A group of researchers and activists met recently to discuss the role of goods movement and logistics in and around ports, and how the industry contributes to local pollution problems and skews highway spending.
Mark Vallianatos discusses the impact of goods movement in this piece from Streetsblog.
"The logistics and freight industries are also among the most powerful advocates for new and expanded highways in and beyond Southern California. The infrastructure used to move goods – mega warehouses, distribution centers and rail yards – and the road configurations to direct trucks between these transshipment points, are about as far as one can get from a human-scaled street.
THE (Trade, Health, Environment) Impact project organized the conference to link impacted communities from throughout the region and to network with representatives from 15 states and 5 countries. We knew that since corporations and governments were promoting policies and investments to massively expand trade and goods movement, we needed to connect to partners at each link in the global freight system chain. Otherwise, we risked winning some battles to clean up the industry locally, only to have trade shift routes and poison communities across the county or around the world who were less aware of the harms involved in moving products."
FULL STORY: Too Big to Miss: Confronting the Costs of Freight Transport at the Moving Forward Together Conference
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research