Friday, August 17, 2001, CDTC Office, Colonie, NY

Attendance:

Chungchin Chen (CDRPC)

Steve Iachetta (Albany Int. Airport)

Gus Lapham (NYS Thruway)

John Newman (Konski Engineers)

William Sheffield (Target Dist. Center)

Ted Thompson (NYSDOT - Region 1)

Katherine Forster (CDTC)

Teresa La Salle (CDTC)

Jason Purvis (CDTC)

Regrets - Michael Franchini, Martin Hull

Record of Previous Meeting - No changes to the May meeting notes.

K. Forster announced that she is resigning from CDTC and will be working up in Ottawa, Canada. Jason Purvis and Teresa La Salle will be taking over the Freight Task Force for CDTC.

New Visions Checklist - CDTC staff has taken the pinch point locations that Kristina Younger summarized in the New Vision document and updated some of the lists. These updates included bridges with load limits, narrow lanes with high truck traffic and bridges over railroads providing insufficient vertical clearance. Staff will be updating the other lists so that we can see what progress has been made since 1995.

Video: Foreign Trade Zones - The Task Force watched a video that described foreign trade zones and presented different examples. There has been a foreign trade zone in the Capital District since 1995. It includes the original four counties and now Greene, Columbia, Montgomery and Warren counties have been added. CDRPC is the local contact regarding the Capital District Foreign Trade Zone. Anyone locally who is interested in creating a zone at a specific location must apply through CDRPC.

A general-purpose zone is for storage or distribution (usually a warehouse) while a sub-zone will be identified for manufacturing. There are two main reasons why a company would want to use a foreign trade zone: either for duty deferral or for duty-free items. The applicant must demonstrate that an inventory control system and security will be set up. CDRPC will do a feasibility study and then file an application to the foreign trade zone board. It will take 8-10 months for an application for a general-purpose zone to be processed. A sub-zone application will take longer.

Video: Urban Delivery Systems - Solving the Problems - This video showed the freight issues that local municipalities should be aware of when regulating site design and street restrictions. It highlighted the need for well designed loading zones and freight access corridors and also discussed the need to focus on safety, flexible scheduling and partnerships. There is a lot of potential in partnering for both the private and public sector.

NYSDOT – The Federal government has approved a one-year trial in Glenville of tandem trucks travelling from Exit 26 to the Adirondack Industrial park using the western exit of the park. Adirondack must pay for improvements at the State 890/Rte 7 intersection and at the park exit onto Rte 5 (so that trucks can drive through the park).

With the dredging of the Hudson River approved, NYSDOT did some preliminary scoping of the possible locations for hauling the dredged material by rail. There are two good sites one in the Town of Thompson and one in the Town of Moreau with rail access.

Region 1 has put in a letter of intent to the Cor-Bor programs for funding for the double stacking on the CP Rail corridor, the next phase of the Thruway Tandem Truck Lot and the Northway feasibility study.

T. Thompson does the programming of the funding for signal protection mechanical upgrades at at-grade rail crossings. There is $6 million for the state of New York. T. Thompson asked that if the Task Force knows of any sites they should contact him.

T. Thompson also announced that he is participating in the Eno Foundation Philadelphia Freight Workshop. Teams of around four are invited and T. Thompson has put one together with the Port, both local MPO's: AGFTC & CDTC and himself. He also asked that details of the workshop be passed on to CP Rail, Thruway and Guilford Rail in case they were also interested in participating.

Airport – The Airport is interested in establishing a foreign trade zone and will be working with CDRPC next year on this. They have acquired the Keiser Industrial Park which includes four large warehouses where they can do plane to truck transfer. They are still working on the expansion of the existing air cargo facility.

Target – It has been a busy year for the company. Target has opened its first import center in Los Angeles and has new distribution centers in Alabama, Arizona and Michigan. At the Wilton Center they will be hiring 300 new teammates to help service ten new stores.

NYSTA – The Thruway will be starting to test a pilot product from Cambridge in a few weeks that will enable them to automate their special hauling permit process for over-dimension and over-weight vehicles. It took 3-4 hours to process these permits by hand and it will take 2-3 minutes with the new program. The program identifies an "envelope" of criteria and if the information checks out the permit is automatically issued with the necessary restrictions. The Thruway processes eighty to ninety thousand permits a year.

Mr. Lapham has also heard about a new border-crossing program called C-View, which is being tested at the Peace Bridge in Niagara. This will speed up the process of clearing trucks at Customs. The trucking company provides Customs with the driver and vehicle information prior to the transport. Then when the truck approaches the border a transponder in the truck notifies Customs that the truck is waiting in line to clear the border. Customs will be able to pre-clear the truck and a green light will then appear on the dash board and the truck can pass through without physically stopping at the border. There is no dedicated lane for the equipped trucks as of yet however.

CDRPC – The Planning Commission is doing an airport economic impact report for the Albany International Airport. The last impact report was completed in 1994. After this is finished they will start the foreign trade zone feasibility study for the Albany International Airport next year.

Konski – The engineering firm was responsible for the inspection of the entire New York State Canalway above water.

Champlain-Hudson Trade Corridor - The coalition did hold a meeting in June. They discussed the proposals for the Cor-Bor program and the status of the border crossing north of Plattsburgh. There are no meetings planned presently for the fall.

May 2001 FHWA Introduction to Freight Issues Course - K. Forster attended this course in Baltimore. There was one session that discussed public participation and there were some good ideas for the Freight Task Force. Many MPO's have not established a freight task force yet. One of the recent focuses of the Baltimore Freight Task Force was to identify problem areas for trucks (turning, restrictions, access, etc.). The Baltimore MPO hired a consultant to look at possible low-cost solutions for these locations.

Northway Corridor Study - As mentioned CDTC participated with NYSDOT in the discussions of identifying Cor-Bor projects. The Northway study will build from the $100,000 planning project to study the I-87 from Exit 9 to the I-87/I-90 Interchange 24 of the NYS Thruway already identified on the CDTC TIP. The Cor-Bor application would be for a study that looks at the entire corridor from Albany County to the Canadian border. Congressman Sweeney has also earmarked some funding to look at the situation from Montreal to New York City. The CDTC Freight Task Force will be kept updated on these projects and will be asked to participate when needed.

High Truck Volume Map - T. La Salle created a map of the Capital District that shows the areas that have high truck volume. The largest volumes (above 20 %) are on the I-90 Thruway between Schenectady County line and Guilderland Rest Area, I-90 from NYS Thruway Exit B1 North to Exit 12, NY 396 between US 9W East and NY 144 (where the Selkirk Bypass is proposed) and the Berkshire Spur from NYS Thruway Exit 21A to the Rensselaer County line. The data is from 1997 and will be updated when we receive new Sufficiency data from NYSDOT.