In a first, Orlando MPO factors in freight - Orlando, Florida, Metropolitan Planning Organization - Brief Article

Railway Age, Oct, 2001 by Robert G. Lewis

On Oct. 1, 1880, a South Florida Railroad narrow gauge train chuffed into "downtown" Orlando. It was no doubt greeted with great enthusiasm by the town's 6,000 inhabitants, and the town began to grow, mainly along both sides of the railway tracks. The Plant System, later the Atlantic Coast Line and now CSX Transportation, took over the line in 1883, extended it to Tampa, and converted it to standard gauge.

Ironically, on the morning of Sept. 7, 2001, a day that Metroplan Orlando, the area's three-county Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), had scheduled a forum on freight transportation improvement for the area, the Orlando Sentinel's lead editorial was headed "Moving CSX." Moving it out of town, that is.

At the forum that followed, well attended by community leaders and professionals, that and many other transportation subjects were covered with the specific objective of finding ways to improve freight mobility for all modes.

Railroads represented at the forum were CSX Transportation and the Florida Central, the latter a short line that along with CSXT plays an important part in industrial development in the MPO's three-county area.

State Representative Randy Johnson mentioned the importance of including freight potential in the development of the high speed rail line that Florida voters mandated in last November's elections. He urged planners to keep in mind opportunities for using the line for freight during the night hours. Randy Evans, vice president-Real Estate and Industrial Development, CSXT, pointed out that a railcar load averages three and a half truckloads, suggesting that the alternative to a 100-car freight train moving through town was having 350 large trucks traveling through the streets of the city.

Dennis Hooker, project manager for Metroplan Orlando, said this is the first of Florida's MPOs, and perhaps the first in the U.S., to factor freight into its planning. Its Freight, Goods, and Services Mobility Strategy Plan, launched in August 2000, is funded in part by the Florida DOT, the Canaveral Port Authority, and the adjacent Brevard County's MPO.

The study is managed by Wilbur Smith Associates and should be completed by early in 2002. Those involved hope that other MPOs will move to include freight in their planning and use of TEA-21-funded projects.