Tuesday, June 01, 2010

A response to Michael about the Bridges (part 1).

Roger published a post regarding oil addiction addressed to One Southern Indiana President Michael Dalby. I made a comment about something Dalby once said to me, and, rather than address the concerns raised by the original post - namely, how advocating an increase in regional oil dependency equates to leadership - someone using the handle "Michael" challenged me with the following:

Jeff, how is it that you and only you can possibly be right? As I look back at years of public hearings and input on this project, I see an open process that through negotiation and compromise has brought us to where we are today...two bridges and the re-work of Spaghetti Junction. Tyler Allen ran his campaign as a referendum on the ORBP and got less than 8,000 votes (while the three candidates that openly support the project garnered over 80% of the Democratic vote). I believe the majority of citizens in this region want a comprehensive and safe transportation solution for the next 50-100 years. That's what we are working toward.

I'll take the first part first with the rest to follow:

Jeff, how is it that you and only you can possibly be right?

Unlike Michael does here, I've never made the claim that it is I alone who is singularly correct in assessing regional transportation plans. My point has always been the exact opposite: a large and growing body of evidence from around the country frames the Ohio River Bridges Project as anathema to regional economic progress and sustainability.

What follows is an extremely brief examination of a small amount of that evidence, the tip of a proverbial 'berg based on a short short this morning. It took longer to format it for Blogger than to gather it. Readers will notice that many of the references made here are from several years ago, further making the point that they do not constitute radical new ideas but rather information commonly available for quite some time.

Earlier this decade, the City of Louisville hired the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC, whose mission "is to conduct high-quality, independent research and, based on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations that advance three broad goals: Strengthen American democracy; foster the economic and social welfare, security and opportunity of all Americans and secure a more open, safe, prosperous and cooperative international system."

The Brookings Institution was charged with making recommendations to move the Louisville metropolitan area, including Southern Indiana, forward as Louisville and Jefferson County, KY, governments were about to merge. It's report, BEYOND MERGER: A Competitive Vision for the Regional City of Louisville, found the region to be facing two major challenges: "a workforce that is limited in size and skills that will hamper the city's ability to mature its low-wage, service economy to a higher-wage one" and "the region is growing in a decentralized and divided way that will ultimately harm the area's quality of life and hinder low-income households' access to opportunities."

The transportation section of the report presents several findings:

1. While other transit options have gone largely ignored, we have been aggressively building roads at a rate far greater than peer cities.
2.Due to that construction, the number of miles driven in urbanized Louisville have grown much faster than the population.
3. That increase in Vehicle Miles Traveled has led to increased congestion.
4. While those new roadways have been aggressively pursued, existing ones have not been properly maintained.
4. They did mention one positive: TARC ridership had increased.

Excerpts from the heading "What This Means":

The region’s aggressive road-building strategy may not necessarily improve mobility. Granted, the Louisville transportation system remains less snarled than troubled systems in cities such as Atlanta. But rising congestion and increasingVMT combined with deteriorating road conditions are clearly making it harder for Louisvillians to get around. Meanwhile, transit remains a limited option for most residents thanks to the region’s intense focus on freeways and arterials. Taken together, these trends pose a serious threat to the region’s quality of life.

Current transportation patterns could also exacerbate growth and environmental imbalances across the region. Aggressive road building—coupled with proposed large-scale transportation corridor projects—can redistribute business and residential development. Recent evidence suggests that new highways and interchanges become conduits for decentralization. In this fashion, proposed transportation improvements in eastern Jefferson County could weaken older sections of the new Regional City, further isolating the western corridor.14 Pollution tied in part to motor vehicle exhaust emissions, at the same time, continues to complicate economic development planning. From 1998 to 2000, the counties with the worst ozone air pollution in the states of Indiana and Kentucky were both in the Louisville metropolitan area. Clark County, Indiana and Oldham County, Kentucky each offer the most unhealthy air in their respective states. Oldham recently replaced Jefferson County as the worst in Kentucky.15 And these ratings have impacts beyond their undesirable health effects, including the possible loss of federal transportation funds.16 TARC, the regional public transit system, is actively responding to these negative trends with reduced fares, and plans to add electric buses and light rail to its fleet.

