Developing and applying mobility performance measures for freight transportation in urban areas.

654802251Final report; $b Sept. 2008-Sept. 2009.PDFTech ReportSWUTC/09/476660-00014-1DTRT07-G-0006Freight transportationPerformance measurementTraffic congestionUrban transportationTexasSouthwest Region University Transportation Center (U.S.)Winterich, DavidEisele, William L.Villa, JuanSchrank, David L.Texas Transportation InstituteNTL-FREIGHT-FREIGHTNTL-OPERATIONS AND TRAFFIC CONTROLS-CongestionUS Transportation CollectionThis report summarizes the activities performed in a one-year study with the objective to develop anunderstanding of the interrelationships of urban goods movement and congestion and identify performancemeasures that will help evaluate the impact of goods movement in the urban area. Through a survey instrumentand state-of-the-practice review, this research project investigated the impacts and interactions of commoditymovements within an urban area, given traffic congestion.Researchers generally found that traditional mobility monitoring performance measures (e.g., delay, travel timeindex) can be adopted for freight-related mobility performance measurement. From the surveys conducted, andthe state-of-the-practice review, researchers also found that 1) recurring congestion (and most typical incidentcongestion) is a problem that carriers/shippers can plan for, and in most cases, they can deal with congestion asit comes along; and 2) carriers/shippers tend to estimate a time cushion (buffer) into their schedules to meettheir delivery times. There are times when urban congestion levels can impact freight operations (e.g., just-intime[JIT] deliveries for manufacturing, less-than-truckload [LTL] trips by truck). Researchers also documentedthe interrelationship of how decisions by either the public sector or the trucking companies can influence oneanother.The results of this research will be valuable to decision-making staff at metropolitan planning organizations(MPOs) and local transportation organizations to understand the big picture of local truck movements, as wellas performance measures that will assist public transportation agency staff in considering freight movementsand impacts in project prioritization and selection