Major improvements to the region's goods movement network are clearly needed, especially if the NY/NJ harbor complex is to regain any shipping market share in the coming decades. But while this may require strategic investments to better move trucks in certain areas, the crisis in freight movement and growing community and environmental concern over truck impacts stems from the region's overreliance on trucks. It is time to make a serious investment in alternative pathways for freight, and to price truck movements appropriately.

No new interstate truck route of the kind envisioned by the Port Authority should be contemplated before efficient, competitive cross-Harbor rail and barge operations are put in place to slow the increase in truck trips, and pricing incentives exist for trucks to travel outside peak periods. In particular, capacity expansions to the Goethals Bridge and the SIE should be shelved until a sensible plan to accommodate the growth in east-west movement of goods has been adopted. Port Authority documents list many improvements, but with the exception of the SI Railroad, few are in the works.

The highway projects are in the works, however. As we noted last week the current "major investment study" the NY State DOT is conducting for the Staten Island Expressway corridor will look only at congestion solutions within the highway corridor itself. NYS DOT is trying to avoid analyzing improvements in areas like cross-harbor rail car movement or S.I. North Shore passenger rail, despite the fact that such investments could directly impact demand for car and truck travel in the SIE corridor.

The Port Authority documents referenced above address a variety of transit, freight movement and roadway improvements in four separate corridors. Future issues of MTR will discuss some aspects of these elements. For now, we have placed the "Southern Corridor" sections of the document on the Campaign's web site --click here to see it.