Current trends could also undermine the region’s leadership in the distribution and logistics industry. Louisville’s competitive advantage in freight handling depends on the uninhibited movement of goods through and between the region’s major air and rail hubs, its port, and its interstate highway net- work. However, the efficiency of all of these facilities would be compromised by the traffic delays, deteriorating roads, and decentralized development that could result from an ill-considered road-building program. That suggests the need for the Regional City to weigh carefully the full impact of all proposed transportation improvements so as to protect and grow its critical logistics and distribution sector.


Likewise, the Harvard Graduate School of Design produced a supplementary report, "Metro Louisville Moving Forward", (sorry, no link yet) that specifically "questioned the priority of allocating $1.9 billion for highway improvements [the Kentucky and Indiana bridges project] while leaving the funding of a light-rail system to be addressed at a future time." It's hard to imagine that they would think, now that bridges project cost estimates have skyrocketed, that it would suddenly be a better idea.

Writing for the Infrastructurist, Yonah Freemark, a Gordon Grand Fellow from Yale University, named the Ohio River Bridges Project the #1 most ridiculous new road being built in America.

Hank Dittmar's 2002 testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affiars' Subcommittee on Housing and Transportation also provides clues to the depth of information available that reaffirms the Bridges Project in it's current form as counterproductive. Mr. Dittmar is a member of the board of directors of the Surface Transportation Policy Project. His inclusion isn't remarkable because of that affiliation but because of the sources upon which he's able to draw to make his case.

Some excerpts:

Transit ridership has increased each of the last four years, revealing a growing interest in transit in a range of city types and locales. A preponderance of this ridership growth is in New York City, as a preponderance of transit use is centered in New York. However, many other cities and urban areas around the country are experiencing increased ridership. In fact, the greatest percentage increase in the first four quarters of 2001 occurred in communities with 50,000-99,999 in population, where bus ridership grew 10.25% over 2000 – which also was a banner year for transit. And what is happening in big cities like New York (2.9%), Washington (5.85%), and Los Angeles (15.8%) cannot explain an 11.7% increase in Albuquerque, 6.7% in Providence, 7.7 % in Denver, 5% in Boise City, or 15.67% in Oklahoma City.

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A recent survey by Jones Lang LaSalle in its Property Futures publication found that 77 percent of New Economy companies rated access to mass transit as an extremely important factor in selecting corporate locations. According to the 2001 survey of 350 New Economy companies: "Employers concerned with staff retention regard the public transportation issue as critical. Young and cyber-savvy staff increasingly reject the traditional commuter lifestyle . . .Urban locations, though not always CBDs, will continue to be desirable. This is reinforced by the importance of public transportation to companies and workers." An example in Atlanta was the decision by BellSouth to relocate its entire Atlanta metropolitan workforce – some 20,000 workers – into three locations within walking distance of Metro stations.

Moreover, overwhelmingly, replacement jobs continue to be located in established urban areas near transit. While some researchers have made much hay arguing that most "new jobs" are located in exurban locations, the fact remains that most job openings are for replacement jobs. As Qing Shen of the University of Maryland demonstrated in a recent study of the Boston metropolitan area, "pre-existing employment is still highly concentrated in the central city." (Qing Shen, Winter 2001)

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By the late 1990s, real estate analysts began to see accessible urban locations in a new light as well. The 2001 issue of Price Waterhouse Coopers’ Emerging Trends in Real Estate continued to advise investors to seek out opportunities in what they dub 24-hour cities, with mixed-use development and mass transit access. According to the report, which is compiled from dozens of interviews with real estate investors and professionals:

"Major 24-hour metro markets maintain their pre-eminence while some suburban areas struggle with sprawl and congestion issues. ‘Subcities’—our new term for suburban locations that are urbanizing and taking on 24-hour market characteristics—show particular promise for investors." (Price Waterhouse Cooper and Lendlease, Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2001,) Recent brownfields legislation should improve the interest in existing urbanized locations even more.

Increasingly, real estate investors are looking for value in established communities. Price Waterhouse Coopers’ Emerging Trends report for 2002 - prepared post 9/11 - warns investors away from apartments, retail, and auto dependent suburban locations, while advising investors to buy and hold in 24 cities.

