Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 1: Scenario Planning for Freight Transportation Infrastructure Investment (2013)

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57 The previous section compared the scenario planning process used across the six scenario planning workshops. In this section, we compare the results obtained from the six workshops. The workshops had different geographic focus areas (Northeast, Midwest, Northwest, Southwest, South, and the entire United States), region sizes (state, multi-state, national, etc.), strategic questions, and infrastructure segments. Additionally, each workshop used the scenarios devel- oped for the Future Freight Flows project differently. In some workshops, the host organization evaluated the utility of investing in a set of pre-selected freight infrastructure segments. In some others, the scenarios were used to leverage the insights of the workshop participants to identify freight initiatives. These results are compared in this section. Section 5.1 describes the method used for com- paring the results across six disparate workshops. Following this, the results from infrastructure segments evaluation sessions are compared in Section 5.2. The comparison of initiatives from the “visioning” sessions across the workshops is presented in Section 5.3. 5.1 Method for Comparing Results Across Workshops The scenarios in the six Future Freight Flows workshops were used for two purposes: evaluation of specific freight infrastructure segments and visioning of initiatives in the chosen region. The results of the evaluation session are quantitative; those of the visioning session are qualitative. These quantitative and qualitative results from the six workshops are summarized separately in Sections 5.2 and 5.3, respectively. Five workshops (all except MNDOT) included an evaluation of infrastructure segments. The segments were physical components of the freight infrastructure specific to the regions in four of these workshops, and abstract concepts in the U.S.DOT workshop. In order to compare the results across these five workshops, the segments used in all workshops are first classified into one of the three types: gateways, corridors, and connectors. The three types are defined in Section 4.1.2.6. The number of segments of each type used in the five work- shops is presented in Table 9 in the same section. For comparing the “evaluation” results from the five workshops, the positive votes and vetoes assigned to individual segments in each workshop are rolled up into the corresponding segment types. These results are discussed in Section 5.2. Four of the six workshops (all except DVRPC and U.S.DOT) used a visioning session to identify initiatives the planning organization should consider. These are qualitative results; the themes are identified and compared across the four workshops. The comparison of results of the “visioning” sessions is presented in Section 5.3. S e c t i o n 5 Future Freight Flows Workshops: Results

58 Scenario Planning for Freight transportation infrastructure investment 5.2 Comparison of Results from Evaluation Sessions The results from voting in the evaluation sessions in five of the workshops are summarized by types of segments, and presented in Appendix E, Exhibits 8 through 12. Each exhibit has three sections: a, b, and c. • Section (a) shows the number of individual segments of each type, followed by the total points (positive votes) and vetoes (negative votes) received in each scenario used in the workshop. For example, in the DVRPC workshop (Exhibit 8), the participants in the Global Marketplace scenario assigned a total of 1,360 points and 18 vetoes. • Section (b) shows the proportion of total points and vetoes each segment type received in each scenario. Thus, in each scenario, the proportions of points for the three segment types add to 1. Similarly, in each scenario, the proportions of vetoes for the three segment types add to 1. – If the proportion of points received by a segment type in a scenario is greater than the proportion of vetoes received, then the former is shown in blue font. This suggests that the segment type, overall, was more often preferred than vetoed. – If the proportion of vetoes received by a segment type in a scenario is greater than the propor- tion of points received, then the former is shown in red font. This suggests that the segment type, overall, was more often vetoed than preferred. • Section (c) shows the proportion of points and vetoes per segment. Thus, this section is section (b) normalized by the number of infrastructure segments in the segment type. For each scenario in a given workshop, the highest proportion of votes and vetoes per segment are shown using a bold font. The bold font highlights the most preferred and most vetoed segment types of the three, in each scenario. Before delving into the results, we want to remind the reader about the number of segment types in each workshop. These results were presented in Table 9 by modes, and are reproduced here in Table 11 by combining all modes. The results from individual workshops presented in Appendix E, Exhibit 8 through Exhibit 12, are summarized in one table (Table 12) for an easy, visual comparison of votes across the five workshops. However, because the information density of this table is high, it is described in detail first. • Each column represents one of the five evaluation workshops (DVRPC, WSDOT, POLB, GDOT, U.S.DOT). • Each workshop column has two sub-columns: one for positive points (“votes”) and one for negative votes (“vetoes”). • The votes and vetoes are shown for gateways, corridors, and connectors for each scenario used in the workshop. – Remember that these workshops used four scenarios: Global Marketplace (GM), Millions of Markets (MM), Naftástique! (N!), and One World Order (OWO). DVRPC MNDOT WSDOT POLB GDOT U.S.DOT Gateways 2 - 3 2 3 6 Corridors 4 - 12 10 8 3 Connectors 2 - 1 3 2 3 Number of segments 8 16 15 13 12 Table 11. Types of infrastructure segments used in evaluation workshops.

