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Volume 16, Issue 119
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Tuesday, June 16, 2009
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Study Highlights Need to Modernize Freight Transportation System
The RAND Corporation released recently a study finding that the long-term efficiency and effectiveness of the U.S. freight transportation system is threatened by bottlenecks, inefficient use of some infrastructure components, vulnerability to disruptions and crucial environmental and energy concerns. Demand for freight transportation is expected to increase in the future, a RAND press release states, but the nation’s highways, ports and railroads are nearing the limits of their capacity in key urban areas and transportation corridors, and delays and uncertainty in the system’s performance translate into higher prices for consumers and reduced productivity.
“There’s an opportunity now for the United States to develop policies and plans that will improve the flexibility and security of the freight transportation system, which is currently vulnerable to a host of dangers that could cause costly disruptions, whether from a terrorist attack or a natural disaster, such as an earthquake,” said Richard Hillestad, lead author of the study. “The whole functionality of freight transportation is built on reliability and speed, and those elements need to be protected.”
To that end, the study concludes that there are four issues that are particularly critical to address.
• increasing the capacity of the United States’ national and international freight systems through a combination of operational improvements and selected infrastructure enhancements, such as congestion pricing to promote more highway transportation during non-peak hours, integrating freight and passenger planning on urban rail and highways, providing more opportunities for mode shifts from road to rail or waterway (e.g., more streamlined and transparent intermodal connections), developing an information technology-based “infostructure” to facilitate freight movements across modes and increase the efficiency of the system, developing port connector strategies such as short-sea shipping and using short-haul rail to shift truck traffic from ports, and expanding some port operations to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week
• creating a freight transportation system that is more flexible and less vulnerable to disruption through steps such as providing incentives for the use of alternative ports of entry and debarkation (e.g., differential container fees that could be used to pay for additional infrastructure development and environmental pollution mitigation in the more heavily used ports), increasing system-level modeling to include interactions between modes, regions and components of the freight infrastructure and developing an expanded freight data system to support that modeling, identifying and analyzing key freight system vulnerabilities to disruption and simulating possible responses, and constructing infrastructure that separates freight and passenger traffic on railways and highways, particularly in urban areas
• addressing the energy and environmental issues associated with freight transportation through measures such as reducing truck, ship and rail emissions and fuel use through the development of cleaner fuels, improved engines and better aerodynamics; providing electric shore power for docked ships; replacing diesel equipment in ports with electric equipment; and improving efficiency through better routing, reducing trips with no load, providing real-time information as a way to avoid congestion, and reducing or shifting demands for freight movement in time
• making the case for public and private investment in supply-chain infrastructure and establishing sustainable priorities for funding
Source Document 1...
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