Interviewees have come to realize that properties in better planned, growth-constrained markets hold value in down markets and appreciate more in upcycles. Areas with sensible zoning (integrating commercial, retail and residential), parks and street grids with sidewalks will age better than places connected to disconnected cul-de-sac subdivisions and shopping strips, navigable only by car. Booming populations and wide-open spaces in the Sunbelt’s expanding suburban agglomerations can provide developers and investors with short-term opportunities to cash in on growth waves – but the returns, on average have not been competitive . . . Markets served with mass-transportation alternatives and attractive close-in neighborhoods should be positioned to sustain better long term prospects as people strive top make their lives more convenient. (Jones Lang LaSalle, 2001)

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The consumption of transportation has a major impact on household budgets for all Americans. The American Automobile Association estimates the annual cost of owning and operating an automobile at $7,363 in 1999. About 75% of that cost is fixed costs such as car payments and insurance, and this means that there is little financial incentive for drivers to drive less once they made the investment in a car. Nationally, transportation expenditures account for 17.5% of the average household’s budget, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data by the Surface Transportation Policy Project and the Center for Neighborhood Technology (STPP & CNT, Driven to Spend, 2000). The proportion of household expenditures that is devoted to transportation has grown as our use of the automobile has grown, from under 1 dollar out of 10 in 1935 to 1 dollar out of seven in 1960, to almost 1 dollar out of five from 1972 through today.

The transportation burden borne by American households falls most heavily upon the poor and lower middle class, as the less a family makes, the more of its budget goes to transportation. The poorest quintile of American households spend 36 percent of their budgets on transportation, while the richest fifth spend only 14 percent. This means that the poorer a family is, the less money it has available for other expenses such as housing, medical care or savings. In fact, transportation takes up the second largest percentage of the household budget, ahead of food, education, medical care and clothing, only behind expenses for housing.

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The growing proportion of consumer expenditures that is devoted to transportation inhibits families from devoting their income to saving or investing, and indeed may be part of the reason why so many families have to send two people to work. For the fact is that spending on transportation by poor families, unlike spending on home ownership or investing in education, has a very poor return on investment because autos, unlike houses, are depreciating assets. Ten thousand dollars invested in a car declines to a value of about four thousand dollars in ten years time, while investment in home ownership builds equity and often appreciates. Similarly, investment in college education for one’s children increases their earning power over their lifetime. The fact that the poorest families must spend over a third of their income on transportation means that they are least able to invest in activities that offer them the opportunity to build wealth. It is indeed ironic that many progressive social scientists believe that the best way to help former welfare recipients secure jobs is to give them automobile purchase assistance, thereby trapping them into the poverty cycle even more profoundly, as the poor typically end up with less reliable cars which are more expensive to operate and maintain.

Some lending institutions are also changing loan criteria to reflect the hundreds of dollars in savings per month that can be experienced in denser, transit rich neighborhoods. The Location Efficient Mortgage (SM) a product of Fannie Mae and a consortium of groups called the Institute of Location Efficiency, allows prospective homebuyers in denser transit-rich neighborhoods to use their transportation savings to help them afford a home in these neighborhoods. The program, which has been introduced in Chicago and Seattle and San Francisco, is under study in Atlanta, Portland and Philadelphia, and Fannie Mae has announced plans to introduce a less comprehensive product with smaller savings in Minneapolis-St. Paul and Baltimore. In essence, financial institutions are now sending a message – if you save money by driving less, we’ll take that into account and offer you more funds to purchase a home. This kind of market adjustment is a positive response to the economic benefits of transit investment upon households.

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As indicated earlier, real estate investors are recognizing that development near transit has locational advantages, and a new style of development is emerging in response to this fact. Transit oriented development is the new term used to characterize mixed use, walkable development located within one-half mile of a transit stop, and evidence indicates that as new transit systems – whether light or commuter rail or rapid bus – are introduced, development follows. A recent study by the University of North Texas found that the new DART system in the Dallas region has already generated over $800 million in development, and that the full system is projected to generate $3.7 billion in economic activity upon build out. (University of North Texas, 2000). Typical of these projects is Mockingbird Station, which features a multi-screen cinema, upscale retail, office space and 211 loft apartments within walking distance of the light rail stop. The project was built without public subsidy.

