative is all about and discuss why it’s important for freight planning, and then I will introduce our three featured speakers for today’s webinar.
The next slide here, just to give you a purpose and background, the purpose of Regional Models of Cooperation initiatives is to promote best practices for transportation planning across jurisdictions. It’s a joint Planning Emphasis Area (PEA) of FHWA and FTA (Federal Transit Administration) and initiative of everyday counts program. It’s also about looking for opportunities for MPOs serving the same adjacent urbanized areas to work together on development of planning projects across jurisdictional boundaries. This also includes not only MPOs but also State DOTs, transit agencies, cities, and other agencies that have formal roles in the transportation planning and process. Identifying opportunities to work together on regional planning where it makes sense can enhance the process and resolve in better transportation systems. Today’s webinar focuses on examples of State and local governments working together with the private sector to advance freight planning operations and project development in three regions and I will quickly review why cooperation is so important for freight planning.
Just to give you a freight transportation overview, almost all freight requires transportation from the point of origin to its final destination and it very often crosses many jurisdictional boundaries whether these are national, State, Metropolitan area, county or municipal, so freight needs and issues should be of importance to all levels of government. A significant portion of freight movements are transported via multiple modes or at least multiple vehicles to coordinate between these modes and vehicle operators is important as well. Poor coordination results in delayed or inefficient shipments which ultimately increase costs not only for freight shippers and carriers but also for receiving businesses, including retailers and consumers.
A brief slide that talks about the Supply Chain, understanding the Supply Chain: Freight transportation ties directly to Supply Chain which is a collaborative private sector business process, the manufacturer and distributer get started from distraction or collection of raw materials to production of finished goods to the transport of those goods to retailers and consumers. Those do not directly involve public sector agencies in most cases, supply chains as themselves heavily rely on effective collaboration.
Just emphasize the point we are talking about freight collaboration. It isn’t just about public collaboration; it’s also private sector collaboration and collaboration between both the public sector and the private sector. Freight transportation isn’t just of importance of public or private sector transportation organizations, manufacturers, and retailers, is also important to economic development agencies and communities in terms of land development impact, tax based, and jobs they create. All of the aforementioned groups care in varying degrees about freight’s other impacts such as congestion, infrastructure capacity, which is not only of transportation but also of utilities, financing and funding, environmental issues, livability and quality-of-life issues, security and safety. Coordination between these different groups and addressing the positive and the negative by freight transportation is increasingly important.
We are focused on Regional Models of Cooperation but I did want to talk about as I mentioned earlier that collaboration on all governmental levels becomes very important. I just want to highlight some examples of federal initiatives with collaboration dealing with freight. FHWA has involved in various collaboration efforts. Some examples include: U.S. Joint working Committee, a coordination between U.S., Canada, Mexico on cross-border freight transportation issues. U.S. Canada Transportation Border Working group which is coordination between U.S. and Canada on across the border issues. The U.S. European Union twinning project which is urban freight delivery focus coordination effort between the U.S. and EU, and also involves State DOTs. The national coalition on truck parking which was formed to address national truck parking issues and involves FHWA and the entire USDOT. AASHTO which is the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials. CVSA which is commercial vehicle safety alliance. ATA American trucking association, OOIDA Owner operator Independent drivers association, and NATSO, national association of truck stop operators. The last item is U.S. Department of Commerce Advisory Committee on Supply Chain Competitiveness. It’s a coordination effort between the Federal Government and the private industry to improve U.S. supply-chain efficiency. Although it’s led by the U.S. Department of Commerce, FHWA does participate in the initiative. This list is exhausted and illustrates the precede need for the freight transportation collaboration efforts at the federal level.
Just to sum up here, the freight transportation needs and issues cut across jurisdictions, modes and organization types, and play a major role in supporting economic development and creating and sustaining jobs. Because the needs and issues are crosscutting, there is a strong need for collaboration between the organizations involved or impacted in some way by freight transportation.
Today’s webinar will feature information about three distinctly different types of freight collaboration efforts. I’m confident you will find the discussion about these efforts informative. This last slide here is for if you have questions and comments. At the end of the presentation you will also have my contact information. You can also send it to the freight feedback e-mail or the FHWA freight office website which is shown here. Thank you again for your patience, I hope you take advantage of the freight resources available. Find out more about the collaboration efforts. I will turn it over to our presenters. We have outstanding presentations today and have great stories to tell. I’ll try to have questions and answers at the end. Without further delay, I will turn it over to, Jeffrey Sriver, our first speaker.
Jeffrey Sriver
Thanks Chip. My name is Jeffrey Sriver, I’m the Director of Transportation Planning and Programming with the City of Chicago’s Department of Transportation. Thanks, everyone, for your willingness to hear about the CREATE program.
So as many on the call may already be aware, Chicago is the nation’s freight rail hub and all sorts of different kinds of products and raw materials come through Chicago or to Chicago as part of that Supply Chain that Chip was just talking about. About 25% of all United States rail traffic touches Chicago while it’s in route on trains. For intermodal (that is containerized) traffic, about 44% of all U.S. Traffic comes through Chicago. Certain of the intermodal port facilities on the coasts have an extremely strong relationship with Chicago as part of the distribution of those containers. Seattle/Tacoma has about 68% of its intermodal units coming through Chicago. Nearly half of the intermodal units that arrive in the port of LA Long Beach end up coming through Chicago en route to their final destinations.
Although Chicago is not a seaport, seaports measure their activity in 20-foot equivalent units for the containers that they lift. If you were to count up all of the TEUs (20-ft Equivalent) in Chicago and all of the various rail intermodal facilities here, it would rank alongside the level of activity in LA-Long Beach, which is the busiest port facility in the U.S. It would rank among busiest containerized port facilities in the world. Also for manifest freight traffic, that’s the freight that’s on trains not in containers, Chicago is the primary East-West Gateway, serving many more railcars than the other rail gateways in the middle of the United States.
