Columbia Mountain Times™: You are invited to comment on the draft Washington State Freight Mobility Plan by COB August 8

-----Original Message-----

From: "Washington State Department of Transportation" <wsdot@service.govdelivery.com>
Sent: June 4, 2014 12:53 PM
To: guyperea@live.com
Subject: You are invited to comment on the draft Washington State Freight Mobility Plan by COB August 8

The draft Washington State Freight Mobility Plan is ready for your review and comment. When adopted by Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) Secretary Lynn Peterson in its final form, the Freight Plan will be used to guide state and federal policies and investments in state freight systems. The structure and content of the Freight Plan is compliant with the federal Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21^st Century (MAP-21) Act guidance for state freight plans, as well as state requirements.

We cordially invite you to review the Washington State Freight Mobility Plan and provide written comments to the Freight Systems Division at Freight@wsdot.wa.gov by 5:00 pm Friday, August 8, 2014. The draft Washington State Freight Mobility Plan and the Plan's Public Comment Form may be found at: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Freight/freightmobilityplan.

You are also invited to attend and provide your comments at two public meetings. At each meeting there will be a brief presentation of the Washington State Freight Mobility Plan findings and recommendations, followed by an opportunity to provide comments. To ensure that we accurately capture all comments made at the public meetings, we will ask attendees to summarize their points in writing on the Plan Comment Form and submit them at the meeting. The Washington State Freight Mobility Plan public meetings will be held on:

Thursday, July 24, 2014

10:00 AM-12:00 PM Pacific Time

Spokane Regional Transportation Council, 221 W. 1st Avenue, Suite 310, Spokane, WA 99201-3613

Friday, August 1, 2014

9:30 – 11:30 AM Pacific Time

Puget Sound Regional Council, 1011 Western Avenue, Suite 500, Seattle, WA 98104-1035

The Washington State Freight Mobility Plan applied advanced analysis and extensive public outreach to answers many important questions for the first time:

Where are the state's high-value supply chains?
What roads, highways, freight rail lines, waterways and intermodal facilities make up Washington State's freight system? How do we objectively define the State's Freight Economic Corridors?
What are the recommended performance goals for the State Freight Economic Corridors? What measures should we use to evaluate performance?
Gauged against current performance, what locations on the Freight Economic Corridors have preservation needs and/or poor mobility performance?
How do we prepare for future demand on the Freight Economic Corridors?
How should we evaluate the economic impacts of highway projects with freight benefits?
What are the state's priority freight policies, operational and capital project recommendations?

The Washington State Freight Mobility Plan is multimodal. It includes the freight rail findings and recommendations of the Washington State Rail Plan, other state transportation plans, and many of the recommendations found in the recently published Washington Freight Advisory Committee report.

With the help of many partners and stakeholders, we've taken a big step towards a unified state freight planning process in the new State Freight Plan. For the first time WSDOT and the Washington State Freight Advisory Committee invited Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), Regional Transportation Planning Organizations (RTPOs), Tribes, and Ports to submit regional multimodal freight priority projects drawn from existing regional transportation plans and located on the State Freight Economic Corridors, and we've included them in the Washington State Freight Mobility Plan. The Washington State Freight Mobility Plan, along with other modal plans, will be used to inform the new Washington Transportation Plan.