MTR 109, Moving the Goods

Mobilizing the Region
Issue 109 December 20, 1996

Moving the Goods

Agencies charged with improving the region's business climate and with managing its transportation system are struggling with the problem of freight accessibility to New York City and Long Island, and with the throughput of goods between the Mid-Atlantic and South and New England. New York City is by far the most truck dependent large city in the country, and is at the same time one of the U.S.'s biggest and most concentrated consumer markets. Less than 5% of NYC's freight moves on rail, while the national average is around 40%. The situation is ironic and presents long-term economic problems for a city whose size and world-historic role were based on the intersection of a deepwater port and path-breaking transportation connections to the North American interior, like the Erie Canal and the early railroads.

Unfortunately, albeit characteristically, the agencies struggling with solutions to this complex issue are doing so via largely uncoordinated -- indeed, competing -- efforts. The freight issue and how it impacts other areas of transportation planning is one of several glaring examples of the failure of regional transportation planning in the metropolitan area.

The region's two cross-Hudson freight routes are what the Port Authority (PA) refers to as the "northern" and "southern" corridors -- I-95 via the George Washington Bridge and I-278 via the Goethals and Verrazano Narrows bridges. Together, the PA and the NY State Dept. of Transportation are seeking enhancements to these routes' truck-carrying capacities. The additional capacity the agencies may be able to eke out of these roadways -- even in a hypothetical scenario where communities and motorists impacted by the projects marshal no significant opposition -- is marginal. The Goethals has already generated strong resistance and looks unlikely to be funded in the next 5-year PA capital plan. If these projects are eventually carried out, they will of course magnify the very high economic, local, infrastructure and environmental costs the city and the region already pays for its near-total reliance on road freight.

The PA and NY State DOT have defaulted in development of long-range plans to address the freight access problem. The Port Authority was founded early in the century to construct a rail freight tunnel from NJ to Brooklyn's port. But freight has been largely dropped from the PA's "Access to the Region's Core" study, and I-278 and I-95 remain the agency's east-of-Hudson freight priorities. For its part, NYS DOT has watered down its "full freight access" program by selling off much of the Harlem River Rail Yard, so that the soon-to-be-completed rail link between Queens and the Bronx will help rail's freight market share on Long Island --an important benefit--but not realize its potential for NYC.