by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
Jacksonville and North Florida have been branded variously over the years, and a logistics group likes a name from the past.
“We are a gateway, and the amount of goods consumed in the state of Florida is huge,” said Robert Palmer, who leads the planning, transit and traffic efforts in the Jacksonville office of RS&H, a facilities and infrastructure consulting firm.
“There is a lot of commodity flow through this region,” he said.
With the railways and highways flowing through North Florida to the rest of the state, members of the Logistics Advisory Group recalled when Jacksonville was called the “Gateway to Florida,” a 1960s chamber of commerce slogan.
The group wants to promote its gateway status and is studying the transportation and logistic patterns to maximize its capacity and ability to serve the global market.
RS&H, Cambridge Systematics and Martin & Associates are developing a “North Florida Freight, Logistics and Intermodal Plan” for the Logistics Advisory Group.
The group consists of representatives from the transportation and logistics industry as well as those affected by the industry.
The groups represented at the meeting Thursday included Enterprise Florida, the Jacksonville Port Authority, the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission and the North Florida Transportation Planning Organization. The meeting took place at the TPO office.
The group’s focus is maximizing the area’s logistics capabilities. It was formed in 2009 by George Gabel, a partner in the Holland & Knight law firm and chair of the chamber’s international committee.
“Generally, it’s recognized that global trade will double in the next 10 years,” said Ronald Ratliff, executive vice president of RS&H. “There is a lot of opportunity for (North Florida) to participate in that.”
The study is being developed to help the region take advantage of those opportunities.
“There’s got to be an intensive evaluation of what our base conditions are and what we can do as a community to change policies,” said Ratliff.
“We talked to people up in Fernandina about their port and there are some institutional barriers and legislative requirements that severely affect their capacity. Just a few rule changes could get them additional capacity,” he said.
The study focuses on the six-county area of Baker, Clay, Duval, Nassau, Putnam and St. Johns counties.
Some of the early statistics revealed:
• Trucks handle 76 percent of the freight originating in or destined for Florida.
• Two-thirds of the cargo handled at North Florida ports is imported cargo.
• Thirty-four million tons of trucked products originate in North Florida.
• Two-thirds of the tonnage is destined for 10 markets: The counties of Duval, Miami-Dade, Clay, Alachua, Polk, Hamilton, St. Johns, Orange and Hillsborough Counties and to Atlanta.
There will be three more phases to the North Florida Freight, Logistics and Intermodal Plan, which will include peer ports review, commodity flows and final deliverables. The group plans to educate the public on the findings of the plan upon its completion.
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