Future Freight Flows Workshops: Results 59 – Scenario Millions of Markets was not used in POLB; scenario Global Marketplace was not used in GDOT. Therefore, the cells in the POLB and GDOT columns in rows MM and GM, respectively, are blank. • In each scenario—for a given segment type in a particular scenario—the votes are shown in two rows. The first row shows the percentage of all the votes (in sub-column “votes”) and percentage of all the vetoes (in sub-column “vetoes”) received by the type of segment in that scenario in that workshop. This data is taken from sections (b) in Appendix E, Exhibit 8 through Exhibit 12. • The second row shows a bar-chart depicting the proportion of votes in the total proportion of votes and vetoes. Thus, the length of the bar is equal to votes/(votes + vetoes). Thus, the longer the bar, the more important the participants in that scenario in that workshop thought that segment to be. • The bar charts in the scenarios are color-coded: Global Marketplace (blue), Millions of Markets (gray), Naftástique! (red), and One World Order (green). Table 12 is shown above. Key observations from this table are presented in Section 5.2.1. votes vetoes votes vetoes votes vetoes votes vetoes votes vetoes 0.36 0.17 0.21 0.00 0.25 0.15 0.47 0.29 0.21 0.47 0.20 0.05 0.26 0.36 0.45 0.57 0.25 0.20 0.15 0.23 0.08 0.54 0.21 0.21 0.42 0.89 0.17 0.47 0.15 0.44 0.26 0.22 0.25 0.50 0.35 0.83 0.46 0.50 0.75 0.85 0.37 0.75 0.24 0.21 0.61 0.29 0.77 0.76 0.48 0.64 0.33 0.24 0.45 0.67 0.85 0.47 0.77 0.38 0.63 0.71 0.32 0.00 0.53 0.47 0.84 0.31 0.47 0.67 0.55 0.44 0.24 0.13 0.19 0.33 0.03 0.15 0.38 0.10 0.30 0.50 0.19 0.24 0.03 0.19 0.26 0.00 0.22 0.19 0.31 0.13 0.00 0.30 0.15 0.08 0.15 0.07 0.26 0.11 0.30 0.05 0.02 0.25 0.28 0.11 0.20 0.06 0.41 0.04 100% 65% 37% 54% 71% 90% 100% 68% 76% 62% 44% 32% 79% 66% 71% 42% 50% 33% 43% 47% 56% 19% 15% 0% 7% 63% 13% 54% 33% 67% 47% 50% 64% 73% 41% 30% 52% 58% 81% 40% 25% Co nn ec to rs GM 36% MM 44% N! 70% OWO 85% G at ew ay s Co rr id or s GM 48% MM 67% N! 40% OWO 53% 30% 55% 26% GM MM N! OWO DVRPC WSDOT POLB GDOT U.S.DOT 68% 100% Table 12. Summary of “evaluation” votes by segment types in all workshops.

