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OnTrackAmerica introduces
Freight Transportation Land Use Strategy to Maximize Efficiency While Limiting Sprawl and Pollution
OnTrackAmerica (OTA) recently developed a land-use strategy for Pennsylvania that maximizes freight transportation efficiency while lessening pollution and industrial sprawl. Throughout 2010, OTA will lead an initiative, collaborating with transportation experts, policymakers and industry stakeholders to formulate meaningful legislation for introduction by the second half of the year. This effort in Pennsylvania will serve as a best-practice model for other states.
“Like clean air and water, land is a limited resource,” says OTA founder and CEO Michael Sussman. “Continued population and economic growth necessitates that we make best use of land and space for moving goods and people.”
For many years, individuals responsible for the legislation and implementation of industrial and community planning have had a limited educational and professional exposure to freight transportation. Fortunately, these public-sector planners are already passionate about the environment, land use, and community planning. By reframing freight transportation as essentially a land use issue we bridge this gap.
OTA’s strategy preserves land along rail right-of-ways for rail-related activity and most efficiently locates commercial, logistics, and transportation facilities within the road, marine, air and rail systems.
Land use strategies, supported by regulations and codes, have long been an accepted element of sensible planning efforts in community development and commuter transportation. The parallel arena of industrial development and freight transportation presents a valuable opportunity to apply a new set of land use planning parameters that maximize commercial productivity while minimizing use of land. Ultimately, it is land use planning that will reorient the system toward the least impact on air and water.
“The fact that it requires a convoy of trucks up to 27 miles long to move the same amount of freight as a one mile train alone demonstrates the need for developing a balanced, efficient system that includes thoughtful land use planning,” Sussman says. “And that’s not even factoring in that a train can move one ton of freight 436 miles on just one gallon of fuel.”
With this Freight Transportation Land Use Strategy, OTA seeks to:
OTA’s Freight Transportation Action Plan for Pennsylvania describes some of the specific ways in which an out-of-balance transportation system has already taken a financial and environmental toll on land use in the state. One disturbing trend in Pennsylvania is the prevalence of large, truck-only warehouses and distribution centers built in or near small towns. Industrial and commercial development is being increasingly built without direct rail service, to the immediate detriment of the local community and at great cost to the state. Southern central PA and north-east PA have been especially popular among warehousing and distribution developers; meanwhile, railroads that serve these regions can handle additional traffic.
As a case study, OTA presents the 200,000 square foot Logisco facility in York, PA (see maps). This facility is bordered on the North by US-30, and on the south by the Norfolk Southern Railway’s Stony Brook branch, which stub-ends some two or three miles to the east, and connects with the Genesee & Wyoming’s York Railway to the west, as well as the rest of the Norfolk Southern network via Harrisburg to the North. This is an example of development that had previously been served by a rail spur, now abandoned and paved over, leaving truck-only access to the facility. The implication for a small city as rail-rich as York is heavy truck traffic on local downtown and residential roads, while rail service withers. This is surely an inefficient use of land. Any plan to bring this system back into balance should include a fresh articulation of a freight transportation land use strategy.
Going forward, Sussman will act as the project’s lead facilitator. Dr. Barbara Gray, Director of Penn State University’s Center for Research in Conflict and Negotiation, will serve as co-facilitator. Mr. Sussman and Dr. Gray co-facilitated a Rail Stakeholder Summit at the U.S. Capitol Building in December of 2008, and are planning a series of further summits in 2010 as part of OTA’s ongoing efforts to promote multiparty collaboration in transportation planning and policy. Dr. Beverly A. Cigler, a professor of public policy at Penn State University’s Harrisburg Campus, a member of the OTA’s Brain Trust, a research associate for the Pennsylvania State Legislature and an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, will act as an expert advisor. Pennsylvania State Representative Robert L. Freeman, OTA’s legislative partner, is well experienced in land use legislation as the Chairman of the Local Government Committee of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, representing the Commonwealth’s 136th Legislative District in Northampton County. In addition to these experts, OTA staff members Benjamin Goldman, a master’s candidate in city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, and Jason Owens, a master’s candidate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government, will act as project support staff.
In 2009, OTA built significant support for OnTrackPennsylvania throughout the state legislature, governor’s office, and relevant non-governmental organizations and associations, including the legislature’s transportation committee chairmen and Governor Rendell’s policy team.
A targeted fundraising effort has been initiated to fully develop this concept into its most effective approach. Authorizing legislation is intended to be ready for introduction by the second half of 2010.
OTA is founded on fifteen years of research and dialogue with stakeholders throughout industry, government, and academia. It has promoted a bold, yet pragmatic vision for advancing transportation efficiency through thousands of individual conversations and numerous multi-stakeholder summits.
