Integrating Freight Considerations into the Highway Capacity Planning Process: Practitioner’s Guide (2013)

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82 Planning practitioners can use the decision flow diagram to guide their engagement of freight stakeholders. Key elements of the engagement process include the utilization of freight advisory committees, interviews and surveys, and focus groups and ad hoc meetings to guide the long-range planning and programming process, corridor plan- ning, and NEPA analysis to ensure that freight considerations and interests are properly included. Although many planning processes evolve organically from previous efforts, applying the freight decision flow diagram at any point in an ongoing process will enhance the practitioners’ ability to elicit valuable insight into BCO, motor carrier, and economic development needs within regions and states and expand on existing stakeholder dialogue. Figure 6.1 illustrates how market-based freight-planning consid- erations, the SHRP 2 decision-making diagram, and existing freight-planning resources converge to identify the critical freight-related decision points. Figure 6.2 reflects an active stakeholder group that might have more resources available during additional decision points. WHERE TO BEGIN: THE TOOLKIT This section provides more depth on several topics introduced in the guide. These toolkit topics are designed to help agencies implement and sustain some of the more difficult elements of a freight stakeholder outreach program. Appropriate outreach methods for freight stakeholders can help transportation planning practitioners con- serve resources and maximize the value of the feedback offered by private-sector stake- holders in the highway planning process. Users of the guide may have noted that many of the most effective outreach strategies can be used during the development of several of the key decision points in the planning process. These strategies include many of the same tools that practitioners use during the conventional public outreach 6 APPLYING THE GUIDE’S TOOLS

83 INTEGRATING FREIGHT CONSIDERATIONS INTO THE HIGHWAY PLANNING PROCESS process but are customized to freight. The toolkit topics in this chapter include the following: • How to initiate a freight advisory committee • How to sustain a freight advisory committee • How to leverage existing contacts in your state • How to find and collaborate with a freight champion • How to attract and maintain freight stakeholder participation • How to use freight data to support freight outreach HOW TO INITIATE A FREIGHT ADVISORY COMMITTEE Planners can obtain valuable project-specific and ongoing feedback from knowledge- able freight stakeholders by forming a freight advisory committee. To increase the like- lihood of success and maximize the value to policy makers, the following are suggested techniques that have worked well in locations around the nation: • Define the mission, meeting schedule (i.e., monthly, every other month, or quar- terly on the same day of the week), and critical priorities and projects. Market-Based Freight- Planning Considerations Existing Freight- Planning Resources SHRP 2 Decision Flow Diagram for Capacity Planning Critical Freight- Related Decision Points Figure 6.1. Where we have been: Convergence.

84 INTEGRATING FREIGHT CONSIDERATIONS INTO THE HIGHWAY PLANNING PROCESS Decision Point Decision Points for Environmental Review (ENV) 1 Reach Consensus Scope of Environmental Review 2 Approve and Publish the Notice of Intent 3 Approve Purpose and Need/Reach Consensus on Project Purpose (PER-1) 4 Approve Public Notice (PER-2) Reach Consensus on Study Area 5 Approve Evaluation Criteria, Methodology, and Performance Measures 6 Approve Full Range of Alternatives/Approve Resource Agency Public Notice (PER-3) 7 Approve Alternatives to be Carried Forward (PER-4) 8 Approve Draft EIS/Reach Consensus on Jurisdictional Determination (PER-5) 9 Approve Preferred Alternative 10 Approve Final NEPA Document 11 Approve Record of Decision/Render Permit Decision (PER-6) Attend kick-o meeting to better understand advisory committee or task force role, and discuss and vote to approve Purpose & Needs Statement (previously developed by sta). Review Draft EIS and attend meeting to discuss and vote on approval of Draft EIS (sta would have highlighted the most pertinent sections for review by stakeholders including preferred alternative, impacts to freight facilities, etc). Attend meeting to discuss, agree and vote to adopt Evaluation Criteria, Methodology & Performance Measures (draft evaluation criteria would have already been prepared by sta and stakeholder meeting would validate). Stakeholder Actions (critical decision points) Review materials describing alternatives in preparation for attending a meeting to learn more about, discuss and vote to approve Full Range of Alternatives (sta would disseminate information on project alternatives to stakeholder group). Task Force or Freight Advisory Committee Assembled Task Force or Freight Advisory Committee Sunsetted More active groups might also discuss and approve a nal NEPA document but it is not a critical decision point. More active groups might also discuss and vote on the alternatives to be carried forward but this is not a critical decision point. Figure 6.2. Key decision points from a hypothetical BCO's perspective. Note: Critical decision points are consistent with Figure 5.1 in Chapter 5, but this diagram reflects a more active stakeholder group that might have greater resources for engagement during additional decision points. If the Freight Advisory Committee was convened to address a specific project, then it will likely be sunsetted once the NEPA phase has been completed. Sometimes an existing freight advisory group is brought in to provide advice and service, while the group continues to perform its routine advocacy work. • Determine the governance structure, including minimum and maximum number of members and nonvoting ex officio members, type of person for chair and as- sistant chair roles (from private or public sector), sponsor agency representative, terms of service for the chair and assistant chair, and whether members have term limits or serve at their will. • Develop a list of potential members from a cross section of the freight industry. The committee might comprise representatives from BCOs, motor carriers, port authorities, airport authorities, marine terminal operators, ocean carriers, ocean and air freight forwarders, railroads, integrators (FedEx and UPS), city transporta- tion bureaus, local economic development agencies, mayors’ offices, state DOTs, chambers of commerce, and industry and trade associations. • Identify an appropriate regular meeting venue that is convenient and pleasant for members. • Ensure that the letter of invitation sent to potential members is signed by a high- level policy maker, such as the governor, mayor, state DOT director, or state trans- portation commission chair.

