Midwest transportation coalition addresses regional freight challenge
 earing such freight as consumer goods, agricultural
products and manufacturing shipments, thousands of semi trucks hurtle
daily through the Midwest on the region’s increasingly crowded
web of highways and freeways.
These ubiquitous roadway giants play an increasing role in such issues
as travel safety, highway bottlenecks, and transportation logistics
and security. Now, 10 Midwest state departments of transportation have
united in a unique coalition that will enable them, as a region, to
tackle issues related to rail, water, highway and air freight transportation.
“The next federal transportation bill has to
recognize that freight issues don’t stop at state borders,”
says Professor Teresa
Adams. “Freight is not like state tourists or commuters all
going to the same few destinations. It goes everywhere, and currently
accounts for 10 to 20 percent of the vehicles on freeways. It crosses
numerous jurisdictions—so it’s not something states can
plan for and manage independently.”
The Mississippi Valley Freight Coalition includes
representatives from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan,
Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin. “It’s critical
to get support from the states at the executive level to move this forward,”
says Adams, who directs the National Center for Freight and Infrastructure
Research and Education (CFIRE), a national research center that facilitates
the coalition.
National transportation emphases focus on citizens’ quality of
life and the country’s economic health, productivity and ability
to remain globally competitive, says Adams. “Those are related
to freight,” she says. “If we don’t have the things
we want—or if we can’t afford them—then our quality
of life goes down.”
In particular, the country’s economic competitiveness is tied
to its ability to deliver freight quickly, safely and cost-effectively—and
emerging powerhouse countries like China are making major infrastructure
investments right now. “Our competitive advantage has been in
our very efficient, very inexpensive transportation—and the developing
world is catching up,” says Jason Bittner, CFIRE deputy director
The 10-state Midwest region generates about 20 percent
of the nation’s overall gross domestic product and about one-third
of its gross domestic product in agriculture. Both agriculture and manufacturing—another
Midwest backbone industry—are heavily reliant on freight transportation,
says Bittner.
He estimates that, by the year 2020, the number of semi trucks hauling
freight will increase by more than 60 percent. However, the country’s
transportation infrastructure isn’t keeping up. “We add
maybe 1 percent a year to lane miles,” he says.
Laced with east-west highways—many of which converge in major
cities—the Midwest is the freight gateway to the nation’s
coasts, and coalition members are trying to anticipate and learn from
transportation problems in those more densely populated areas. “The
coalition is getting ahead of the situation in anticipation of the region’s
growth,” says Adams.
The effort will establish performance measures to help identify and
assess bottlenecks and then generate potential ways to alleviate them.
Such solutions, says Bittner, can contribute to the overall efficiency
of the transportation system. “Trucking companies aren’t
necessarily concerned if a truck has to sit in congestion for four hours
if they know it’s always going to be four hours, because they
can plan for that,” he says. “But when it’s six hours
one day and two hours the next day, that makes it a much harder problem
to solve.”
Similarly, the time a truck driver spends crawling through a bottleneck
eats away at his or her allowed time on the road. “In compliance
with hours-of-service regulations, you have to have rest,” says
Bittner. “How do you get rest if you’re on a 16-hour trip?
You can’t drive for 16 hours—you have to stop someplace.”
As often is the case, there may not be a truck stop or rest area nearby,
so drivers are forced to park on off- or on-ramps. Coalition members
are examining ways to locate rest stops strategically throughout the
Midwest, and how best to communicate their location to truckers.
Among other coalition initiatives are several strategies for obtaining
and leveraging federal funding to improve freight as a region, and for
developing recommendations that may help shape national policies that
recognize regional transportation issues.
Though each member state has unique freight transportation problems,
the coalition goal is to provide a common voice and visibility for the
region, says Adams. “What we’re doing is finding that common
ground so they can all work together and, as a region, make a case at
the federal level for the importance of freight in this region,”
she says.
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