Future of freight discussed in Collegedale

COLLEGEDALE, Tenn. (WDEF) – Logistics industry leaders discussed the future of freight in our area today.

These discussions were held at the Thrive Regional Partnership’s State of Freight forum at McKee Foods in Collegedale.

The forum discussed research into the high volume of trucks moving through our interstates, and how infrastructure needs to be built to accommodate that growing traffic.

But several speakers urged the need for action for infrastructure improvements.

“It’s easy to get bogged down, intimidated, and quite frankly lost in what you’re looking at, and as Representative Vital said earlier, we have to prioritize and execute. We don’t have time to get lost in data. We have to prioritize these things and what needs to come first and execute on the local level,” said Jacob Bearden, member of the Thrive Freight Mobility Core Team.

The Thrive Regional Partnership presents much of their data through their Infrastructure Portal.

On the portal, it shows several statistics related to traffic issues all over our viewing area in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama.