Conference speakers call for more freight spending
With the population of New York City expected to grow by 1 million and the entire Tri-State region by 4 million, a transportation crisis looms for the region, speakers at a conference on freight transportation said today.
“If you think it is bad now, just wait,” said Joel Ettinger, executive director of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, as he welcomed several hundred participants to the program held at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University.
He noted that freight is growing even faster than the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut population, because it tends to more closely track the region’s faster growing wealth.
In New York, even more than in most parts of the country, freight means truck traffic.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who has been advocating for years the construction of a trans-harbor rail tunnel, said that only about 1 percent of cargo moving in the area east of the Hudson River moves by rail, compared to an average of 40 percent in the rest of the country. That needs to grow, he said.
Astrid Glynn, commissioner for the New York State Department of Transportation, said while a growing population will bring economic vitality and growth, it will also bring “additional congestion to an already overburdened transportation system.”
Glynn cited a Texas Transportation Institute study that found that 658 million gallons of fuel, worth $1 billion, are wasted on the New York region’s highways, while delays $6.7 billion.
She said no new highways have been built in the New York metropolitan area since 1964 when the Verazano Narrows Bridge opened.
Rail projects such as development of a rail-intermodal truck facility at the former Pilgrim state hospital, improved clearances leading to the Harlem River intermodal yard in the Bronx, and the revitalized Maspeth Yard in Queens should all help boost rail volumes, she said.
Anthony Shorris, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said investment in port infrastructure has picked up substantially in recent years.
From 1975 to 2000, port spending was dampened by competition — both from West Coast ports sending intermodal traffic to the region and from “greenfield” ports in the Southeast ' he said.
Port funding has picked up greatly in recent years, he said, noting that investment is less risky with the increased popularity of trans-Panama and trans-Suez services making Asia now the leading trading region with the Port of New York and New Jersey.
The port is attracting private investors like Deutsche Bank and the insurance company AIG that have purchased terminal companies with port terminal leases.
Shorris noted the port authority has invested $600 million on its on-dock Express Rail system to move containers between marine terminals and inland destinations.
More infrastructure needs to be built, and Shorris suggested there needed to be “national guidance” on what infrastructure projects will have the most benefit to the entire country.
Nadler agreed that there needed to be more infrastructure built, saying initiatives such as Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal for congestion pricing is just a “stop gap” measure that will not add to the region’s freight hauling capacity.
He also called for more preservation of the working waterfront in the city.
James Devine, president of New York Container Terminal, said waterfront preservation should include a tract on Staten Island, just south of his facility, that NASCAR had planned to develop into a motorway but which is now up for sale.
John Henry, senior vice president of Duane Reade, a chain of pharmacies with 250 stores in the region, urged participants to focus on “now solutions,” not things that can be done in five or 10 years.
He noted that it takes an average of four and a half hours for trucks coming from his company’s stores in Queens or North Bergen, N.J. to make a delivery to a store.