85 INTEGRATING FREIGHT CONSIDERATIONS INTO THE HIGHWAY PLANNING PROCESS HOW TO SUSTAIN A FREIGHT ADVISORY COMMITTEE Transportation agencies sometimes struggle with sustaining an advisory committee once it is established. The following ideas might help to sustain the committee: • Limit the meeting to 2 hours or less; distribute an agenda and meeting materials in advance; and adhere to the agenda. • Provide food and nonalcoholic beverages. • Identify the most critical freight infrastructure projects on which the committee should focus advocacy efforts. • Invite various external speakers to make short presentations during each meet- ing on topics of interest (e.g., mayoral candidates can offer their perspectives on transportation, the state DOT director can explain programs and projects, a rep- resentative of the bicycle association can communicate the needs of that stake- holder group, a representative of an environmental group can provide perspective on how transportation projects negatively and positively affect the environment). This fosters open-mindedness and cooperation. • Develop a communication plan and calendar for periodic meetings with key policy makers to educate them on supply chain dynamics and advocate for critical freight infrastructure projects that will benefit the freight community. • Craft position papers on critical freight-related subjects for distribution during advocacy efforts. • Write letters and provide public testimony in support of critical freight projects. • Provide opportunities for networking among members. • Communicate via e-mail with members during the month as important issues arise and their input is desired, but be careful not to bombard members with too many requests for input or involvement. • Consistently remind members how the sponsor agency values their participation and feedback. HOW TO LEVERAGE EXISTING CONTACTS IN YOUR STATE When establishing a plan to engage freight stakeholders, instead of starting from scratch, find the organization that already has good contacts and relationships with members of the freight community and work with them to initiate efforts. The agency with freight industry contacts could be the local MPO, state DOT, chamber of com- merce, trucking association, or other public agency. Align your efforts with theirs to reduce duplicative outreach, otherwise it may overwhelm and confuse freight stake- holders and lead to stakeholder fatigue and loss of interest in engagement.

86 INTEGRATING FREIGHT CONSIDERATIONS INTO THE HIGHWAY PLANNING PROCESS HOW TO FIND AND COLLABORATE WITH A FREIGHT CHAMPION Find a freight champion, someone widely respected and dynamic who can advocate for freight interests among public-sector agencies. For example, this freight champion can help DOT and MPO staff understand how and why it is important to incorpo- rate freight issues into their plans and programs and solicit input from freight stake- holders on transportation infrastructure projects early in the planning stages. This person might be a high-level executive in a state organization (even the DOT director) or a private-sector leader. Regardless of his or her station or employer, the freight champion should be effective in catalyzing action and inspiring firms and individuals to collaborate on freight transportation planning. HOW TO ATTRACT AND MAINTAIN FREIGHT STAKEHOLDER PARTICIPATION Freight stakeholders generally want to participate in the decision-making process, but policy makers have a limited number of opportunities in which to engage them before they lose interest. Stakeholders can lose interest if they feel the process is not advancing with clear goals and outcomes or that their corporate bottom line will not be improved through continued involvement. Planners call this freight stakeholder fatigue. Because large infrastructure projects take a long time to plan and complete, engaging public- sector stakeholders over the course of the project can be difficult. Moreover, the time horizons of the public and private sectors differ greatly. Challenges of Attracting and Maintaining Freight Stakeholder Participation Freight stakeholders often perceive that public-sector transportation infrastructure projects are highly complex and take far too long to plan and execute, often in excess of a decade, sometimes resulting in only marginal tangible benefits for their businesses. They find the public-sector planning process to be tedious and are reluctant to spend much of their limited time sitting in meetings, listening to presentations, and offering feedback—which they believe is not always taken to heart and incorporated into the plan. Their frustration grows when they see infrastructure projects completed with little net gain in system capacity and/or freight velocity, particularly if transit, com- muter, bicycle, and pedestrian solutions are perceived to be a greater priority than freight mobility enhancements. In particular, BCOs and logistics service providers may be reluctant to become involved in transportation infrastructure planning activities for several reasons. Public agencies can help stakeholders overcome hesitancy using the following methods. 1. Concerns about confidentiality. Public-sector agencies cannot assure freight stake- holders that the proprietary information they provide will be kept confidential; official documents produced during the study become part of the public domain and are discoverable under the Freedom of Information Act. BCOs consider their supply chains to be a strategic advantage; therefore, they often decline to par- ticipate in outreach sessions because they do not want proprietary strategies and

