Average daily traffic through the corridor is about 45,000 vehicles, but can exceed 250,000. Average daily truck traffic is about 11,000, and up to 26,000. The projected 2030 average daily traffic will exceed 100,000 vehicles, including over 25,000 trucks.

The project has received about $5 million in federal funds for feasibility and environmental work. The feasibility study, conducted by HNTB Corp., Kansas City, includes potential intermodal links to airports and waterways.

Norfolk Southern Heartland Corridor is under way.

Funding the full project is a question mark. “Right now, all possibilities are on the table,” including fuel and sales taxes and tolls, says Jeff Bridges, a spokesman for Missouri DOT. “Ultimately, any such funding would be up to the approval of the state legislature and the voters,” he adds. Brian Weiler, Missouri DOT’s multi-modal director, says that as projects focus more on logistics centers that bring rail, trucking and ports together, robust private participation may increase “if the public sector can demonstrate value and efficiency to improve freight flow.”

In Chicago, Project CREATE plans to improve freight flow through a sweeping overhaul of rail lines. Chicago receives 37,500 rail freight cars a day, which is expected to increase to about 67,000 in 20 years. The $1.5-billion, six-year project will create five rail corridors, including one for passenger trains, plus 25 new grade separations.

CREATE so far has a federal commitment of $100 million and private railroad contributions of $212 million. “In the past, transportation thinking has been along modal lines without really considering the impact on the overall picture,” says Tom White, spokesman for the Association of American Railroads, a CREATE participant. “We need to think on a broader level.”

Oregon DOT Projects like the I-5 corridor on the West Coast aim to relieve congestion caused in part by trucks.

That is happening in Kansas City. “Rail, truck and maritime shipping aren’t the best of friends, but they are working together today more seamlessly than they ever have,” says Chris Gutierrez, president of Kansas City SmartPort, a not-for-profit transport organization. Funded 75% privately and 25% by the Missouri and Kansas DOTs and the local airport authority, it has developed an 800-acre facility at Kansas City International Airport; a 2,200-acre NS facility; and the New Century Air Center, a 2,500-acre facility with two runways and access to rail and Interstate highways.

Other states are just getting started. Arizona DOT is creating a multiagency Freight Advisory Committee with the aid of FHWA “to help Arizona learn more from similar committees in other states, including Oregon and Colorado,” says spokesman Doug Nintzel.

Looking Ahead

For now, the transportation world must wait to see what results are reaped from the experts’ recommendations. One was by J. William Vigrass, a project manager with Hill International Inc., Marlton, N.J., who advised the congressional commission. He proposes, based on industry feedback, a network of east-west and north-south exclusive freight corridors with nodal exchange points. Freight could be moved by magnetically levitated rail at specific sites. “I proposed frequent container trains on freight networks running on commuter-like schedules,” he adds. He also proposes electrifying heavily used corridors.

HDR’s Lewis recommends using PPPs to invest in Intelligent Transportation Systems for freight. “Just-in-time production and distribution management has changed the role of the transportation system. This has special significance for intermodal facilities,” he says. “They em­body the latest engineering designs, technologies and business pro­cesses.”

The “silo” nature of the modes—highways, rail, marine—needs to be broken down for intermodalism to be truly integrated. The congressional report proposes to do that by streamlining all current federal programs into 10 priority points, one of which is freight. It dovetails with other priorities like congestion relief and environmentalism.

The federal office of intermodalism was submerged into the Research and Innovative Technology Administration in 2005, which PB Consult’s Downey, former U.S. DOT deputy secretary, says was disappointing. “There is no longer a place to say, ‘I have an intermodal project, how can we make it happen?’” he says. But there is hope. MARAD’s Nelson notes that multimodal, multi-agency teams have been set up in southern California to do concurrent reviews of proj­ects. She says that efforts like these, the Corridors of the Future program and others “need to be more routine.”

Orski is optimistic. “If you take a historic view over the past 30 years, we have made tremendous progress in the intermodalism notion,” he says. “That notion will continue to gain supporters. There are some deeply ingrained attitudes—modal attitudes—and it will take time to overcome them. It won’t happen in one reauthorization cycle.”

... Missouri to relieve congestion on I-70. The plan is to construct two dedicated truck lanes in each direction along a 750-mile segment from the I-435 beltway in eastern Kansas City suburbs to Bridgeport, Ohio.