TRB Special Report 238 - Landside Access to U.S. Ports examines the nature of port access problems and appropriate strategies for responding to them. The report covers four broad subject areas that influence landside transportation access to ports: physical impediments, land use policies, regulatory constraints, and institutional issues.

This report on landside access to general cargo ports is the first phase of a two-phase study. The purpose of the study was to examine landside access impediments and to evaluate and recommend appropriate strategies to reduce those problems. An examination was also made to determine whether access to general cargo ports is hindered by lack of interagency and public-private coordination, physical impediments, land use restrictions, or federal, state, and local safety and environmental regulations.

One of the greatest drivers for maintaining access to America's Intermodal ports and related infrastructure redevelopment efforts over the next several years will be the control and treatment of contaminated sediments dredged from the nation's waterways. More than 306 million cubic meters (m3) (400 million cubic yards [cy]) of sediments are dredged annually from US waterways, and each year close to 46 million m3 (60 million cy) of this material is disposed of in the ocean (EPA 842-F-96-003). The need to protect the environment against undesirable effects from sediment dredging and disposal practices is gaining increased attention from the public and governmental agencies. Meeting this need is a challenging task not only from the standpoint of solving formidable scientific and engineering problems, but also, and more importantly, from the need to implement complex collaborations among the many different parties concerned with the problem. Some 40 years ago, C.P. Snow pointed out the problems involved in communicating between the two cultures of the sciences and the humanities (Snow, 1993). Today, it is necessary to extend Snow's concept to a multicultural realm with groups that include governmental, industrial, environmental, academic, and the general public communicating in different languages based on widely different fundamental assumptions. The handling of contaminated sediments in the Port of New York/New Jersey (Port) exemplifies this problem. This paper describes a multicultural team that has formed as the result of a Congressional mandate for the development of procedures suitable for the decontamination of sediments in the Port under the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 1992 (Section 405C) and 1996 (Section 226).