A new report from the Panel on 21st Century Freight Transportation, Improving the Nation’s Freight Transportation System, recommends a series of steps for Congress to take in order to modernize the national freight transportation system to increase transportation efficiency and economic competitiveness.
freight
New report from SSTI discusses freight transportation demand management strategies
A new report, funded by SSTI with a matching grant from the Center for Freight and Infrastructure Research and Education, identifies and evaluates freight transportation demand management strategies to improve transportation efficiency by reducing the social costs associated with goods movement in urban areas.
Getting the Goods Without the Bads: Freight Transportation Demand Management Strategies to Reduce Urban Impacts (SSTI, 2013)
This project, funded by SSTI with a matching grant from the Center for Freight Infrastructure Research and Education (CFIRE), identifies and evaluates strategies to reduce the social costs associated with goods movement in urban areas by managing freight transportation demand.
New York City reducing number of garbage trucks on its streets
New York City took a big step last month in its efforts to reduce the number of garbage trucks on city streets when it signed a 20-year, $3 billion contract with the waste-to-energy firm, Covanta. The firm plans to send about 30 percent of the city’s solid-waste to power-generating incinerators using primarily barges and railroads. This will help the city move closer to its goals of improving solid waste management and reducing associated negative impacts as cited in PlaNYC 2030, New York City’s effort to plan for one million more residents and the resulting impacts on the city’s quality of life.
Back to the future: crowded freeways and tight budgets lead some to call for a return to policies from 1984
During the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, city officials scrambled for ways to accommodate the additional traffic as well as Angelinos’ normal daily activities. Today, the L.A. area is even more congested than it was in 1984, and some lawmakers are looking back to that time for ways to improve the situation. The strategies that have gotten the most attention are those that shift truck traffic to off-peak hours.
High demand creates challenges for rail service in Washington state
Increased coal shipments to Washington State ports could significantly intensify congestion on both roads and rail lines. Two recent reports by Parametrix and the Sightline Institute discuss the impacts of increased shipments of fossil fuels (particularly coal) from Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota to ports in the Pacific Northwest.
Trucking’s shift towards LNG picking up steam
With high diesel prices consuming profits and growing concern surrounding the impacts of diesel emissions, more trucking companies are experimenting with liquefied natural gas as a fuel.
Freight rail traffic is growing, but urban conflicts hinder infrastructure expansion
While passenger rail has been on the front page, freight railroads have been thriving. However a new truck-to-rail transfer facility to serve the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach has caused a fierce debate on the thorny question of how to weigh the value of regional economic and environmental benefits against local environmental impacts and environmental justice concerns.
Public supports system preservation, why not politicians?
More evidence that the public strongly supports system preservation comes from a survey performed for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. When asked to rank the importance of a variety of potential priorities for WisDOT, preservation came out on top by a wide margin with 47.3 percent of respondents citing it as “extremely important.” A year earlier, a survey for Washington DOT found a similar result in that state.
Senators call for action on freight rail rates and monopolies
Early this month, a bipartisan group of senators, led by Al Franken (D-MN), called on the chairman of the Surface Transportation Board to assure that Berkshire Hathaway’s 2010 purchase of BNSF doesn’t result in unfair rate hikes for farms and businesses in Minnesota and nationally. He also recently called on President Obama to address a lack of freight rail competition that he claims is forcing businesses to pay unfair rates to ship their goods.