The CREATE program is a $4.4 billion public-private partnership designed to improve transportation flow throughout the Chicago region. It got its start as a result of a snowstorm in 1999 that exposed weaknesses that there had been some disinvestment in Chicago. A lot of the rail infrastructure in Chicago is shared responsibility or shared use between a number of different railroads, and as is often the case if something is a shared responsibility, sometimes it has a tendency to become nobody’s responsibility, and there had been some disinvestment.
The traffic was increasing and the capacity was not increasing to handle it, so an external event such as a snowstorm caused severe delays. It took many months for the traffic delays due to that snowstorm to get cleared out. It brought the delays to the attention of many elected officials, which brought the railroads and the city and State governments together to address the circumstance. One of the ways it was addressed was to improve coordination operationally between the railroads in Chicago, and there were protocols and facilities set up to handle that. On the other side it was intended to address the capital investment deficiencies in Chicago.
The CREATE program is the program addressing the shared capital needs on the rail system in Chicago. All of the different Class 1 railroads in Chicago, six out of the seven Class 1s in the country are represented in CREATE. Plus 2 switching railroads (that are jointly owned by many of the Class 1 railroads), plus Amtrak, the national passenger railroad and Metra, our region’s commuter railroad, as well as the city of Chicago’s DOT, my employer, and the Illinois State Department of transportation.
The program itself comprises 70 different projects. There are 25 that are road/rail grade separations to remove conflicts between freight and passenger trains and road traffic. In an urban context like Chicago, that is not only cars and trucks but also the pedestrians, bicycles, and transit vehicles. Six of the CREATE projects are separating freight trains and passenger trains. This is important because freight trains tend to be very long and they move relatively slowly, compared to passenger and commuter trains which are much shorter and like to move much more quickly. Having conflicts at grade crossings or at rail to rail grade crossings can result in significant delays for either of those trains. 36 of the projects are rail-based projects to improve switches, signals, and add track capacity on right-of-way that is typically already owned by the freight railroads.
In addition, there are programs to improve old viaducts within the city. There was a big viaduct separation initiative that had taken place nearly 100 years ago. A lot of those viaducts reaching the end of their lives. There is also a grade crossing safety enhancement initiative at places where grade crossings will not be separated. And there is a common program among the railroads to allow controllers and other railroad personnel in Chicago to see all of the trains among the various railroads as they enter and proceed through Chicago.
The projects shown on this map are scattered throughout the metropolitan area, Downtown Chicago is towards the upper-right of the picture. The projects are primarily concentrated on the west, south west and south sides of the metropolitan area. All railroads coming from the east kind of consolidate and approach Chicago from the South because of Lake Michigan. That tends to concentrate the rail activity in that area. The projects are divided into several different corridors. The blue corridor on the map is the Belt Corridor. The red is called East-West and purple is Western Avenue Corridor. These corridors are effectively creating sort of “rail highways” through the city and linking together and making improvements along a corridor so that we don’t end up in a situation where we improve one bottleneck only to have all of the traffic get tied up at the next bottleneck down the line. These are coordinated improvements so that traffic can flow from one end of the corridor through to the other with minimal delays. The yellow corridor represents 2 particular passenger corridors that have a number of freight conflicts, and a lot of the rail flyover projects concentrated along those corridors.
To date, we have completed 27 projects with a number of under construction, final design and projects in the environmental review. All of our projects proceed through the standard preliminary engineering and planning and environmental review or “Phase I” process, as it’s often called, into a Phase II process which is final design, and then into construction. Because we have 70 projects in the overall program, we always try to make sure that we have sort of a line-up of projects that need to either enter into Phase I stage or Phase 2 stage or into construction. So as funding resources are identified we have projects ready to take advantage of them.
This chart shows the steady progress that has been achieved since the CREATE program was started in 2003. A few projects were actually already underway and through the planning process and were grandfathered into CREATE, and the rest of them got started as the CREATE program got going. The benefits from all of these CREATE projects greatly exceeds the estimated costs so far as we showed earlier with the overall cost of the CREATE project so far is nearly $5 billion but the 30-year economic benefits as shown on the slide are over $30 billion. The other benefits that we have seen so far have been a 1.3 million passenger hours reduction in delay for passenger trains, a significant reduction in delays for trucks and motorists at grade crossings, improvements to safety, and improvements in the environment from reduction of idling of freight trains waiting on other trains.
Let’s talk briefly about funding and how that works with the Partnership. At the time the CREATE program was established in early 2000s, there was no dedicated funding source established for these projects. As the various public and private sector partners have been proceeding with the plan on this coordinated suite of 70 different projects, we have essentially agreed that we would all work together to get funding resources and apply for funding resources on an opportunistic basis. So as various federal, State, and local funding resources have become available, we have applied for these types of programs which will be familiar to the most people on this call: the TIGER programs and the previous program called Projects of National and Regional Significance (PNRS), the recovery act stimulus and railroad relocation grants and other types of federal grant programs. And then as our State government has also undertaken capital funding legislation, we have been talking with our State representatives to make sure there is funding for the CREATE program as well. The railroad partners have also contributed significantly to this and their capital processes are perhaps a little less complex than the government grant applications, but all the railroad officials do have to talk with their Executive management to ensure that these CREATE projects stay on each individual railroad’s capital program.
Next I will discuss the CREATE organization process and how do we achieve this coordination and cooperation among all of these entities? We have a Committee structure that I will go into. At the top is the Stakeholders Group that communicates directly with the Management Committee, then Advocacy, Implementation, and Finance & Budget Committees. The Stakeholders are essentially the Executive level of coordination among the CREATE partners. The Association of American Railroads (AAR) represents all of the railroad partners through the President of the AAR. The Secretary of Transportation is the stakeholder that represents Illinois DOT and Commissioner of Transportation represents the Chicago DOT. The U.S. Department of Transportation also is heavily involved in the CREATE program represented primarily through the Federal Highway Administration, but increasingly also through the Federal Railroad Administration. FHWA’s involvement is because they had the grant making authority and management authority at the time the program was established more than a decade ago. In the intervening years, FRA has gotten more and more into grant-making and has become more engaged in the process as well.