The potential for transit oriented development to build economic value and staying power in a region is evidenced in the National Capital region by both Montgomery County, Maryland and Arlington County, Virginia. My organization is completing a case study of Arlington County, which has pursued a policy of concentrating its development activity along the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor since the construction of the Washington Metro. Our forthcoming study found that development along transit allowed the County to capture over 13 million square feet of office space and 2 million square feet of retail since 1980. The corridor has increased in population from 19,838 in 1980 to 34,485 in 2000, reversing a steep population decline in the Seventies. Land value within the corridor near the four stations increased by 81 percent from 1992-20002, an average annual increase of 6.1 percent, generating over $109 million in property taxes in 2002 alone. The corridor generates approximately 33% of the County’s real estate tax on 7.7% of the County’s land. According to the study, "Even with the economic downturn and the residual affects of the 9/11 incident (which affected Arlington directly through the bombing of the Pentagon and the subsequent shut down of National Airport and several major arterials), February 2002 vacancy rates were at 10%. This is half of the vacancy rate of suburban office concentrations in outlying Virginia such as Tyson’s Corner and Reston. Office rents in the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor also command a rent premium over other office locations in the Northern Virginia marketplace." (TransManagement, Inc. for Great American Station Foundation, forthcoming)


The National Association of Realtors and Transportation for America commissioned a survey in 2009.

A results summary:

To accommodate future U.S. population growth, which is expected to increase by 100 million by 2050, Americans favor improving intercity rail and transit, walking and biking over building new highways. When asked what the federal government’s top priority should be for 2009 transportation funding, half of all respondents recommended maintaining and repairing roads and bridges, while nearly one third said “expanding and improving bus, rail, and other public transportation.” Only 16 percent said “expanding and improving roads, highways, freeways and bridges.”

When asked about approaches to addressing traffic, 47 percent preferred improving public transportation, 25 percent chose building communities that encourage people not to drive, and 20 percent preferred building new roads. Fifty-six percent of those surveyed believe the federal government is not devoting enough attention to trains and light rail systems, and three out of four favor improving intercity rail and transit.


Those results have been echoed locally as well:

In order to update its long range plan recently, TARC utilized community outreach to help determine direction.

Results Summary:

• Community outreach conducted as part of the report mirrored prior studies: Louisville residents desire convenient, fast, frequent and affordable transit. Community leaders and residents highly value existing bus service, would like to improve services for seniors and ranked a light rail system and intercity passenger rail as the top improvements that they would use.

• A look at TARC’s short-term and long-term financial outlook illustrates that TARC must have new or greatly expanded funding sources in order to develop advanced transit modes such as Light Rail or commuter rail or even to significantly expand existing bus service.

• New avenues for expansion of transit services may come from changing federal transportation policies and funding, prompted by the current economic crisis and the recent spike in gas prices. (The report was completed in advance of recent discussion regarding economic stimulus funding for transit.)


Though admittedly unscientific, Business First conducted its own Business Pulse Survey poll to gauge what its readers were thinking about 8664, asking, "What do you think of Louisville Metro Council's decision to examine the 8664 proposal?" 55% of respondents answered "It's worth examining the merits of the proposal."

Respected urban development consultant Aaron Renn (a Southern Indiana native), has also chimed in against the Bridges and for 8664.

Here's a recent video featuring several, local well-known thinkers, developers, philanthropists, and representatives expressing disdain for the Bridges project and support for 8664.



So, it's hardly me and only me and I'll remind again that this only a tiny fraction of readily available information pertaining to urban transportation planning and impacts in general and Louisville or Louisville-like situations more specifically. If Michael would care to begin his refutations here, I'll follow up with more information regarding his other claims later.

18 comments:

  1. You just confuse them with facts, Jeff. I keep thinking back to Milwaukee and seeing what they did with their waterfront. It seems to be awfully similar to what Louisville wants to do and it's absolutely amazing. It can work here.

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  2. What evidence can 8664 proponents provide that a ground based boulevard would not become like Lake Shore Drive feature in the video at 2:48.