60 Scenario Planning for Freight transportation infrastructure investment 5.2.1 Observations from Comparison of Evaluations Across Workshops The sections below describe the positive and negative voting results for the five evaluation workshops. The analysis combined the common infrastructure elements into three categories: gateway, corridor, or connector. Each is discussed in turn below. Let us make three general comments on the combined results before discussing the details. First, these results and insights are limited in that they represent the opinions from only a small set of professionals from six different regions on a limited set of options presented by the host organizations. It is not meant to be conclusive or final. Second, it is interesting to note that each scenario demonstrated slightly different priorities. No two workshops behaved quite the same across all segment types. This is probably due to the location at which each workshop was held as well as the particular economics of that area. Third, we can get a rough sense of priority for the three different segment types by com- paring the positive vote to negative veto ratio for each of the 18 scenario-workshop pairings. (A scenario-workshop pairing is simply one breakout group’s results in one workshop. We ran five evaluation workshops with three using four scenarios and the other two using three scenarios. This gives us a total of 18: 4 GM, 4 MM, 5 OWO, and 5 N!). For gateways, only seven of 18 had more positive votes than negative vetoes, while for corridors this was reversed with 11 of 18 having more positive votes than negative vetoes. Connectors are a little more complicated since the WSDOT workshop had only a single segment that could be classified as a connector, which was heavily vetoed. Removing it, we can see that 11 of 14 scenario-workshop pairings had higher positive votes than negative vetoes. As a general insight, we can take away that connectors seem to be viewed as the most critical infrastructure elements to invest in followed by corridors. Gateways appear to be less valuable for further investment. 5.2.1.1 Gateways The evaluation workshops had two (DVRPC, POLB), three (WSDOT, GDOT), or six (U.S.DOT) gateway segments. All five workshops had waterport and airport gateways. Only the U.S.DOT workshop had land gateways (i.e., border crossings with Mexico and Canada). Gateways were found to be useful investments in all workshops in the Global Marketplace scenario. At least 62% of the total votes (including vetoes) received in the Global Marketplace scenario were in favor of investing in this segment type. In the remaining three scenarios, gateway segments, overall, were found to be useful to invest in at most one workshop in each of the remain- ing three scenarios, and found to be bad investments in the remaining workshops. Of the four scenarios, Global Marketplace resembles the global world we live in today. This is the only scenario in which gateway segments are found to be useful to make investments in today. This suggests that, based on the results from all five workshops, it makes sense to make investments into gateway segments only if we believe that the future will be similar to today—that is, marked by global trade, which provides access to resources to anybody at any place in the world. Actually, across all of the other scenarios, the general priority for gateway infrastructure is quite low; negative vetoes outweigh positive votes in 11 of 18 potential scenario-workshop pairings! Given that the official projections about the future often consider the continuation of the existing trends, there is a real danger that infrastructure planning agencies will continue to invest in gateway segments (because they are useful segment types in which to invest in Global Marketplace), and these investments will turn out to be futile if the official projections of the future are wrong. Therefore, investments in gateways must be done judiciously. The consensus of the other scenarios seems to be that there is sufficient gateway capacity for trade and further investment might not be needed.

Future Freight Flows Workshops: Results 61 5.2.1.2 Corridors Corridors were the most common segments in each the Future Freight Flows workshops. With the exception of the U.S.DOT workshop, at least 50% of the segments evaluated in all workshops were corridors. WSDOT evaluated the most corridors, both by number (12) and by the percentage of total segments (75%). The most common corridors evaluated were highways, followed by rail lines. Corridors were not found to be uniformly useful investments within any scenario across all five workshops. However, it was found to be generally useful to invest into corridor segments today to prepare for a Naftástique! or a One World Order scenario. The net proportion of votes received by corridor segments (including positive and negative votes) never fell below 40%, and was above 50% in seven out of 10 scenario sessions in the five workshops—reaching as high as 100% in Naftástique! in the U.S.DOT workshop and 73% in One World Order in the WSDOT workshop. Corridor segments were also voted favorably in the Millions of Markets scenario in three of the four workshops where they were used. Only in the GDOT workshop was investing in corridors favored by less than 50% of the votes. Corridor