This Stakeholders Group is a high-level policy group and resolves any issues. All decisions within CREATE are made on a consensus basis. Usually that can be achieved at the lower levels but if they need to rise up to Executive level this is how it happens. The Management Committee is typically where most decisions get made. There are many Senior Managers from all of the various CREATE Partner agencies that participate in the Management Committee. We approve the project designs, cost estimates, and take care of other management issues. The Management Committee meets on a quarterly basis. The Stakeholders meet on an as needed basis. For day-to-day activities we have the Implementation Team and The Advocacy Team. As far as Implementation, this group meets twice per month, once in person and once on the telephone. Again, it includes representatives from all of the various agencies. This is the level where all of the engineering plans are reviewed and approved and scope, schedule, and budget changes are determined, and then sent to Management Committee for final approval. This is where all of the engineers get together and the planners get together and are heard from on every project.
We talk extensively with the consulting teams involved in the projects. The Advocacy Committee makes sure that all of the organizations on the same page when it comes to project advocacy and we have the same message when we seek funding from federal, State and railroad sources. There’s a lot of coordination that occurs for public messaging through the Advocacy Committee.
The Finance Committee meets on an ad hoc basis just to make sure that everybody is on the same page in terms of what our estimates are for our projects and where they are coming in on budget. This chart represents the project process through selection and environmental assessment, final engineering and construction that I described earlier. The railroads, at the beginning of the CREATE program, did not have established protocols for dealing with federally funded projects. The State of Illinois actually developed these rather complicated flowcharts to go through the Phase I workflow process and the phase two and three workflow process indicating where decisions needed to be made by each of these partners. That helped the railroads understand how our public sector processes work, as well as where they fit in these processes and where everyone else fits in these processes. I realize this is way too much to go through on this call but these processes are in place here.
We are running out of time, but here is just a quick overview of a few of the projects as representative examples. This [Project P1] is a major grade separation between a busy Metra route that would cause a busy Amtrak and freight route to be delayed for three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon because that is the commuter curfew when none of the freight trains could block the commuter train during that time. This involved coordination between Metra, Amtrak and the Norfolk Southern Railroad, the State of Illinois, and the U.S. DOT, and all had funding commitments here.
This [Project GS15a] is a grade separation project next to a Ford Motor Company vehicle assembly facility. Two major streets were crossed at grade by the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks with South Shore commuter trains going to Indiana running over the blue bridge overhead. It’s another project that involved a lot of coordination not only between the various funding entities, public and private railroads, but also the Ford Motor Company who had a very much vested interest in that and actually contributed to some of the funding for that project.
[Project B2] established a third mainline on a critical Union Pacific route going west from Chicago that also serves commuter trains. A lot of the projects that are in CREATE are about signaling. There are many antiquated signals and even areas without signaling and switches that cause freight trains to incur significant delays as they come through Chicago. These are some projects where improvements are made affecting capacity.
Last but not least, our biggest project is called the 75th Street Corridor Improvement Project, and this is the biggest bottleneck of all of the freight rail in Chicago. It has its own website, if you would like more information. It’s the confluence of a number of different railroads crossed by other railroads with Metra going right through the middle of it putting everything out-of-service for the freight trains for three hours a day in the morning and three hours in the afternoon. It’s an area where up to six or seven freight trains may want to go through at one time but only one or 2 can because of these conflicts. The conflicts will all be removed. This project all by itself is about a 1 billion dollar improvement. One of our main priorities, at this time, is to get this project started. We’ve already gone through the environmental review phase and now are ready for final design and construction.
Thank you for your participation. I would be happy to address questions at the end along with the other presenters.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Jeff. We will now move on to Chris Gutierrez of KC SmartPort. Chris?
Chris Gutierrez
Thank you, very much, Nicole. And again, as Jeff said, we appreciate your attendance on the webinar and giving us the ability to talk about projects happening in our regions. I’m going to change it up a bit from Jeff’s presentation and talk more from an economic development standpoint on things that are happening in the greater Kansas City region.
First on the slide, I always like to point out our logo. We use the two letters K and C to represent Kansas City. Those of you that are familiar with our area market are a Kansas City, Missouri and a Kansas City Kansas. The KC represents the whole region. For the Supply Chain people that swoosh around the whole represents the fact that freight at-rest is freight at-risk and freight moves efficiently through the Kansas City market. My one marketing plug there.
SmartPort, a little bit about who we are. We are the regional not-for-profit economic development organization in this market and our job is attracting what we call freight-based economic development. New manufacturing, distribution, and warehousing into the region that isn’t here today. We do work closely with existing businesses in our market on growth and labor force and leadership. But the primary job of SmartPort is to attract new investment in to that 18 County, 2 State, 50 community regions that we call, Kansas City. That’s domestic or international companies that might invest in our market. We are connected to and affiliated to the regional ED group called the Kansas City area development Council or KCEDC that does similar work to us but in the context of corporate headquarters, data centers, financial services, back-office, etc. Our job is to focus on the freight specific projects.
A little bit greater into SmartPort, as I said, we are an economic development organization. We have been regional in this market from the beginning in 2000. We are a not-for-profit but we pointed very quickly that we are also a not for loss. About 90% of my funding comes from the private sector who is investor members in this effort to grow the region. I have a Board of about 30 and total investor organizations, more than 75 in our region. We were found it back in the late 90s when our regional economic development group, our regional chamber, and our MPO here in Kansas City, mid-American regional Council all commissioned a study to look at freight volumes in our region.
