Com'r Daly Long on Enthusiasm, Short on Details to Improve Rail Freight
After explaining how he was implementing Gov. Pataki's direction to reduce the number of NYSDOT employees by 1,000, and eliminate or simplify one-quarter of the Dept.'s regulations, NYSDOT Commissioner John Daly told hundreds gathered at the Long Island Association's recent breakfast meeting that he was most enthusiastic about the Dept.'s "full rail freight access" program. He noted his dismay that rail freight traffic largely terminates in New Jersey and said it was imperative for Long Island and New York City to reduce truck trips, offset emissions and divert more traffic to rail. Citing the recently released Downstate Rail Freight Study by Mercer Management Co., which identified ways to grow freight business (from the current 3 to nearly 23 million tons annually, with the LIRR growing from 1 to 15 and Conrail gaining the remainder), he claimed the Dept. was working actively with the LIRR to try to achieve that goal. Less clear was whether the Dept. had taken a position on the consultant advice to combine the operations of the three most active freight railroads in the metropolitan area (LIRR, Cross Harbor and Conrail) into a single regional system run by a private operator, or whether the options of a single public entity or improving the fractured-system status quo would continue to be studied. When asked whether the Dept. had a specific plan for locating the rather small sum ($79 million) needed to make the necessary track, yard and other infrastructure improvements to pull off the consultant's recommendations, NYSDOT Regional Director Ed Petrou demurred. And when asked by Tri-State Campaign director Janine Bauer whether the Dept. would go further to partner with the towns along the LIRR to create zoning and other incentives for businesses to locate at warehouse and factory sites along the rail sidings to make the most efficient use of the railroad, Com'r Daly merely said he "didn't want to get into zoning." He had no response to the point that a comprehensive and comparative approach be taken to transportation investments, to avoid situations such as the Dept.'s and Port Authority's proposed billion dollar-plus spending in the "southern corridor" (Goethals Bridge expansion and reconstruction of the Staten Island/Gowanus Expressways), investments which will attract more of the new, wider trucks and thus compete directly with the Dept.'s and the LIRR's promotion of rail freight traffic.
