OTPa Freight System Action Plan

OnTrackPennsylvania represents a shift—from discussing the need for coordinated transportation planning—to actually designing, committing to, and implementing an optimal freight transportation Action Plan. This Action Plan will be built the only way it can for a plan this important to work—by those needed to implement the plan collaborating alongside all those who are affected by it, i.e. transportation providers, shippers, developers, planners, suppliers, funders, and citizens.

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Join Us!

If you want to support OTA's mission of bringing a collaborative approach to surface freight transportation planning, there are a variety of ways you can get involved.

Partners

Industry Vision

OnTrackAmerica's many contributing participants have co-created this vision for our work together:

Transportation policy conceived by industry, capital, and government working in partnership
Capitalization strategies that better integrate private and public funding resources
Appropriate resolution of perceived conflicts between individual stakeholder interests and system-enhancing commercial and policy developments
Full social and environmental cost accounting
Labor-management relations that empower all parties to greater security and productivity
Public appreciation of thoughtful rail, roadway, and waterway development as a common good
Optimal development of capacity improvements to safely accommodate both freight and passenger traffic
System-wide, multimodal transportation planning grounded in specific performance measures that reflect the long-term viability of customers, providers, and the environment

End Rail Abandonments

OnTrackAmerica is championing a continental moratorium on rail line abandonments in support of the effort to rebuild our missing transportation links. Every year the US abandons enough tracks to stretch from Boston, MA to Richmond, VA. If you know of a rail line in danger of being abandoned, please let us know before it’s too late.

Doubling Freight Transportation Efficiency by 2020

In the face of looming environmental challenges and ongoing economic malaise, now is the time for big thinking, followed by intelligent planning and well-coordinated action. Welcome to OnTrackAmerica. Our commitment is to double North American freight transportation efficiency by 2020.

This endeavor requires the collaboration of many individuals and organizations assuming large and small roles in its accomplishment across the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Our own role is that of a catalyst and convener to ensure the success of these efforts.

“Freight transportation efficiency can contribute positively to commercial profits and economic vitality with less strain on land use, roadway congestion, and the environment,” says Michael Sussman, president and CEO of OnTrackAmerica. “We can accomplish this if we think systemically and we work together.”

OnTrackAmerica proposes the following framework for advancing toward this overarching goal:

Define a set of efficiency parameters through a well-facilitated, thoughtful, stakeholder engagement process
Pinpoint the current performance of North America’s freight transportation system in 2010 as a baseline
Identify and address the legal and regulatory barriers to the new level of commercial coordination necessary for this multistakeholder engagement
Motivate, inspire, and facilitate the related parties to embrace the opportunity of resolving previous political and commercial conflicts
Set the goals for 2020 that compute to a doubling of efficiency in each performance measure
Develop a freight transportation land use strategy that preserves rail right-of-ways and most efficiently locates commercial, logistics, and transportation facilities within the road, marine, air and rail systems
Convene related stakeholder groups around each performance measure to build an overall plan for achieving efficiency goals, including necessary legislative and financial support
Identify the support needed for any stakeholder group that faces losses or challenges as they transition their activity to successfully meet these goals

OnTrackAmerica will convene a year-long series of in-person summits, co-facilitated by Barbara Gray, Director of Penn State University’s Center for Research in Conflict and Negotiation. This initial set of multistakeholder summits is designed to define the parameters for measuring a doubling of freight transportation efficiency. The effectiveness of these summits will be enhanced by a leading-edge use of the Internet for maintaining the dialogue between in-person events.

OnTrackAmerica is committed to producing real results, so we operate where industry, commerce, government and the community intersect. While forwarding broad scale thinking at the national and continental levels, we must also demonstrate a new paradigm for public-private transportation planning at the state and local level.

In 2010, OnTrackAmerica will continue to develop its model state freight transportation business plan for improving freight transportation productivity and efficiency. We have launched OnTrackPennsylvania—a Statewide Collaboration for Optimal Freight Transportation—and are working on partnerships to advance a parallel model in a western state.

In cooperation with our Pennsylvania stakeholders we aim to:

Develop a set of purpose-driven performance measures in the following areas:
- Commerce
- Land Use
- Environment
- Community
Develop the template for Community-Commercial Partnerships to be implemented for every branch line in the rail system
Develop a freight transportation land use strategy for Pennsylvania that best utilizes space to move goods and people

“From our work coordinating private- and public-sector resources in recapitalizing railroad branch lines, we have seen firsthand the necessity to refocus attention on local transportation development,” Sussman says. “’Projects of national significance’ are vital, but so are the many local components of a larger transportation system.”

In order to avert the loss of another rail transportation link, OnTrackAmerica has entered into a community partnership agreement with a local shipper to champion the revitalization of the Stony Creek 10-mile branch line in metropolitan Philadelphia that runs from Norristown to Lansdale, PA. Saving and regenerating the Stony Creek line provides an ideal opportunity to use stakeholder engagement to expand the narrow economic lens that is used to assess individual rail lines; a perspective that currently devalues the key role of rail line segments in the regional transportation system.

OnTrackAmerica is founded on fifteen years of research and dialogue with stakeholders throughout industry, government, and academia. We have promoted a bold, yet pragmatic vision for advancing transportation efficiency through thousands of individual conversations and numerous multi-stakeholder summits. We look forward to working with you in the coming year toward our aim of doubling freight transportation efficiency by 2020. Please take a moment to express your interest in contributing to the success of this project.