The collaborative nature started right from the beginning of these three organizations to look at how much freight goes in and out of Kansas City, by what mode, what is the freight? Where is it come from? Where is it going? How do these freight volumes affect our region? Number of things came out of that Mid-Continent Trade Way study such as a new bridge over I-35 over the Missouri River, some significant infrastructure projects, and the need to create an entity like SmartPort. We also have board members from both Kansas and Missouri’s DOTs. Again, a very collaborative nature of private and public sector, looking at freight and freight volumes and transportation, and how do we continue to grow this market, but also look at how do we support them from an infrastructure and the planning standpoint?
In terms of some cooperation efforts, I mentioned the mid-continent trade way study. That was done in the context of NAFTA that was put in place in 1994. And how does Kansas City central location within the three countries position itself as well? We have grown beyond the NAFTA context to look at freight volumes in any direction or from any source inbound or outbound. That study was a strong base of data and, again, the cooperative nature of both public -- private public sector to start SmartPort from that study.
We since have updated the study a couple of times. We had one significant update of the Kansas City regional freight study in 2009 that we level set the freight volumes again and really looked at unique areas, some markets of Kansas City we call freight zones. A lot of this was pre-freight being so critical to the federal highway funding efforts. We had a good understanding of freight zones within the region and what volumes of truck and rail and what sort of freight was in those zones, and how infrastructure whether it be any one of the most supported or affected that freight volumes or the freight movement in those zones.
I listed a point to 2017 study. A little optimistic. We’re hoping to do a study and our market on new innovations around Autonomous vehicles, drones, new ways to deliver last mile freight in an e-commerce context and how is that benefiting us, but also how does it support the planning efforts that’s going on in this region. I listed that there. We are putting the framework around that and how we will implement that study.
The couple of other things, SmartPort being a true representative of the freight community in our market have been very active in freight advisory boards at both states. I was fortunate to Co-Chair the advisory Board on the Kansas side in its initial rollout. It’s in its second phase and is still active in that but I am not the Co-Chair anymore. I have been active in Missouri Freight advisory Board as well, as we put those in place for the freight and transportation funding in the future. Our NPL, MARC, has a good movement committee which I have been a member of since the beginning as well, to bring that freight the voice to the planning and operations organizations as we look at opportunities to expand or improve freight infrastructure within the region. Everybody’s got to have their logo slide as Jeff did as well. Here is just a snapshot of some of my members.
What I want to point out there you see some of the major railroads in our market. You see some of the aviation partners we have both in Kansas City, Missouri and Johnson County, Kansas. UPS is a member; KCP&L was our dominant electric utility provider. Some of our engineering and transportation groups like Transystems; Olsson Associates are also members and our port, Port KC. The blue circled logo at the top is our Greater Kansas City foreign trade zone.
We see a lot of international freight moving in and out of our region. When I mention Kansas City or, KC, as a region, this is our footprint which consists of 18 counties. The red ball sits in the downtown area of Kansas City, Missouri. To the right, the gray is Missouri and the blue is Kansas. We know those boundaries and the regions here but when I’m talking to a client considering in investing in Kansas City, they look at our region as the target. Someone in their organization or a consultant has done a transportation network optimization study and they know they can be competitive with their inbound/outbound freight in our region. But that just shows you the cooperative nature of the jurisdiction of our market, 18 counties, 2 states, and 50 communities.
We joke that we have become Switzerland to work with a project as we don’t care whether it’s located on Missouri or Kansas City side and just a background to Chicago. We are also the United Nations when it comes to managing all these independent public organizations that want that development happen in their region. From a global standpoint, this map says it all. All 4 modes connect very well in Kansas City in the North American context. We are the largest rail center in the country by tonnage. Chicago moves a lot more railcars and freight in and out of their region but by tonnage we are the largest. We are the third-largest trucking center. In fact, UPS and FedEx will tell you independently if you have one e-commerce fulfillment center, it should be in Kansas City because of that highway infrastructure and the ability to reach 85% of the U.S. population in 2 days on a truck.
You see the plane flying over to Canada; we have a significant air cargo hub in Kansas City, one of the largest in the Midwest, second in Chicago. Also a significant amount of cargo moving by air in and out of Kansas City. Lastly and hard to see on this map, but the Missouri River is connecting us to the largest navigable waterway through the Mississippi.
Not as significant cargo mode as the other three, but our port has invested heavily in our port facility, and it’s seeing freight volumes grow on the Missouri River, and again, in a context to head north from us and then in East to the Mississippi. The yellow boxes represent the global markets, both imports and exports moving through the traditional port gateways into the U.S., whether that is ground or water into the Kansas City market, and again back out on an international context.
A couple of examples of significant private public partnerships that have happened in our region recently, this slide are the Logistics Park Kansas City. It’s in Edgerton, Kansas and is a partnership of BNSF railroads that you can see the orange cranes off in the distance. The Kansas Department of Transportation, Johnson County Kansas, and then Edgerton being the city, as well as North point Development as the developer out there. This is a significant intermodal logistics park. BNSF has the capacity to go to 1.5 million less with this facility. They are not there at this point but they are moving fast in terms of the growth.
The big-box distribution centers been built by north point and others in the Region to support that user of the intermodal park. Again, significant transportation infrastructure has gone into this park both paid for by the BNSF and the public entities to support the road infrastructure of trucks moving out of this park. This is a snapshot of some of the development. This group continues to build spec development as soon as they have one building up; they are building a second one to support the growth of freight movement in and out of Kansas City.
Another one, hopefully, you can tell that’s our Kansas City international Airport. It has over 8000 acres they control as an enterprise entity of Kansas City, Missouri. They have recently established over the last five years of partnership with Trammel Crow and CBRE to develop 800 acres of that. You can see that in what would be for us the southeast quadrant of the airport. That development has the ability to build buildings with direct access to the runways for cargo movement, as well, as well as immediate access to our interstate network. There are three buildings already built in this park. One is here that supports challenge manufacturing, an automotive supplier. This is blunt international, a cutting blade, chainsaw company that supports their North American distribution and manufacturing here. And then another building that is a spec building. We are already seeing growth in this park. Again it’s a partnership of the city and the private sector to develop this. The city, the aviation department will always own the land. It’s a ground lease development and then Trammell Crow supports the vertical development onsite.
