Examples of ARC Transportation Projects

Increasing Transportation Options for Western North Carolina

Linking residents who often have poor access to transportation services with growing educational, health care, and employment opportunities has been a key challenge in North Carolina.

To address these transportation problems, the Transportation Options Project created a coalition of transit, civic, health care, educational, business, and senior citizen interests to map out a better-coordinated and more expansive regional network of public transportation services. 

A 32-member Policy Advisory Committee established the overall goals and direction of the project, and a 60-member Intermodal Technical Advisory Committee conducted the work. The resulting report offers specific recommendations on how to better coordinate existing transportation resources, and calls for new transit services. 

Port Itawamba Intermodal Transportation Center Attracting New Business

The Itawamba County Development Council recognized the importance of freight transportation, product and supply storage (warehousing), and logistics service to a community's ability to attract new businesses. 

The Itawamba County Development Council created a comprehensive intermodal strategic plan for the future of the Port Itawamba Intermodal Center. The strategic plan calls for improved highway access to the port, site preparation, rail line extension directly to the port, and construction of an intermodal bridge crane that can serve water, rail, and truck operations from a single location. The Port's transportation and warehousing capabilities are intended to create new services and efficiencies that are attractive to prospective businesses.

Reclaiming Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroads

Over the last 25 years, rail lines in many Appalachian communities have been abandoned and local rail transportation services lost. In the 1980s, the former Erie Lackawanna mainline railroad, which once served as a major transcontinental rail corridor moving passenger and freight trains, became part of Conrail and service decreased, leaving many communities with no freight rail service. 

In western New York and Northwestern Pennsylvania, public and private sector interests joined forces not only to stop the abandonment of an important railroad, but to create an institutional entity that would assume control of the rail line and oversee the capital redevelopment of the railroad's infrastructure, in addition to relaunching freight operations in the corridor.

Local business and civic leaders used an ARC planning grant to conduct a marketing and engineering analysis of the railroad to confirm that it could be commercially viable. 

Redeveloping Land for and Improving Access to Queen City Shopping Center, Cumberland, Maryland  

Built originally to manufacture steel rail for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the former Rolling Mill industrial site (used to produce materials for the construction and maintenance of railroads until it was shut down and demolished in the early 1980s) is being transformed into an 11-acre shopping center in downtown Cumberland, Maryland. 

Transforming the industrial site into a shopping center required some difficult work, as the soil was contaminated with volatile organic chemicals and petroleum hydrocarbons: it had become a brownfields site. To convert it into a commercially successfully retail center, the community worked closely with public and private sector interests. 

While ARC Area Development Funds are helping to prepare the site for new businesses, ARC Local Access Road funds are being used for roadway improvements to help ensure that area residents enjoy safe and convenient highway access to the shopping center.