Leaders
from all levels of government and from private business and academia
gathered to discuss the importance of linking Appalachia's transportation
systems at a summit meeting co-sponsored by the Appalachian Regional
Commission (ARC) and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) May
17–18, 1999, in Lexington, Kentucky.
Speakers at the Appalachian Intermodal Transportation Summit, which
drew approximately 300 attendees, emphasized two points: first, that
all of the Appalachian Region will need a diversified and tightly
interconnected transportation network, and second, that the work of
providing adequate highways is still incomplete for some of the Region's
inner core. Panels examined the economic benefits of intermodal transportation,
assessed Appalachia's existing transportation assets and liabilities,
and described how four Appalachian communities are successfully expanding
their transportation capabilities.
National and state political leaders present included Rodney E. Slater,
U.S. secretary of transportation; Paul E. Patton, governor of Kentucky;
Cecil H. Underwood, governor of West Virginia and ARC's 1999 states'
co-chairman; Congressmen Harold "Hal" Rogers and Ernie Fletcher,
representing Kentucky's Fifth and Sixth Districts, respectively; and
Jesse L. White Jr., ARC federal co-chairman.
"We are gathered here," Representative Rogers said, "to
talk not only of roads but of trains, buses, and airplanes. The premise
of this conference is that the wealth of our region will depend on
all these modes. 'Intermodalism' is the bureaucratic word for linkage."
Secretary Slater, the conference keynote speaker, stressed the high
return on investment in highways but noted that access to intercity
transit does not exist for 38 percent of rural residents and is negligible
for another 28 percent.
"Our challenge is to find ways to connect rural areas to areas
around the country," he said. "The stubborn pockets of poverty
must be included at America's table of opportunity."
White, after crediting Slater with the initiative for planning the
conference, also emphasized the importance of completing the Appalachian
Development Highway System (ADHS). He added that Appalachian success
stories should not be allowed to obscure the needs of distressed counties.
At the conference's final session, he announced that ARC will commit
$400,000 to assist communities with transportation planning grants,
giving preference to projects that serve distressed areas and that
include strong private sector support.
Governor Patton reminded attendees that highways remain the backbone
of any Appalachian transportation system. He strongly urged the approval
of a proposed Interstate 66 project, conceived as an east-west route
through southern Kentucky. "This highway," he said, "would
take Appalachia off the back porch of the nation and put it on the
front porch."
Governor Underwood and Representative Fletcher made similar comments.
"It's important to focus on the next steps," Governor Underwood
added. "We need to interconnect the highways with all the elements
of the system—rail, barges, and cars."
Jim Coyne, representing the National Air Transportation Association,
said, "The development of the Internet has been the greatest
spur to the growth of aviation. The business leaders of America get
up and go, and they take their offices with them. Don't forget the
airport as part of your planning."
The conference sessions, a series of four, began with a global perspective
and concluded with case studies.
Economic Benefits of Intermodal Transportation: Global and National
Perspectives
Moderator: Eugene A. Conti Jr., assistant secretary for transportation
policy, DOT.
Presenters: Clyde J. Hart Jr., administrator, U.S. Maritime
Administration; Craig R. Lentzsch, president and CEO, Greyhound Lines,
Inc.; Thomas H. Weidemeyer, senior vice president of transportation
operations, United Parcel Service (UPS), and president, UPS Airlines;
and Amy K. Glasmeier, professor of regional planning and geography,
Pennsylvania State University.
All of the private sector panelists emphasized how fast the world
of commerce changes and the flexibility needed to respond to change.
Hart noted that the nation's total transportation volume is expected
to double by 2020. Businesses, he said, will be looking for whatever
combination of modes that will enable them to move goods and people
quickly.
Lentzsch agreed, noting that the public sector's regulatory and planning
structures will need to adapt as well. "In the past," he
said, "every form of transportation went its own way. We have
maritime administrations, railroad commissions, and highway authorities.
[But] . . . this is a business based on connections. Better service
produces growth and reduces cost."
Weidemeyer was the first of several speakers to comment that the
explosive growth of the Internet increases the importance of good
physical transport networks for getting products to market. He noted
that a Fortune 250 company like Gateway can grow within a small town
in a rural area as long as it can get its products to customers fast.
"Does anyone know where they are located?" he asked. "Does
it matter? Geographic boundaries have no future in commerce."
(Gateway is based in North Sioux City, South Dakota, but it employs
19,000 people worldwide.)