segments were found to be of the least use to invest to prepare for the Global Marketplace scenario. They received a higher proportion of vetoes than positive votes in three out of four workshops where they were evaluated for usefulness to prepare for a Global Marketplace world. Only in the U.S.DOT workshop was the proportion of positive invest points received by corridor segments slightly greater than the proportion of vetoes received. However, even in the scenarios for which corridor segments received a greater proportion of vetoes than invest points, the proportion of invest points was fairly high. One way to interpret this result is that the participants across all workshops felt that corridor segments were useful, but did not require additional investments at this time to prepare for a future similar to today. Overall, comparing the results of evaluation in four scenarios in five workshops, corridors stand out as fairly robust investments. However, these investments will be a lot more valuable if the future were to be significantly different from the world dominated by global trade. One way to invest in corridors today would be to prioritize investments in those corridor segments that urgently need to be invested in even to meet today’s demands. Those investments will not only help us meet the present day needs, but also prepare us for a future quite different from today’s fairly resourceful world of global trade. 5.2.1.3 Connectors All five workshops evaluated one (WSDOT), two (DVRPC, GDOT), or three (POLB, U.S.DOT) connectors. The connectors consisted of local roads, short-line rails, or intermodal facilities. The only connector evaluated in the WSDOT workshop was the “Grays Harbor to Chehalis Rail Line.” This segment was heavily vetoed and received few positive invest points in all four scenarios used in the workshop. Because the results of evaluation of connectors in the WSDOT workshop are specific to one peculiar infrastructure segment only, they are omitted from the cross-workshop comparison presented below. After discarding the evaluation from the WSDOT workshop, the connector segments emerge as highly useful investments to make to prepare for a Naftástique! or a One World Order scenario. Among the eight evaluations in these two scenarios from four workshops, the lowest proportion of positive points received by the connector segments is 66%. The connectors were also found to be useful investments in the Millions of Markets scenario in the GDOT and U.S.DOT workshops, and received 44% of the positive votes in DVRPC.

62 Scenario Planning for Freight transportation infrastructure investment The connectors received mixed evaluations in the Global Marketplace scenario. They were found to be highly useful investments to make in the POLB workshop, but somewhat not useful investments in the DVRPC and U.S.DOT workshops. This suggests that connectors only in some specific regions or connectors only of specific types are useful investments to prepare for a business-as-usual future. Overall, connectors emerge as useful to invest in to prepare for Millions of Markets, Naftástique!, or One World Order—any future in which the world looks different from today’s Global Marketplace. Connectors are also found to be useful in some specific regions. Thus, one broad investment strategy for connectors would be to invest in those connector segments that urgently need to be invested in to meet today’s demands. Those investments will help meet the present needs, and help prepare for a future quite different from today’s Global Marketplace world. 5.3 Comparison of Results from Visioning Sessions Four of the six Future Freight Flows workshops included a visioning session. The MNDOT workshop was a pure visioning workshop. The visioning sessions were conducted within indi- vidual scenarios, where the participants were asked to identify initiatives the planning organiza- tion should take today to be prepared for the corresponding scenario. The data collected in these visioning sessions is analyzed to identify similarities. Similar initiatives are grouped together under a category heading. Table 13 lists the most common initiatives across the four workshops. Only those initiatives are shown that were identified in at least two different scenarios in one workshop and in at least two different workshops. There are nine categories of initiatives, which are illustrated using the actual initiative identified by the workshop participants. An “x” next to the initiative indicates the workshop and the scenario in which it was identified. The rightmost column indicates the number of scenario groups across the four workshops in which the category of initiative was suggested. 