87 INTEGRATING FREIGHT CONSIDERATIONS INTO THE HIGHWAY PLANNING PROCESS operational profiles to be made public. Logistics service providers also do not want their competitors to know how they manage their businesses, who their customers are, and the volume of cargo they handle. These risks can outweigh any potential benefit to be derived by the stakeholder’s company. What can the agency do? If stakeholders are hesitant to participate because they do not want to share information, transportation agencies can focus their inquiries on a broader geographic level (e.g., the highway corridor) to avoid disclosure of corporate strategy or operations. For example, instead of asking for the number of trucks, the agency can work with the firm to identify, in more general terms, the types of operations that use the corridor (commodities) and the problems they face on the highway. 2. Potential negative outcomes. Conclusions drawn by public agencies based on information collected from stakeholders might negatively affect the shareholder value of the companies. Once gathered, freight stakeholders cannot control how the public agency uses or interprets the information. What can the agency do? One way of limiting this fear is by allowing the stake- holders to review any materials that use information they provided before it is publicly released—even in draft form. 3. Limited impact. The freight stakeholder may perceive that the infrastructure project may not deliver enough specific benefits to the stakeholder’s company to warrant participation in the planning process, particularly on projects with long planning and execution timelines. It is the law of diminishing returns. What can the agency do? Agency staff should remind stakeholders that the high- way planning process will yield much better long-term results with their input. Agencies can also assuage these concerns by focusing on short-term projects that provide immediate benefit to stakeholders—such as access improvements, road repairs, and traffic signal improvements. This type of activity promotes trust and increases stakeholders’ willingness to endure longer-term planning processes. 4. Fear of being lost in the noise. Because there are usually many types of stake- holders—including private citizens, neighborhood associations, bicyclists, public transit users and promoters, and environmental groups for any given transporta- tion infrastructure project—freight stakeholders may believe their voices will be drowned out by other types of stakeholders who are more vocal and willing and have more time to speak out in public forums. What can the agency do? This challenge can be overcome by engaging stakehold- ers in the development of a prioritization process, in which they help set the crite- ria and weighting for the projects. The use of benefit-cost analysis is also helpful as it tends to provide high benefits to freight projects. 5. Disparate time frames: public versus private sector. Often projects progress in fits and starts, and lack a clear direction. This is frustrating to freight stake holders who are responsible for achieving rapid results in their own businesses, unlike public agencies whose planning and implementation horizons can be decades long.

88 INTEGRATING FREIGHT CONSIDERATIONS INTO THE HIGHWAY PLANNING PROCESS Stakeholder fatigue can set in if policy makers are not creative in stimulating and maintaining interest over the course of the planning process. What can the agency do? Agencies can schedule meetings at a reasonable fre- quency, have a specific and limited agenda, stay on task during the meeting, ex- plain the progress that has been made thus far, offer food and beverages, and make the meeting an opportunity for networking. 6. Lack of public-sector and private citizen understanding. The majority of private citizens and legislators do not have a clear understanding and possess limited knowledge of how supply chains function, the myriad ways products move from origin to destination, and the economic value of freight mobility. Freight stake- holders might believe that the solutions developed will not be relevant or address their concerns because of this lack of understanding. Transportation is not taught in schools, so policy makers have to obtain their knowledge of how freight stake- holders use the multimodal transportation system in other ways. What can the agency do? This guide, freight advisory committees, industry ex- perts, universities with transportation and logistics programs, and other sources can be helpful in providing that valuable education. Policy makers also need to be careful in approaching public citizens and take time to explain transportation and logistics concepts and terminology to help them broaden their perspectives. 7. Inclusion of private citizens in freight stakeholder meetings. Inviting private citi- zens to freight stakeholder meetings can be beneficial in terms of building bridges between these groups that often have very different views and interests, and pro- viding a forum for BCOs and other freight stakeholders to educate the public about supply chain dynamics and freight movement. This can lead to more citizen support for freight projects. However, depending on the circumstances, planners should be aware that BCOs do not always welcome the attendance of citizens— who may sidetrack the meeting’s agenda in an effort to advocate for their own interests rather than listen to the information that BCOs provide. What can the agency do? Planners should proceed cautiously and tightly control meetings to keep everyone on task if citizens are invited. HOW TO USE FREIGHT DATA TO SUPPORT FREIGHT OUTREACH Agencies use freight data to evaluate the economic effects of highway projects and to paint a general picture of the regional freight system. Freight data can be a powerful tool to engage freight stakeholders in the planning process: the careful use of such data can raise the credibility of the DOT and provide freight stakeholders with broad market information that may benefit their firms. Several guides recommend using data from a variety of sources, both private and public, so analysts can evaluate the nature of the overall economy, the direction in which the economy is moving (robust growth, stagnant, or in decline), and the types of industries and firms that exist in a particular region. Private firms are accustomed to “triangulating” between data sets and will typically respect this approach.