The last couple of slides for me, all of these are great effort in Kansas City. There is a lot of development happening, close to 9 million square feet of spec development is being built or has been built in our market this year alone, and supply or demand for that is right there to lease those buildings. None of it can be done without the support of the workforce. Again, in a collaborative nature, at SmartPort our partners are working at the middle school, high school, community college, and also the 4-year and graduate level to support awareness of the careers in supply-chain, whether that’s transportation, warehouse distribution, but also the specific training needed to support this industry. It’s been successful but, I think, nationally, everybody has a labor issue in terms of development of available labor and interested labor, we are continuing to try to stay in front of this.
One good example is our community college on the Kansas side has a regional training center at that BNSF development to support the growth of the jobs right there in Edgerton, Kansas, to meet the needs of the tenants that are locating there as well as the railroad. This is critical to us. Everybody talks about talent recruitment and young professionals and millennials; we are doing our best to promote this within the high school and the middle schools that this is a career. These are good jobs, skilled jobs and students need to look at opportunities in this space. Its working but we are constantly working ahead of job growth coming in our market. Sectors for us e-commerce, automotive, rail intermodal is the growth for us in supply-chain. Again, we are seeing positive growth in our market and our job is to bring the public and private sector together to support the growth as we move forward. That was my last slide. Our contact information has been provided. As Jeff said, I look forward to the questions at the end of the presentation.
Nicole Coene
Thank you Chris. We will now finish out with Reza Karimvand, Arizona Department of Transportation. Reza.
Reza Karimvand
Thank you, Nicole and good morning or good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, depending on where you are. It’s my pleasure to present you the I-10 Corridor Coalition today. I will go over how we started and the process we have gone through, where we are and where we are going. Before I start, I would like to thank the Federal Highway team, specifically Terry Reagan and his team and I-95 corridor coalition, I-81 corridor coalition who really helped us in providing great guidance to the process of forming the coalition.
Arguably, the most important key commerce corridor is I-10 which connects Arizona with the ports of Los Angeles and the Ports of Houston. There is a tremendous opportunity to work with adjacent states to improve the delivery of services we provide to the motoring public. Therefore, I-10 corridor coalition was developed with California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. It goes through seven cities and creates 1700 miles of multi-jurisdictional corridor organized with overall objectives that can be described in 2 words, reducing friction.
If you ask any logistics or shipping expert, what threatens Supply Chain competitiveness, they will say congestion, travel delay, and unreliable travel time. Specifically, private shippers have expressed a desire for greater reliability in freight movement along the corridor which could be achieved through the research and coordination of operations across the 4 states. In fact, commerce flowing on I-10 across California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas is a powerful engine for the Western region. The I-10 corridor coalition seeks to do in the west what our peers have done in the East. I-95 corridor coalition and I-81. We want to see today if a commercial truck can travel the 1700 miles between LA ports and Houston ports safely, efficiently and without delay and regulatory hassles. Let me go over the charter and the planning. We utilize staff from each of 4 State DOTs to develop a partnership charter, as well as launching the Concept of Operation study. We also reached out to FHWA for help in gathering Lessons Learned from other established corridors across the country. FHWA helped us conveying a peer exchange on June 2 of this year in Phoenix, Arizona. At that meeting, all 4 CEOs signed a partnership charter and discussed the priorities.
Let me go over some of the goals and visions as stated in the charter. Connected corridor throughout the 4 states and providing streamlined “end-to-end” and connected vehicle experience and reducing friction for economic development in the West, and developing technology, standards of practice and protocols to enable better freight and passenger movement along the corridor in connected vehicle environment, and engaging the transportation manufacturing and technology sector to participate in the development of products and services to be tested as part of this deployment. It is needless to say that achieving our objective will be the result of focusing on standardization and optimization of permitting, commercial vehicles’ inspection and operation which I will discuss later in the presentation.
Let me go over some of the expected outcome and focus areas. The first task we had was to define the corridor. The operations of corridor extend far beyond the right-of-way of the interstate, understanding there are situations where the boundaries are different, depending on the subject. For example, the normal boundary may extend a few miles from the right-of-way during normal operations, but extends a wider distance during the larger scale incidents such as bridge closers or major disasters. It was recommended to reach out to various interest groups, including the truck, trucking community for input and their use of the corridor. The second task we had was to brand the corridor. We have determined the brand for I-10 corridor is “I-10 CONNECTS”, as you can see on the logo at the top; it says I-10 CONNECTS. This was approved by all four states. And now we are in the process of developing a website which will include the development of look and feel for the website, social media and travel information. Another task within this topic is to identify the content that will reside on the website. Some of the possible suggestions were to include incident management, travel information, permitting, and truck stop availability. And we expect the website to go live in a couple of months.
Our next task is identifying who are the customers are of the corridor. It’s important to understand who the users of the corridor are to ensure work efforts would be most productive, and we would be reaching out to our customers to better understand, not just current the needs but also what they expect in the future as we see an increase in traffic volume and incorporation of new technology in the vehicle traveling corridor.
How transportation system management and operations (TSMO) touches this corridor. In establishing the corridor correlation, we want to ensure that and the operations of the corridor across the 4 states should be seamless to the drivers. The first step would be to identify and integrate communication and operation among the transportation management centers of the 4 State DOTs. We hope to develop joint training programs among the staff to ensure a consistency of delivery. We intend to develop a contact list for the key staff at the TMCs and ensure that all of the TMC staff along the 4 states along the corridor have access to the list and know who to call.