    Thanks Jeff that is the video I was referring to earlier.


    I'm in agreement with building the Eastend Bridge but keeping things as they are now downtown until a study can be conducted on the impact of the Eastend Bridge after it is built and operational.

    The image at 2:00 is scary.

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  3. Though in no way comparable in size to Louisville, what Evansville has done along Veteran Memorial Parkway/Riverside drive is very attractive in the downtown area.
    The bicycle/pedestrian pathway tha hugs the river front is both inviting and works well with the surrounding area.
    Where Louisville, with the exception of the great lawn and that area is miles of concrete...

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  4. Michael,

    I always let the first comment pass, but please be aware that NAC has a user/comment policy handily posted down the right hand side of the main page. In short, if you wish to post further, I must know who you are. If you've already informed me (I looked in my files and could not find it), most sincere apologies. Please refresh my memory. Thanks.

    Roger

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  5. To me, what this has always been about is using a city in the best way possible in preparation for life two and three and four generations down the road.

    What evidence can the current Bridges Project provide to me to make me believe it's the best solution for the future, as opposed to the past?

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  6. DAMN, Jeff ... that took me a half bottle of Thiriez Blonde and most of the latest The Hold Steady album.

    F%^king brilliant. I didn't spell out the F-word because ROCK might tell on me to 1SI.

    Wankers.

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  7. That is one of the best compilations of data on local, regional transportation that I've read since I moved here. Nice work.

    Not to overload the blogging sensory, but I just finished a new transportation article by Todd Litman, from the Victoria Policy Institute, always an invaluable source.

    http://www.planetizen.com/node/44451

    It is interesting to note that none of the data posted actually supports building the East End Bridge (except 8664). Some of the negative externalities to 8664 is that it would encourage low-density sprawl, pull development away from downtown, and not entirely erase the Record of Decision within the ORBP.

    In some ways, 8664 has proved to be the distraction that some entrenched transportation advocates warned us it would be years ago. I did not listen then, but it is starting to seem as if they have hijacked the issue and presented themselves as the only game in town.
    If the entire dialogue remains framed around the question of which bridge to build first for much longer we can go ahead and start printing the slogans for the Keep Louisville Stagnant & Inefficient campaign.

    Whats that Meat Puppets song from the early 1990s? In the backwater swirling there are some things that will never change

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  8. So while looking at the comments I came upon this gem...

    " It seems to be awfully similar to what Louisville wants to do and it's absolutely amazing. "

    Obviously, I meant it's similar to what 8664 is proposing, not Louisville.

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  9. Josh,

    I think a ring road is important. While rail and other forms of non-auto transport are the solution to over-the-road, long distance hauling and commuting, we're always going to have a need for local manufacturers to get their product to either the larger, regionally located manufacturers who use them or to larger transport hubs as mentioned by Brookings. Given current and foreseeable technology, trucks are arguably more efficient than rail for that particular, short trip purpose and I think the community will be well served from keeping them off the urban grid to the extent possible. If we are ever going to supplant trucks for that purpose, then congregating and efficiently linking those types of businesses is paramount as well and they'll need a way to survive in the mean time. I'm willing to concede just one more major road project along those lines.

    I think the above will be even more true as increasing transportation costs and peak oil conditions make a return to U.S. based manufacturing a growing necessity. Driving a batch of parts across town via the ring is much more sustainable than flying them in from Asia. Even Chinese and other foreign producers are looking to invest in U.S. manufacturing facilities as international transportation costs are starting to negate any labor and environmental "savings" they can glean in selling products made elsewhere to the U.S. market.

    What will matter going forward is a)whether we consider that the only option for every single transportation need (a la ORBP), a stance that's incredibly short-sighted and counterproductive and b)if completion of a ring road happens within the context of accompanying land use policy that essentially marks that ring as the outer limits of development.

    Give current and any future manufacturers what they need on the periphery, limit induced growth to immediately around the ring hugging it like a glove, and then concentrate on making the community inside the ring (including to and from the ring) as mobile as possible without the need for an individual, petro-fueled vehicle.

