Appendix E – The Freight Action Strategy (FAST) Corridor
| Mode | Rail, Highway, Marine |
|---|---|
| Ownership | Public/Private |
| Commodity Type | Various |
| Location | Urban, Northwest |
| Lead Federal Agency | FHWA, FTA |
| Cooperating Agencies | NMFS, FWS, EPA |
| Review Agencies | Not Applicable |
| State or Local Agencies | Washington State DOT, Puget Sound Regional Council |
| Air Quality |  |
|---|---|
| Cultural Resources | |
| Land Use |  |
| Local Transportation |  |
| Natural Resources | |
| Noise/vibration | |
| Hazardous Waste | |
| Socioeconomics | |
| Water Quality | |
| NEPA, including agency consultation | |
|---|---|
| Use of structured process | |
| Integration of NEPA and state processes | |
| Timing of environmental review initiation | |
| Effect of process on project design and alternatives | |
| Multi-agency review | |
| Public involvement | |
Project Description
The Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) establishes the National Corridor Planning and Development program. This program cited the FAST Corridor as one of its 43 high priority corridors. The FAST Corridor, stretching from Tacoma to Everett within the State of Washington, is a statewide initiative composed of fifteen individual projects. These individual projects, twelve grade separations and three port access projects, are designed to function as an integrated unit. The Puget Sound region is the second largest freight gateway for containerized cargo in North America, and the volume of container traffic is expected to double by 2015. The FAST Corridor projects are intended to facilitate the transfer and transport of this increasing volume of trade commodities. The fifteen projects have been planned at the corridor level by the Puget Sound Regional Council and the Washington State DOT (WSDOT), the fifteen cities where the individual projects will be completed, the ports, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railroad, and the Union Pacific (UP) Railroad. All of the projects have begun the planning process, and a number of them (e.g., SR 519, 3rd St. SW, Port of Tacoma Road, E Marginal Way, and S 277th St.) are ready to begin construction imminently. Funding for the projects varies and includes federal, state, and private (railroads and ports) financing.
Environmental Issues of Concern
Air Quality: The FAST Corridor is in an air quality maintenance area. The Washington State DOT has indicated that by reducing congestion for both freight and general purpose movements, the fifteen projects will improve travel speeds around ports, rail yards, and grade crossings and thereby reduce air emissions.
Cultural Resources: Cultural and historical issues have been identified as a concern. A number of the projects, for example SR 519, are being built on mud flats, where the potential for discovering Native American artifacts is high. This issue will be better defined as studies progress.
Local Transportation: All 15 projects are designed to improve freight mobility in the corridor by improving local transportation. The FAST Corridor partners will achieve this benefit by reducing delays at highway/rail grade crossings through grade separations and by improving rail and truck access to ports.
Natural Resources: Some projects may have potential impacts to endangered species and some have had impacts to wetlands. The recent addition of the Sockeye and Chinook Salmon to the list of threatened and endangered species has created new environmental review and consultation issues not usually encountered in urban projects. Puget Sound and its surrounding river systems are habitat for the endangered Sockeye Salmon. Damage to the Sound, the rivers, or to adjacent riparian habitats may threaten the Sockeye and their habitat. Separately, additional land required to create grade separations has required filling in wetlands for some projects.
Environmental Review Process
NEPA, including agency consultation: The projects receiving federal funding have all begun the NEPA process. Because each project has "independent utility" (i.e., they are not operationally dependent on each other to succeed), the Corridor as a whole did not require review under one NEPA document. Instead, the projects are covered under separate EAs and EISs. The FAST Corridor partners selected the projects because they scored high in a state technical ranking process that evaluates economic benefit and the feasibility of mitigating community impacts. This approach helps to avoid lengthy environmental reviews.
To address the new endangered species consultations required by the recent listings of salmon, three counties have created a Tri-County ESA Response Team. This Team is an informal association and has no independent powers. Consultations with NMFS are coordinated with the Tri-County ESA Response Team and follow long-range and short-range approaches. The long-range approach is to prepare a recovery and conservation plan for each of the six river basins in the three-county area that will support the recovery of the salmon. The preparation of the plan is estimated to take between 18 months and three to four years. The short-range approach is to identify and pursue other actions likely to have an immediate beneficial effect. These include capital investments, regulation of activities within habitat areas, the level of enforcement of various actions, and management practices of government agencies. Ideally, the Team would like NMFS to recognize their early, proactive, and beneficial actions as a basis for giving some umbrella coverage for activities rather than protracted project-by-project consultations.
The FAST Corridor partners have been grappling with several issues. For example, they have had to address with NMFS the issue of how the salmon listings will affect projects that are already underway, as well as projects that are still in the planning and environmental review stages. The ESA Response Team has been trying to determine what processes and procedures would be timely and give the level of review that is needed. WSDOT has been proactive in negotiating, facilitating, and evaluating transportation projects, however, they believe that even this exemplary effort will involve project delays. In addition, the FWS is responsible for the Bull Trout, which may be listed soon (FWS has jurisdiction over freshwater species). They are concerned about having two processes and two biological assessments with two different agencies when both the salmon and trout are potentially affected. As a possible mitigation strategy, the ESA Response Team is considering whether NMFS might approve the concept of basinwide habitat banking. Under the banking approach, a pool of mitigation sites is preserved for use to offset impacts from individual projects within the basin. Another issue is that Native American groups can bring treaty rights to bear if the salmon are not protected.
Integration of NEPA and state environmental review processes: Some of the projects are only receiving state funding and only trigger the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA), and not NEPA. For those projects that trigger both NEPA and SEPA, the two processes are very similar and their integration has not caused any problems. On another level, while the independent nature of these projects did not require a NEPA review for the corridor, the Washington State Growth Management Act requires the Regional Council to review the projects as a whole, seeking consistency throughout the Corridor. The fifteen projects were assembled and screened at the regional level by the Puget Sound Regional Council. This higher level of screening and review under the Growth Management Act allowed the state and regional planners and decision-makers to balance the environmental impacts of each project with the regional transportation benefits.
Multi-Agency Review: Multiple agencies have been involved in the review of these projects and it appears that coordinating the review process and keeping it on schedule has not been an issue.
Effect of Process on Project Design and Alternatives: The screening and ranking process used by WSDOT and the Regional Council led to the selection of projects with fewer impacts.
Public Involvement: No major issues or delays have been associated with the public involvement process. When a local community, such as the City of Auburn, opposes one of the projects, the local planners address the community's concerns.
The fifteen cities involved in the Corridor projects are all host communities in the sense that they have the infrastructure that supports this flow of commodities. However, over 70 percent of the imported containers at Puget Sound ports are headed to points elsewhere in the U.S. Some host communities have voiced concerns over projects causing local impacts without appearing to create reciprocal benefits. WSDOT and the Regional Council have had a public outreach campaign to raise public awareness about the value of facilitating this flow of commodities. In their campaign they have indicated that many Washington State exports are bulk items (such as apples and grain), which have relatively low value per ton, while the imports passing through tend to be higher value goods. Those higher value goods generate most of the shippers' profits. The State wants to attract and keep those shippers in Washington, because once they are there, they prefer to carry the State's exports with them on backhaul trips. Backhauling allows Washington farmers and manufacturers to reach markets that are otherwise unattainable. They have pointed out to the public that without a large volume of high-value imports and an abundance of backhaul capacity for lower-value exports, it would be difficult to attract the freight companies that ship many of the State's goods to international markets. They estimate that Washington exporters save $150 to $500 per container because of this advantage.
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