Blacker: The Weakness of our Freight Planning Program in Southeast Connecticut

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I enjoyed Jim Cameron’s Aug. 3 column on a great example of commonsense, innovation, and efficiency: the shipping container.

In a recent article Cameron laments that a feeder barge service to move shipping containers from places like Port Elizabeth, NJ to Connecticut  with out clogging I-95 was never established.

The Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments has an important meeting tomorrow.  

SECCOG Executive Director Jim Butler said that the Federal Highway and Federal Transit are aware of  “the weakness of our freight planning program in Southeastern Connecticut.”  (20:50 on the recording of 7/15/19 SECCOG BOD Meeting).  This will be the topic of discussion in Agenda Item 3.

I believe the weakness of our regions freight plan is largely due to poor judgement and planning by the CT Port Authority.  CPA should have followed the plan outlined on page 30 of the Milone MacBroom Report for State Pier to establish a feeder barge service and maintain a multiuse port.

The State should have followed the 7 Port Investment Strategies on Page 3-6 of the Statewide Freight Plan when setting up State Pier.

The State lost Oz Griebel, a great Transportation Planning leader.  With my two feet together I am going to try to fill one of his shoes by advocating for commonsense transportation planning.  I hope that Jim Cameron and the CT Examiner will step up and fill the other, by covering this meeting.

Kevin Blacker
Noank