Freight is projected to increase by 75 percent in Kansas over the next 20 years, with important implications for our state’s economy and transportation system. Addressing bottlenecks, maintaining roads, and helping travelers feel comfortable with more and larger trucks and trains will be examined in Phase 2. Rural residents are concerned about the impact on local infrastructure of truck traffic prompted by the surge of ethanol plants. Also of concern is the loss of connectivity with short- and main-line railroads. In metropolitan areas, truck traffic is helping drive increased congestion, the growing need for highway capacity, and the soaring demand for intermodal facilities and warehousing. Freight group members
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The Freight Topical Working Group (TWG) reviewed many cross-cutting issues and discussed several possible ways to address capacity, maintenance and access issues associated with the freight that were identified in Phase 1 of the LRTP. The Freight group was asked to:
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Identify any other freight issues that might have been missed in Phase 1.
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Evaluate possible solutions to these issues (i.e., identify benefits and concerns about the solutions).
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Generate other possible solutions to freight issues.
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Develop a sense of which solutions seem most likely to be cost effective.
The input from the Freight TWG helped inform the development of the investment scenarios. The additional issues and possible solutions were forwarded to the Policy and Technical Committees for review.