Glasmeier closed the session by identifying three major trends affecting
Appalachia: globalization (worldwide opportunities but also worldwide
competition), demographics (the increasing necessity of targeting
niche markets—e.g., elderly people with special interests), and the
information economy. She gave special emphasis to twofold difficulties
facing distressed counties: failure to complete the ADHS has left
them physically isolated, and their residents are the least well equipped
by their educational institutions to take advantage of information
technology.
Her comments drew a sympathetic response from ARC Federal Co-Chairman
White: "Even though this is a transportation summit, it is placed
in the larger context of social and human infrastructure problems."
White mentioned ARC initiatives in leadership development, Internet
access, and, more recently, entrepreneurship, adding, "We're
trying our best to address these other pieces of the puzzle at the
same time."
Intermodal Transportation in Rural America: The Challenges
for Rural Areas and Small Towns
Moderator: Harry Caldwell, chief of intermodal freight, Federal
Highway Administration.
Presenters: Bob Robinson, executive director, Tishomingo County(Mississippi)
Development Foundation; Jerry Nagel, president, Red River Trade Council
(representing several states and a Canadian province); Aurelia Jones-Taylor,
CEO, Aaron E. Henry Community Health Services Center (Mississippi);
and Michael J. Ogborn, managing director, OmniTRAX, Inc. (one of the
largest private operators of short-line railroads in North America).
"There's a time for competition and a time to work together,"
Robinson began. He described projections of immensely increased trade
with Latin America, expected to increase by a factor of five or more
within a few years. That volume of trade cannot continue to flow through
Florida alone, a fact that creates opportunities for Appalachian areas
willing to cooperate in regional planning and creative public-private
partnerships.
Nagel urged planners to consider three kinds of potential advantages
on which areas seeking development may capitalize: comparative advantage,
based on resources; competitive advantage, based on technology; and
collaborative advantage, based on ability to work together. Collaborative
planning, he said, is an absolute necessity because of the need to
invest today in infrastructure whose full benefits may take years
to materialize.
Jones-Taylor outlined the payoffs from cooperation and coordination.
She described how a particular problem—the difficulty of getting patients
in low-income Mississippi Delta counties to doctors—led to an expanding
transportation network. Beginning with two minivans in 1990, she and
her colleagues were able to persuade many agencies to pool resources.
Today, the Delta Area Rural Transit System operates 30 vehicles serving
a seven-county area.
Ogborn explained that many short-haul rail lines offer major opportunities
for public-private partnerships. His company, he said, operates about
400 locomotives (most of them 30 to 40 years old) within ten states
and three Canadian provinces. After citing statistics showing explosive
growth in freight traffic, he called attention to some 800 real-estate
leases involving land on or along OmniTRAX rights-of-way. He summed
up his company's view of the potential value of such property along
short-haul rail lines like this: "It's not just a ribbon of steel
between two points. We look at what's on either side of the tracks—what
can be developed." Communities and regional authorities should
also be able to spot many alternatives to abandoning old lines, from
tourism to spur lines for plants. "There are," he said,
"other opportunities ready to be picked off low branches."
An Assessment of Intermodal Transportation Systems in the Appalachian
Region
Moderator: Thomas M. Hunter, executive director, ARC.
Presenter: Robert Zuelsdorf, president and CEO, Wilbur Smith
Associates.
Responders: James C. Codell III, secretary of transportation,
Commonwealth of Kentucky; Nick Ardillo, executive director, Golden
Triangle Regional Airport; and Ron Eller, associate professor of history,
University of Kentucky.
Zuelsdorf summarized an inventory of Appalachia's transportation
resources, prepared for ARC. The ADHS has been an
economic success, he reported, and its completion should have high
priority. Intercity bus service has tended to deteriorate, and despite
two major railroads, many branch rail lines are abandoned or inadequately
maintained. On the plus side, waterways are already more important
than may be generally realized and likely to be more important in
the future. The Appalachian inland waterway system includes over 1,500
miles of navigable rivers and almost 700 private and public port terminals.
"Transportation is no longer just access to isolated areas,"
Zuelsdorf said. "Today the issue is global competition. We need
to think globally."
Codell described an intermodal facilities directory for Kentucky
and talked about design work toward the proposed Interstate 66 project.
Stressing the importance of completing the ADHS, he cautioned that
the system's final 48 miles in Kentucky could cost approximately as
much as the first 300 miles did.
Ardillo, himself a pilot, acknowledged that "airplanes and mountains
are not natural allies." Nevertheless, he contended that the
growth of just-in-time manufacturing and production cycles would require
more attention to air transport across Appalachia. Referring to his
regional airport serving three eastern Mississippi communities, he
said, "I'm convinced that we'd have no service if these people
had not developed a regional concept. And the concept has taken hold
in other areas, like landfills."