The first step could be to identify existing truck parking along the corridor and compile this information in one central location. Other ways to reduce friction could be to examine permitting, weigh-in-motion and other issues truckers deal with as they cross the borders. Let’s look at some of the policy coordination. We need to identify differences among the State policies and better align the policies among the 4 State regarding permitting, inspection, and State freight plans.
In terms of permitting, we need to have a good coordination of truck permitting among the 4 states. And also disseminate the information about permitting require along the corridor primarily on the website. In terms of the inspection, we need to coordinate weigh-in-motion programs among the 4 states and document the inspection program among the 4 states, and also share and collaborate on freight initiatives among 4 states.
Let me go over some of the operations aspects of the I-10 corridor coalition. In order to have a good handle of the traffic management and incident management, we need to coordinate the training program among all 4 states, and coordinate cross-border responses; develop a contact information database of key contacts of each of the states, develop and display on the corridor website, the links of the State traveler information, and develop a coordinated real-time travel information along the corridor, implement communications protocols among the TOC/TMC’s, develop alternate route maps for detours along the corridor for emergencies, and document bridge clearance along the corridors.
In terms of the technology, the implementation of technology such as truck platooning and connected vehicle weigh in motion to minimize trucking inspection delay, and traffic congestion at the weigh station are important aspects to reduce friction. We need to coordinate use and implementation intelligent transportation system along the corridor, and coordinate research conducted by each State, and develop an end-of-queue warning system through the corridor and implementation of the weigh sensor for screening and sorting trucks at the weigh station to minimize truck inspection delays and traffic congestion at the weigh stations.
What are the early benefits and long-term benefits? We think the traveling public will experience benefits very early in the efforts of coalition. Our increased communication among the TMCs should result in quicker response to incident management and truck drivers receiving improved information on truck parking along the corridor. However, long-term benefits will result from our coordination on efforts such as permitting and adoption of technologies such as truck platooning and Autonomous trucks along the corridor.
Where are we going? Now we are in the process of signing official agreements between the 4 states. We’re in the process of going to the Con OPs study and requiring implementing the study recommendations and work diligently towards our goals as described earlier. One last thing I would like to say is, as we get up and running, we fully except our State DOTs partner to the east to inquire about joining the corridor coalition. We from the start, have expected the effort to expand, and work with them in how best to integrate them into the work of the coalition. At the end, I would like to thank FHWA for great support that they have provided throughout this process. Thank you, so much. If there are any questions, I will respond at the end.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Reza. We will now move on to the Q&A session. Since we do have our 30 minutes remaining, we are also going to open up the phone lines at the time if anyone has a question. Press star one on your telephone keypad to be placed into the queue.
I will start a Q&A session off with questions for Jeff. Jeff, was there a difference between the stakeholder members who selected the CREATE project and what was described, which seems to be the stakeholder members charged with implementing the project?
Jeffrey Sriver
Thank you. Sure. The stakeholders implementing the projects are the same ones that chose the projects, and the way that worked, back again more than a decade ago now is the railroads got together and essentially came up with their own top 10 list, for lack of a better description of that, where they thought the most important points that were needed to be improved. Bear in mind, the issues in Chicago, issues with railroad, share assets have operating rights over other railroads and that’s what creates the issue. If there is one railroad that owns and runs on their own track, they’re not going to have a problem justifying making an investment in that but the issues came in where multiple railroads owned tracks and you should invest and how much. They found that a lot of commonalities between the railroads and where they identified with a check point were. There was an example of railroad to railroad coordination. And some of the grade separations were more of a public sector led process with overstock among the public sector entities.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Jeff.
From the beginning of CREATE, there has also been 70 projects on the list, are you still adding related projects, including those that introduce multimodal technologies to support the management and operations of the rail and highway systems?
Jeffrey Sriver
In the beginning there were actually more than 70 projects. There was actually a whole fourth freight rail corridor. Right now there is only three. There was a fourth and the railroads that corridor was primarily serving was the Canadian National. And after CREATE started they bought a new line that runs around Chicago and that sort of abbreviated the need for certain projects in that corridor. Others still remained they were incorporated elsewhere. There are protocols in place within the CREATE program to reassess the projects, but that doesn’t happen very often. Right now, we have a way a process where we are re-examining the grade separations to make sure those are still the priorities. Several years have passed since we last looked at that but there are protocols in place.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Jeff.
Insights and recommendations to other DOTs about public-private partnerships based on lessons?
Jeffrey Sriver
There is a lot that can be said on that topic. I guess to keep it brief and to allow for further questions, I would say communication, it sounds maybe a bit cliché, but to the extent that you can start communication among the different partners on any subject for any reason, just getting these professional relationships between all these different parties is very important. The CREATE program itself came at the end of three years of extensive discussions and communication between and among the railroads themselves and then the railroads and public private sectors partners. That time was necessary to develop relationships that ended up resulting in the agreement upon which the CREATE program was based. Those relationships helped on myriad of other issues that were not specifically related to CREATE, but just getting issues and problems solved related to rail and road interaction in and around the Chicago region.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Jeff.
One last question for you for the time being. I’m sorry, there are a 2.
First one; CREATE program, or any CREATE program applying for FAST?
Jeffrey Sriver
Yes, as part of that opportunistic approach definitely looking for funding at FAST is on the list. We have put all of our public sector grant applications on the CREATE website. They are all there are available for review and after we have made the application, of course. We look forward to looking at that application in the future.
Nicole Coene
Last question. Our there any CREATE projects on the former EJS corridor around Chicago? This route circles around Chicago about 30 miles outside of the city limits, but crosses over every railroad line coming into Chicago, including several major passenger rail routes.
Jeffrey Sriver
Yes, in fact that is the railroad I mentioned earlier where the Canadian national had bought that railroad, and then basically took away the need for what had been a corridor that was included in CREATE. Because they bought and they solely own that corridor and they have all the control they need on that corridor, it wasn’t necessary for them to add any of the projects needed on that corridor into the CREATE program which, again, is more based on there is multiple stakeholders in any given project. They could handle that on their own and they are making improvements on that corridor on their own independently from CREATE.