    An East End bridge can fit with all that. Another downtown bridge, a much expanded downtown I-64, and a 23 lane, 72 feet high Spaghetti Junction destroys it.

    Like your understandable criticism of 8664, I think CART's and others' fighting against the East End bridge has often been a distraction from everything that needs to happen within the ring.

    The real problem for everyone is that we live in a region that, as you said, too often represents thinking that's decades behind what reasonable people around the country are doing every day. That's why I get so frustrated with advocacy groups who refuse to even discuss and often work to quell discussion of these extremely prevalent and completely common issues on the grounds that it might upset someone's (anyone's) apple cart.

    None of this is the least bit radical. If anything, those who refuse to acknowledge the situation we're in globally - let alone locally - and insist via their advocacy or silence in response to advocacy that the only way we can possibly handle these issues is the exact same way we always have are the ones who are radical, attempting to keep us living on the fringes of a world that doesn't exist anymore and may not have actually ever existed in the ways they tend to romanticize. The lack of political will would be somewhat astounding were it not for the reinforcement it so regularly receives.

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  10. Jameson,

    While Roger makes a good point about asking ORBP advocates the same type of questions, perhaps the best way to gauge traffic results would be for KIPDA (our regional transportation authority for those who don't know) to run its traffic modeling program with regard to an accurately depicted 8664. If tests were conducted the same way by the same people, it could provide us with much more information about comparative outcomes.

    Unfortunately, local officials have refused to allow KIPDA to run that modeling, even when 8664 agreed to pay for it so there would be no expense to the public.

    A couple years ago, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet hired Wilbur Smith and Associates to analyze something similar to 8664. When outsiders find out about it, officials denied that such a study was commissioned and it took the Kentucky Attorney General's office interceding on Freedom of Information grounds to even confirm that it had happened.

    As it turns out, the study was canceled when almost completed. After enough pressure from the public, officials agreed to finish and release it. What they studied was not actually 8664. They never even attempted to contact 8664 about their plan and then blamed any inaccuracies on the unavailability of information.

    Despite all the political jockeying, spin, and inaccuracies concerning how 8664 would interface with downtown (depicted in a way that would create more bottlenecks than the actual 8664 plan would), the results of Vehicle Miles Traveled and Vehicle Hours Traveled (two primary measures of congestion) comparisons showed that a single bridge solution would result in system-wide traffic performance within one percent of ORBP.

    Likewise, still completely unreleased to the public is a few years old study from Louisville's Downtown Development Corporation that, after examining several different options, recommends a surface level parkway as the best solution for downtown and the riverfront.

    This ongoing process has been anything but open and transparent.

    Meanwhile, ORBP advocates missed their financial deadlines for the second year in a row in 2009, putting us in a suspension status with the Feds and jeopardizing nearly every other transportation project in the region. If they miss that deadline again this year, our federal transportation funding could be completely frozen, all because they won't even talk about options other than ORBP in its entirety or nothing.

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  11. Those are all valid points, and similar to ones I have made in the past. My only divergence is with this statement:

    "I'm willing to concede just one more major road project along those lines."

    My own willingness for concession has waned as of late. However, if conceding one more road project could be coupled with an intermodal freight operation, that could change.

    And you're right about the rigidity of local advocacy groups. The fact that this dialogue is even taking place, probably owes something to the fact that we do not belong to any organizations, and are able to remain somewhat objective, open-minded and flexible on this issue. The trouble with many local groups is they advocate a certain ideological stance, and disregard any viewpoint that doesn't support that stance, which essentially limits the region's capacity to be something other than reactionary. I have criticized our local transportation advocates for years for not paying enough attention to the interests of those within the ring. Especially those interests west of 9th St. But I find that is indicative of advocacy in Louisville overall. Much of it is self-serving, ignores issues surrounding class, and often amounts to pissing in the wind.

    That notion that trucking is more efficient than rail for short trips is arguable. The most efficient prospect is a combination of the two. Here is an excerpt from the Magazine of the American Planning Association's article Freight Finds Its Niche(May/June 2010)

    In the past, the largest single cost of manufacturing goods was labor. So retailers set up an intricate supply chain that relied on low-volume shipments to state and local distribution centers and then to stores. Now, with so much production having shifted to Asia and Mexico, the largest single cost is transportation, according to the logistics industry, and rail is far more fuel-efficient per mile than trucks. Larger, regional distribution centers, supplied by trains that are often more than a mile long, mean huge savings in fuel costs.