5.3.1 Observations from Comparison of Initiatives Across Workshops Of the four workshops with visioning sessions, two workshops used all four scenarios (MNDOT and WSDOT), and two workshops used three scenarios each (POLB and GDOT). Thus, the list of initiatives is generated in 14 scenario-workshop pairings. By far, the most common group of initiatives was to “develop or improve intermodal con- nections.” The initiatives in this category included increasing capacity of intermodal exchanges, improving interoperability among different modes at the intermodal facilities, and development of regional logistics hubs. These initiatives were identified in 11 out of 14 scenario sessions. They were identified in all four workshops and across all four scenarios used in the Future Freight Flows project. These initiatives are related to the “connector” type segments discussed in the previous section. The next two most common initiatives were “creating freight-only lanes” and “making regula- tions and standards to facilitate freight.” Each of these was identified by eight out of 14 scenario sessions, and across all four scenarios. While “freight lanes” was suggested in all four workshops, “regulatory initiatives” were suggested in three of the four workshops (except WSDOT). The initiatives in the “freight lanes” category suggested creation of dedicated truck lanes on highways, separating freight transportation from passenger transportation, and even taking the passen- ger traffic off the highways completely through improved transit! The motivating idea behind this initiative is to create “freight-only corridors” to facilitate goods flow in the country. The “regulatory initiatives” are also motivated by the need to improve the existing freight flows by eliminating regulations that hinder them. The common themes in this group of initiatives were

Future Freight Flows Workshops: Results 63 having a national freight policy and funding to take freight planning out of regional provincial policies, developing policies to improve flow of goods across the U.S.-Mexico border, and repeal or revision of the Jones Act (Merchant Marine Act of 1920), which prohibits foreign shops from carrying cargo between U.S. ports. The next three most commonly cited initiatives were related to improving the capacity of corridors—highways, rail lines, and waterways and ports. These initiatives were identified in seven, six, and five scenario sessions respectively. The initiatives related to adding new capacity (such as adding highway lanes or rail lines) or making the existing infrastructure carry more cargo (enabling double-stack transportation by rail, dredging ports, etc.). These initiatives were often mentioned in context of specific segments of the freight infrastructure (such as highway I-5, the Alameda Corridor, the Port of Savannah, etc.). MNDOT WSDOT POLB GDOT # GM x x x MM x N! x x x x OWO x x x GM x x MM x x N! x x OWO x x GM x x MM x N! x x x OWO x x GM MM x x x N! x x OWO x x GM x MM x N! x x OWO x x GM x x MM x N! x OWO x x GM x MM N! x OWO x x x GM x x MM x N! x OWO x GM x MM x N! OWO x 5 5 3 11 8 8 7 6 6 Improve capacity of waterways: Dredge waterways, build new locks along waterways, build new barge facilities, etc. Freight-only lanes: Create dedicated truck lanes on highways, separate passenger and freight transportation infrastructure, initiatives to take passenger traffic off highways, etc. Reduce environmental impact of transportation: Incentivize use of greener modes of transportation, identify environmental initiatives, etc. Make regulations and standards to facilitate freight: National freight policy, repeal/revise Jones Act, improve goods flow across US-Mexico border, fast-track Environmental Impact Review process, standardize truck weights and sizes, etc. Expand rail capacity: Increase capacity, double-track, separate freight from passenger traffic, improve operations (increase speed, reduce variability), etc. Develop or improve intermodal connections: Improve capacity of intermodal exchanges, improve inter-operability via policy changes & technology, create regional logistics hubs, etc. Increase highway capacity: Increase highway capacity, improve road conditions, streamline interchanges for commercial traffic, improve last-mile infrastructure, etc. Land use: Reserve industrial land for industrial use, create multi- modal zones for industrial use and long-haul distribution, simplify zoning process, etc. Use information technology to improve freight flows: Implement demand management, implement technology to track and monitor cargo, use technology to charge for port usage, etc. Table 13. Summary of initiatives from “visioning” session in all workshops.

64 Scenario Planning for Freight transportation infrastructure investment The other commonly identified initiatives included creating policies to reduce the environ- mental impact of freight transportation (six sessions), policies related to land use, specifically setting aside industrial land for creating long-haul distribution and multimodal facilities, and leveraging information technology to improve freight flows. 5.4 Summary This section presented the results obtained in the six workshops, which used the Future Freight Flows scenarios project for evaluating different freight infrastructure segments and for identify- ing initiatives in different regions of the country. The six workshops had six different geographic focus areas: Northeast, Midwest, Northwest, Southwest, South, and the entire United States. To compare the results across the workshops with such diverse foci, some common themes had to be identified. Section 5.1 describes the method used for comparing the results across six disparate workshops. The actual comparison of results is presented in Sections 5.2 and 5.3. The former compares the results from evaluations of freight infrastructure segments and the latter summarizes the results from the visioning sessions used to identify freight infrastructure initiatives.