89 INTEGRATING FREIGHT CONSIDERATIONS INTO THE HIGHWAY PLANNING PROCESS • NCHRP Report 594, The Guide for Integrating Freight into the Transportation Planning and Project Selection Processes, recommends identifying “corridors or facilities of statewide or regional significance” during the long-range planning or corridor planning phases. National corridors or facilities of statewide or re- gional significance have been highlighted by FHWA; additional local corridors of significance (for freight flows) can be identified by analyzing a variety of eco- nomic, mobility, or strategic metrics to identify concentrations of warehouse and cargo- handling facility space or a disproportionate number of freight-oriented firms located within a particular highway corridor. The MAP-21 legislation fur- ther promotes the identification of freight corridors at the national level. This identification of key corridors and concentrations of freight activity is especially critical during the long-range planning process. Challenges associated with the understanding and sharing of freight data include the following: • Identification of sources and use. Some available data are free, such as the FHWA’s Freight Analysis Framework (FAF) and trade data from the U.S. Department of Commerce. The FHWA’s FAF assists planners in determining trade trends and freight flows. Additionally, some data are available from private sources, including trade associations or research organizations. Another data source on imports that can be further used is customs entry information on imported goods collected by the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. • Nonproprietary data. Planners often need access to data retained by the private sector. For DOT and MPO planners to access proprietary data from BCOs and motor carriers, they need to know how to clearly describe the need and pur- pose for the data; timing (both duration of collected data and when the data are needed); and the required format (file type, size restrictions). Too often, planners are unaware of the sensitivities associated with certain types of data and/ or how to formally request only the data they need, which may not include the proprietary data elements and therefore be nonproprietary. • Proprietary data. Private-sector data generally contain proprietary information that companies are often reluctant to share; however, private industry represen- tatives often discuss and share trends in freight movement at industry forums and conferences. Some key examples are the Retail Industry Leaders Association Logistics Conference and the Intermodal Association of North American Confer- ence. These types of venues may provide a valuable source of data for public- sector planners who attend, as well as an opportunity to establish industry con- tacts for future data collection efforts. Obtaining proprietary data from BCOs can be challenging because BCOs recognize that, once data are provided to a public- sector agency, there is no way to protect that data from dissemination in the public realm. DOT and MPO planners must be cognizant of the sensitive nature of BCO proprietary data. BCOs may be more inclined to furnish some data rather than none if planners carefully approach BCOs for specific and limited data while pro- viding explanations about how the data will be used.

90 INTEGRATING FREIGHT CONSIDERATIONS INTO THE HIGHWAY PLANNING PROCESS Potential recommendations for improving the freight-planning process include the following: • Expanding the recognition and understanding of freight data sources. Some freight stakeholders familiar with the FAF data indicated interest in seeing more funding allocated to improving and refining the database for purposes such as gaining a better understanding of day-to-day freight operations and routing. Other private data sources, such as TRANSEARCH1 or PIERS,2 are generally familiar to the private sector and use proprietary methods to develop freight information databases. Data from these sources are readily available for purchase by public- sector planners, but the cost can discourage their use. • Promoting the sharing and expanded use of freight-specific data. Trade or business organizations can act as intermediaries between firms and the public sector for the sharing of freight data. Similarly, DOT planners can gain insight through participation in industry forums to better understand industries’ decision- making processes, as well as the data used to make transportation decisions. The value of data is only recognized through the data’s proper application. It is critical that public-sector planners understand and respect the confidential nature of BCO supply chain data and implement safeguards to prevent the unintended, unauthor- ized dissemination of such proprietary data. To this end, the importance of educat- ing DOT and MPO planners on how to use the data properly should be a shared priority of both private- and public-sector stakeholders. NOTES 1. TRANSEARCH is a commercial data product developed by IHS Global Insight, Inc., which incorporates a mix of public-sector and proprietary data to estimate freight flows. 2. PIERS is a database of U.S. waterborne trade activity for both imports and exports.