    Katherine Lugar, executive vice president of the Retail Industry Leaders Association, which represents giant retailers, recently lobbied the federal government to support rail intermodal projects. In a letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood, Lugar wrote that "the concept of distribution, warehousing, and light manufacturing near intermodal facilities has been shown to reduce transportation costs, make supply chains more efficient, and create substantial numbers of new jobs and economic benefits for the communities that host these sites."

    Railroads continue to build or expand stand-alone, rail-to-truck intermodal transfer terminals, but those facilities tend to be small, and containers must still be trucked many miles from the train to a storage warehouse. The intermodal-logistics centers combine both the transfer and the storage operations on one site. The larger facilities can handle many more "lifts" (container loadings and unloadings) per year.

    The key advantage of these new combination intermodal-logistics complexes is "drayage"--the term for trucking a container from a rail yard to a warehouse. The longer the distance, the higher the cost, because more time, fuel, and drivers are needed. Having a short drive to a warehouse withing a mile of a rail stop can add up to a significant savings.

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  12. ...if conceding one more road project could be coupled with an intermodal freight operation...

    That's exactly what I'd like to see.

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  13. Jeff,

    What do you think about the old ammunition plant near Clarksville being the site for the regional freight hub? Are there better locations? Could the combination of the East End Bridge and that freight site take the place of ORBP as the major regional infrastructure project? Can any alternatives happen without the entire collapse of the ORBP?


    From the article I cited earlier:

    The US Department of Transportation expects overall freight rail to jump 75 percent by 2035, and other federal forecasters call for rail intermodal shipments to grow faster than long-haul trucking.
    To prepare for growth, major freight railroads have gone on an infrastructure spending spree beyond new facilities. Total capital expenditures among Class 1 carriers nealy doubled from the last recession, in 2001, to a 2008 industry record of $10.2 billion, according to the Association of American Railroads. Railroads have added miles of track and rebuilt bridges to accommodate longer trains of double-stacked container flatcars.

    All these track projects received federal grants this year, signaling a larger commitment by the federal government to "help get freight off America's highways and onto rail," according to the DOT.

    ...Warren Buffet described the investment as an "all-in wager" on the nation's economic future. "Our country's future prosperity depends on having an efficient and well-maintained rail system."


    Meanwhile, we get 25 lanes of traffic downtown and a new basketball arena. Hooray for everybody else, and lets go fuck ourselves.

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  14. Joshua,

    Why would it have to be at the old ammo plant? Why not at one of the existing yards more centrally located?

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  15. One of the goals would be to get all the trucks out of the downtown area. They don't want to be there and we don't want them there.

    Is there a rail yard, near a preexisiting (non-downtown)interstate path with enough space around it to facilitate such a hub? I really don't know.

    I thought about the powder plant, the Indiana river port just east of Jeff but a little closer in and the Riverport area in Louisville. Other suggestions are welcome. I haven't looked at rail schematics in quite a while but think tying the river in would be a help as well.

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  16. The current CSX yard is near the airport, 65, 265, and 264.

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  18. Jameson,

    Intermodal distribution centers share some common features: a minimum of 500 acres of flat land, on-site warehouses, spurs for loading and unloading, high shipping volumes, and easy access to highways. The largest hub in the Midwest was opened this summer, a 3,900 acre complex in Joliet, outside Chicago.

    Obviously, they cannot be centrally located as central locations should be reserved for mixed-use commercial and residential. Just from playing around with GIS layers showing an imaginary East End Bridge, the old ammo plant appears to be a feasible, if not ideal, location based on land use, size, transportation volumes, population demographics, and the common infrastructural features(the ammo plant is over 5,000 acres).

    Nothing I have done resembles even a rudimentary analysis of intermodal freight options in the region. I would need more layers, and a lot more free time.

    Thankfully, our city now supplies GIS shape files to the public. Glory be.

    Jeff,

    I'll look at the sites you mentioned.

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