(The Center Square) — As online shopping has grown, it’s put pressure on Pennsylvania’s roads and transportation system.
County planning commissions have also started to weigh how they’ll need to adapt for the future as more trucks and home deliveries crowd city streets and rural interstates.
One proposal kicked around in the Department of Transportation has been a package tax to replace dwindling gas tax revenue. More goods shipped to a home rather than a business means more wear and tear in residential neighborhoods, along with congestion.
A $1 per-shipment fee, PennDOT estimated, would raise almost $800 million in its first year.
“E-commerce has a disproportionate impact on the local transportation system,” PennDOT’s Transportation Advisory Committee noted during an August panel discussion. “The local roadway network is now handling a sizable volume of commercial vehicle traffic that in many cases it was not designed to accommodate.”
Zoning and land-use planning will have to change as well. The panel noted places will need more public-private collaboration to deal with congestion and sprawl, more truck traffic, and environmental consequences like emissions and stormwater runoff.
“We should not have a ‘build first, plan later’ approach,” one panelist noted in a summary write-up. “These warehouses are going to be here a long time. We should more adequately fund planning departments locally and statewide, and embed planners within PennDOT.”
The growth of warehousing has turned the Lehigh Valley into a boomtown, but every state is facing transportation challenges.
In Washington state, leaders are considering a retail delivery fee like Pennsylvania; Colorado and Minnesota already have a fee in place. A handful of other states are kicking around the idea to find more revenue to pay for road upkeep.
But the growing pains of online shopping don’t only affect roads, bridges, and public transportation. As in many other areas, Pennsylvania is haunted by its housing question.
“In many instances, the housing for workers at e-commerce facilities is not adjacent to where they work. Typically, when employees head in for their 12-hour shift they are traveling 45 minutes or more to their worksite and back,” the panel summary noted. “This extended workday has huge impacts on the rearing of their children and quality of life. What should be done to push for more housing convenient to these facilities, which are typically located in rural, low-density areas?”
