The report presents statistics that portray extreme regional dependence on trucks for freight movement. Nation-wide, railcars carry one-third of all freight, but less than 5% in the NYC region. Even compared to the urbanized Northeast, the NJ/NY/CT region comes out more dependent on trucks, shipping between 6-9% more tonnage on trucks than other metro areas.

This big-rig addiction has exacerbated congestion and heightened stress on highway infrastructure. Between 1995 and 1997, truck traffic at some of New York City's tolled bridges and tunnels increased by 35%, mainly between in the peak commuting hours of 7am to 9am, and on favored routes like the Gowanus Expressway trucks constitute roughly 14% of AM rush hour traffic. And the Department of City Planning's 1999 "Off-Peak Delivery Study" shows that less than 40% of trucks clogging streets in the NYC area are delivering goods there, the rest are bound to warehouses, ports, and other parts of the country.

Such a picture would seem to cry out for rail freight and ship-to-rail port development. However, only the NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC) has offered proposals to move the region in this direction. Projecting that demand for port facilities will outpace current facilities by 2006, both the EDC and the PA produced major port expansion proposals in 1999. The EDC plans include construction of a shuttle train route on First Avenue to serve a Sunset Park terminal and connect it with a new float bridge at 65th St. and the LIRR Bay Ridge Line. Both the EDC and Port Authority call for the construction of an on-dock rail transfer station at Howland Hook to be served by a reactivated Staten Island Railroad that will link to the rail network in New Jersey. But the EDC vision for Howland Hook also includes development of 100 more acres of intermodal/rail warehousing as well as an ambitious cross-Hudson transport strategy to make the expanded terminal a central hub for a New Jersey-Brooklyn rail-line.

The center-piece of the EDC plan is construction of a cross-harbor freight tunnel. Currently, all freight crossing the Harbor in a rail car is barged from 51st Street in South Brooklyn to the Greenville, New Jersey railyard via barges. The only other rail route to East-of-Hudson markets requires a 2-day, 600 mile detour to Selkirk, then back down the Hudson Valley. The EDC plan puts forth two possible tunnel locations: One would connect the Brooklyn waterfronts to the Staten Island Railroad, which itself would connect to the continental rail network via the Arthur Kill lift bridge. The other would run between Greenville, NJ to the Brooklyn waterfront. Building such a tunnel was conceived of as a priority project for the Port Authority as early as 1921. But the PA argued against building it in a 1980 study, and has not reconsidered that position since.

Any version of the Cross-Hudson tunnel is not likely to see completion for at least a decade. Thus, in the near future, a functional rail route across the Hudson depends on the aggressive expansion of rail car float facilities and service. The EDC plan estimates that adding four float bridges at 65th Street for traffic to and from Greenville and two float bridges between Brooklyn and the Howland Hook terminal could supplant almost 12% of Hudson truck crossings.

To Department of City Planning report suggests that prospects for the Tunnel be pursued and that "new float bridges are essential to increase...capacity in the interim." But expanding truck capacity at the Goethals Bridge and across Staten Island will compete with efforts to build a stronger rail freight market in NYC and Long Island, and have big impacts on Staten Island. If an onslaught of trucks is coming, the region's agencies should be planning to head it off and minimize its impact rather than ensure that it is as large as possible.