Eller struck a cautionary note. "Generalizations about the Region
as a whole," he said, "can obscure some of the diversity
of conditions and needs. There's always been a difference between
the periphery of Appalachia and the interior core."
Eller displayed the results when transparencies showing various transportation
modes are overlaid upon each other. On the periphery of Appalachia,
lines showing roads, railways, and bus and air routes combine to form
a relatively dense web, but leave nearly blank spaces near the Region's
core.
Far from being inevitable, Eller said, Central Appalachia's relative
isolation is attributable in large part to governmental decisions
that have supported improved services for densely populated areas
over development in sparsely populated areas. He urged policy makers
not only to complete the ADHS but to start planning for a second layer
of highways. Dueto surface mining, he noted, many Central Appalachian
counties have sizeable tracts of flat land but no access roads that
reach them. He also urged policy makers to recognize that short-line
railroads can be a major asset in tourism, and to pay more attention
to improving water quality and to providing access to streams.
Intermodal Transportation Systems in Appalachia: Case Studies
Moderator: Samuel G. Bonasso, secretary, West Virginia Department
of Transportation.
Presenters: Ron Hamby, director, International
Intermodal Center, Huntsville–Madison County Airport Authority; Jeff
Stover, director, SEDA-COG Joint Rail Authority; James E. Seney, transportation
liaison, Ohio Department of Development; and Ron Littlefield, special
planning consultant to the City of Chattanooga.
Hamby described how the Port of Huntsville, in Alabama, functions
as an inland port for the Tennessee Valley Region, combining air,
rail, and truck services at one location, and providing an industrial
park, a foreign trade zone, and on-site U.S. Customs services. The
Huntsville International Airport provides air services to over one
million passengers and more than 50,000 tons of cargo each year, and
the 1,700-acre Jetplex Industrial Park provides facilities for major
companies such as Boeing and Raytheon.
Supported initially with funding from ARC, the center connects with
two interstate highways and the Norfolk Southern railway. Airport
tenants and nearby businesses employ nearly 15,000 workers, with a
combined payroll of $600 million. A 1996 study found that these jobs
and the spending associated with them created a multiplied regional
impact of 28,000 jobs and over $970 million in total payrolls.
Stover described how the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and many other
public and private partners helped to prevent an 80-mile stretch of
lines connecting two major rail lines from becoming "two sticks
of rust in the weeds." Entities across central Pennsylvania pulled
together to form a Joint Rail Authority (JRA) that has maintained
and expanded rail freight service. Managed by the SEDA–Council of
Governments, the JRA has acquired 192 miles of rail lines targeted
for abandonment. This saved an estimated 3,000 jobs and created 2,000
new ones. Stover credited an ARC planning grant with creating momentum:
"ARC was the first in. It turned us around from 'Save us!' to
'We'll save ourselves!' "
"Ohio is a platform," Seney announced. "We have to
be able to move information, cargo, and people around the globe."
Recently, the state adopted a new comprehensive transportation plan
called Access Ohio that seeks to assess and upgrade all facets of
the state's transportation systems, including those in the 29 counties
of Appalachian Ohio. The potential for increased water transport is
immense, Seney said; already more tonnage moves along the Ohio River
than along the Danube or through the Panama Canal.
Littlefield concluded the panel presentations with a description
of a project still in the planning stages, the Chattanooga-Atlanta
High-Speed Rail Corridor between Atlanta and Chattanooga. The two
cities, 100 miles apart, have begun exploring linking their downtowns
and their airports with a new high-speed rail passenger service along
the Interstate 75 corridor.
"We've had a lengthy love-hate relationship with Atlanta over
the years," Littlefield admitted. "But it's not important
that two communities be twin cities or equals. Atlanta's problems
equal Chattanooga's opportunities. And you can turn that around. We've
learned that we can spawn new grassroots leadership, and we can find
boundary crossers."
Closing Session
ARC Federal Co-Chairman White closed the conference with the announcement
of ARC's commitment to intermodal transportation planning grants and
again placing intermodal transport issues into a broad social and
economic context. He commented that he found it "both exhilarating
and disheartening" to hear how the Internet will open opportunities
to small communities but leave still farther behind those areas with
poor educational opportunities and poor transport systems.
"We've got to get our communities to start thinking regionally,"
he concluded. "If we can do that, we can make them competitive
in a global market. If not, it'll be another technical breakthrough
that widens the gap between haves and have-nots."
Fred D. Baldwin is a freelance
writer based in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
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