Nicole Coene
Chris, I see you have answered some of your questions in the chat but I will read them out to give you an opportunity to expand upon them. For Kansas City, how big is the organization in terms of budget and staff? How has it evolved over the years? I see you answered you have that you have 2 all-time staff and a budget of $500,000. Did you want to address the evolution part of the question?
Chris Gutierrez
The organization started with just me as a single employee back in 2014. I was hired as the second full-time person, our first Executive Director moved on to bigger and better things. It was one person with a very limited budget of just over $100,000. It’s definitely evolved over the years. We are probably at a point where we will need a third person to really expand upon our workforce efforts, and the project activity of recruiting companies here. I think the focus has evolved from initial ITS efforts and looking at NAFTA and some other specifics to really focusing on the traction of freight based projects into the Kansas City region.
Nicole Coene
Thank you. KC SmartPort is planning and constructing for growth, are they incorporating advanced intelligent transportation systems and alternative fuel infrastructure to ensure more efficient and less polluting transportation systems?
Chris Gutierrez
The ITS systems, absolutely. Over the years, we have worked with FHWA and both our states, and MPO on and ITS effort looking at freight movement and how freight can move more efficiently through our region, thus decreasing emissions and traffic congestion and other things. We call that effort, the trade data exchange. We receive back when you were allowed to say, earmarks, as well as Agency direct funding to support that effort. That has been very successful. We work closely with FHWA’s ITS group on a number of those projects to support how to move freight more efficiently through the region using technology.
In terms of efficient vehicles, yes, we’ve got a couple of startup companies here. One is called OrangeEV that is taking the yard trucks that support Intermodal or distribution centers. They don’t really travel too much on public roads to convert older vehicles to purely 100% electric trucks. That firm is taking off in terms of growth. There is test around the country with their OrangeEV trucks. There is other efforts that the private sector is doing to look at alternative vehicle, alternative energy vehicles. We have a company here that’s making electric delivery vehicles for Staples and some of the parcel delivery that’s depot-based delivery, it’s called, Smith Electric vehicles. There are a couple of examples of that happening in Kansas City.
Nicole Coene
Thank you. The next question: The KC program is very impressive but is there consideration to incorporate complete streets into the circulation system. About what complete streets mean; just about all circulation means, for example pedestrian, bicycles, all users?
Chris Gutierrez
SmartPort’s focus mainly is to focus on freight, the movement on freight and how to do that efficiently. We are not a planning or one of the DOTs, but each of those entities had active transit pedestrian and bicycle efforts going on in our region. We just initiated a streetcar in the downtown area. That is definitely taking place in a larger context of transportation movement in totality across the region. SmartPort specifically, focuses on the freight side of that and how freight moves so that’s more my area and hence the reason I didn’t know the term, complete street.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Chris.
We have a few questions for you, Reza.
I assume when you say the objective is connected vehicle experience; you mean a seamless experience along the corridor, or do you mean connected vehicle’s experience as technology enabled vehicles for tuning for example?
Reza Karimvand
The answer to the question is both. Absolutely, the seamless service experience throughout the corridor is a given throughout the corridor and that’s what we are shooting for. However, our main goal is definitely to try to use the technology that’s available to us, which is truck platooning in V2I environment for the entire corridor. That’s our goal and that’s what we are going to be shooting for.
Nicole Coene
Thank you.
For I-10, as a collaboration just starting what advice would you have for other regions that might be considering starting a corridor partnership? How do you go from idea to reality?
Reza Karimvand
We suggest two initial documents for the people who are starting. The first, the Work Plan to define the concept of the operation. Who is going to do what and how to get things done? And also following the Work Plan, we strongly recommend to put a charter together, which provides the big picture of how we need to move forward and provide guidance, vision and goal. These documents would definitely put all of the coalition participants on the same page moving forward. And lastly, contact FHWA and get their help because as I mentioned in my presentation that FHWA put a lot of effort to bring together all of the Lessons Learned from others to this coalition. That’s how we are moving forward with that. That would be my suggestion for those states they would like to start.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Reza.
Has the states involved in I-10 ever consider joining forces to examine the parallel I-40 corridor which itself is a very high volume truck corridor in the future?
Reza Karimvand
As I mentioned, this is very beginning of our work in the corridor coalition and we still have until February 2018 to complete the Con OPs and will implement each chapter of the work plan moving forward. Also, we will collect all of the lessons learned, then discuss how to deal with issues we have in I 40. At the moment we have no plans for I-40 yet, because we are at the beginning of I-10 corridor coalition. We have a lot to do and are looking forward to do everything as best as possible.
Nicole Coene
Thank you.
For I-10, number six says; reach out to trucking industry for input, which is great. What types of input were requested? What input have you gotten so far? Were there challenges that you can mention?
Reza Karimvand
As I mentioned, when we talked to the trucking industry, they always complained about the friction. They always complained about the unreliable travel time and congestion. We are putting the stakeholders list together within all 4 states, and are going to approach the trucking community and engage them in discussion of I-10 Corridor Coalition and their needs. This is part of our plan as we’re going to be covering within this month and next month. But definitely, their comments and inputs are very important for us. We will take their comments and input very seriously. The trucking community will be an integral part of this project as we move forward.
Nicole Coene
Thank you. I will open the question to all presenters.
Increasing infrastructure due to increased freight means an increase in truck traffic in affected areas. Truck parking is already an issue nationwide. Do any of your freight plans address what to do with the truck who will need to park for several hours due to hours of service regulations?
Chris Gutierrez
This is Chris from Kansas City. We don’t have a specific plan that addresses that, but I think both MODOT and KDOT and our MPO are looking at this specific issue. I know that KDOT for example, out of their freight Advisory Board has a contracted study looking at truck parking and opportunities to expand the capability of trucks to park within Kansas. The other comment I would make from a private sectors standpoint, the more efficient we can move freight to the network on the right modes will also be a solution to truck parking and how that can be addressed nationwide, not specifically in Kansas City.
Reza Karimvand
This is Reza with ADOT. In terms of truck parking, that’s one of the tasks we are going to accomplish to automate the truck parking for the trucking community. That’s part of our Work Plan that TTI, who is our contractor, who is going to identify those parking spaces private and public and then we’re going to work through the program to make that available to the trucking community. We will be in the process of automating those as we move forward.
Jeffrey Sriver
At the City of Chicago, we don’t have any specific plans in place for that. I think maybe something dealt with more at a statewide level. Generally, the time they get into the city proper, the trucks are closer to their terminals and their destinations and I don’t have anything else to add.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, gentlemen. Jeff, while we have you, Ralph asked if you can expand upon your answer to an earlier question. Specifically, regarding whether you are including projects that introduce multimodal technologies to support the management and operations of the rail and highway systems? New technologies?
Jeffrey Sriver
We don’t have any of these multimodal technologies included among the CREATE projects at this time, and there is nothing specifically that would prevent that from being added. If there is specific ideas that one of the partners would come up with that would jointly benefit everybody, it could be entertained through the CREATE program, or, potentially, through some sort of side agreement. If we have all of the right people around the table that is part of CREATE is that were all together and allows us to meet together to make something like that, that might fall under that category as well.
Nicole Coene
Funding of CREATE projects is an important consideration. The fact to use public and private money going after grants is a key feature. When was it determined to go about this approach and who does lead in the application for the grant?
Jeffrey Sriver
An interesting historical footnote on CREATE, since it was started in the early 2000s, that was back in the error and there were things such as earmarks. I think some of the original thinking among some of the political supporters of CREATE at the time was that we would figure out, negotiate a railroad contribution and a State contribution, and use that to leverage a very large earmark, and have this whole thing done in a matter of years. But we ran into the headwinds of the anti-earmark phase and, now, we’ve transitioned to this opportunistic approach towards applying for grants. We basically have reached decisions on a consensus basis, essentially at the management Committee level where all of the partners will introduce, here is a grant opportunity. Here are the criteria that relate to this particular grant funding opportunity. We will then discuss amongst ourselves which projects we have that could potentially match the criteria of a particular grant. And then we will reach a consensus that we should do that. Then we determine which entity has the resources to cover the cost of preparing the application, or we might work jointly on it. We have had applications where the freight railroads have covered the cost of the applications. Others with the city have covered the cost and others with the State have covered the cost. Once we have made the decision there is an opportunity there to pursue, it’s usually pretty easy to agree that how we are going to pursue that.
Nicole Coene
Thank you. One last question for you. We often hear the railroad companies are hesitant to share data with public sector agencies due to concerns about sacrificing competitiveness or protection of proprietary information. Have you experienced these challenges? Do you have any advice for how to overcome them?
Jeffrey Sriver
Yes, absolutely we have experienced those challenges. They are very real and legitimate too. Some of the things we have done, again, having the people around the table to discuss in a collaborative manner so that the railroads can understand the needs, why the public sector might need this data and what it might be used for. Usually, the railroads are able to, once we are able to discuss why the data is needed, they can noodle over it and say, what if we could provide this data, somehow anonymized data, or other ways of providing data that do not have competitive, conflicting implications. But yet allow us to achieve the public policy needs of having data to maintain some sort of trend line analysis or whatever is needed. It requires communication and understanding of what the data is needed for and some back-and-forth give-and-take. We don’t always come to agreement on what’s needed but, generally, we can get some better data than none at all.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Jeff.
Will now go back to Reza. When it comes to trying to streamline a process across State lines and agree to one policy for ease in crossing Stateline, how do you determine best practices and initiate the other states to accept a standard State practice?
Reza Karimvand
That’s one of the challenges. Each State has their own policy regarding standard practice. Definitely, with the resource sharing and also sharing information and collaboration with each agency, we can overcome those situations. Specifically, since we’re talking about technology, as we move forward, technology is evolving so fast, and all 4 agencies are involved to really get the technology up and running in the I-10 Corridor. In terms of standard practice, obviously, we will have some differences, but we need to coordinate. We need to discuss, and we will do that in order to resolve those issues as we move forward. But the coalition charter provides that foundation; provides that umbrella to have those kinds of discussion and resource sharing. Also as I mentioned, in my presentation we are in the process of getting the agreement together, which is different than the charter. Those issues will be spelled out in the agreement. We do not see any problem of having policy issue as a stumbling block for moving the technology forward.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Reza.
One last question in the chat pod. We have five minutes left so if you would like to ask a question over the phone, press star one on your telephone keypad.
Reza, the last one is for you.
You also mentioned expanding coalition to states to the east of Texas. What about expanding industry participants, trucking Supply Chain commodities, and to other internationally close linked to I-10, for example Mexico or transoceanic?
Reza Karimvand
As I said we are at the beginning of this coalition and there is a lot of work that needs to be done. We are working very diligently to go through those challenges. Each State, as we meet with our stakeholders, specifically, trucking communities, we need to bring those challenges up front for discussion. However, with our neighboring countries like Mexico or whatever, we definitely have a long way to go to streamline the policies and the division that we have between the 4 states before we can go to the other countries like Mexico or so forth. We are at the beginning, and those are things that we need to discuss among the states and we look forward to resolving those issues as we move forward.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Reza. It looks like we’ve gotten through all of these questions and I do not see anything else coming in. We will go ahead and close out. The recorded version will be available online within the next 2 weeks on the Talking Freight website. The next webinar will be on November 16, State freight plan and FAST Act guidance. The registration is not available but I will send out an e-mail announcing when registration is open. I encourage you to join the freight planning LISTSERV if you have not done so. Thank you to our presenters and to the attendees. Thank you and enjoy the rest of your day.
[Event Concluded]
