Research in Progress (RIP)

Traffic Impacts of E-Commerce in Urbanized Areas: A Guide

Mon, 20 May 2024 20:14:42 GMT

The objective of this research is to develop a guide that provides transportation planners and decision-makers at state, regional, and local levels of government with knowledge of the e-commerce supply chain to assess and estimate traffic impacts and to make informed decisions that affect urbanized areas.

Planning for Urban Freight: Putting it Into Practice (Project J6)

Wed, 10 Aug 2022 14:26:01 GMT

The goal of this project is to apply the results of previous STRIDE research on planning for urban freight to demonstrate the potential for stronger consideration of freight concerns in economic development and land use planning activities. The research team will partner with the Greater Nashville Regional Council (GNRC), Tennessee as they convene a working group around freight transportation. The team will share findings from previous research and work with stakeholders to identify near-term opportunities to apply research findings to Nashville’s approach. Moving goods through southeastern cities is critical to economic activity. Rising online shopping combined with increasing urban development has led to congestion on streets and conflicts about how to use limited curb space in towns and cities. This project will apply previous STRIDE research on urban freight to provide regions with information about key issues and solutions.

Y3R2 - Identification and Evaluation of Critical Urban Freight Corridors

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 09:52:27 GMT

There has been a steady increase in demand for goods over the past half-century and therefore there is a continuous need for well-organized freight transportation systems. Optimal use of roadways as the primary and fundamental sector of the freight transportation system is essential. Efficient movement of freight is vital to the rivaling economies of cities and metropolitan areas, and truck highway corridors comprise an essential ingredient of the regional freight transportation system, along with rail and intermodal facilities, river-port barge terminals, and air cargo facilities. To achieve efficient, reliable and robust freight movement, the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act requires the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to establish a National Highway Freight Network (NHFN) to strategically direct Federal resources and policies toward improved performance of the NHFN. The main objectives of FAST are to make the Federal surface transportation more streamlined, performance-based, and multimodal, and to address challenges facing the U.S. transportation system, including improving safety, maintaining infrastructure condition, reducing traffic congestion, improving the efficiency of the system and freight movement, protecting the environment, and reducing delays in project delivery. This network is the focus of funding under the National Highway Freight Program (NHFP), and a significant funding target under the Fostering Advancements in Shipping and Transportation for the Long term Achievement of National Efficiencies (FASTLANE) Grants Program (Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects Program) (23 U.S.C. 117). The NHFN consists of the following four subsystems: (1) the Primary Highway Freight System (PHFS); (2) those portions of the Interstate System not part of the PHFS; (3) Critical Rural Freight Corridors (CRFCs); and (4) Critical Urban Freight Corridors (CUFCs). (23 U.S.C. 167(c)). The ability to entirely understand and accurately designate freight vehicle route choices is essential in helping to inform regional and state decisions. Specific criteria and requirements exist for identifying and designating CRFCs and CUFCs according to FHWA. This research will focus on CUFCs and the mobility of goods especially on the first-/last-mile links leading to them. Critical Urban Freight Corridors (CUFC) are public roads in urbanized areas which provide access and connection to the primary highway freight system for ports, public transportation, or other intermodal transportation facilities. After identifying the critical urban corridors, as FHWA encourages when making CUFC designations, it is crucial to consider first or last mile connector routes from high-volume freight corridors to freight-intensive land and key urban freight facilities, including ports, rail terminals, and other industrial-zoned lands. Therefore, investigating the first-/last-mile connectors is necessary to inspect the condition of the route regarding how congested it is and figuring out the necessity of modifying the mobility of the area by innovative and cutting edge technologies.

Overcoming Barriers to Freight and Logistics Firm Collaboration with Urban Planning (Project D5)

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 21:43:02 GMT

This project gains on-the-ground insight into competition for curb space, what issues drivers face, and the circumstances that inform their parking choices and related behaviors. To do so, it uses data from Reddit to examine US parcel delivery driver perceptions and behavior, focusing on the following questions: What are some key challenges parcel delivery drivers encounter when delivering in urban areas? What strategies do drivers employ when parking their vehicles to make deliveries? What reasons do drivers cite for engaging in unauthorized or questionable parking practices? The study uses “flexible” coding to analyze the collected comments, providing granular, qualitative understanding of driver behavior and thought processes. Parking is a primary challenge drivers discussed as a concern while delivering in urban areas, especially because parking difficulties extend the time required to complete routes. Drivers in the collected sample preferred to park in authorized spaces, but generally accepted the practice of unauthorized parking was necessary to expeditiously complete their routes. Such parking was motivated by lack of supply of authorized spaces, but also by need for safety and/or expedience. Drivers also opined that parking enforcement personnel rarely issued tickets or other reprimands, acknowledging that for delivery vehicles, unauthorized parking is often necessary. Finally, drivers described concerns surrounding interactions with other road users while making deliveries, especially in terms of conflict and safety. Curb management policies and freight providers’ practices alike will need to adapt in the face of the changing landscape of the curb. To that end, this project also engaged in synthesis of extant and emerging interventions and planning initiatives that may guide the future of urban freight delivery. Specifically, this report provides a brief examination of freight demand management initiatives, curb management initiatives, and safety initiatives. It concludes by discussing how these may complement

Goods Movement and Industrial Land Supply

Wed, 04 Jan 2017 10:56:06 GMT

This project is a study of the demand for and supply of industrially zoned land in the San Francisco Bay Area, in order to determine a strategy for preserving industrially zoned land that will complement MTC’s efforts to improve regional goods movement and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Needs, Barriers, and Analysis Methods for Integrated Urban Freight Transportation

Fri, 17 Jan 2014 01:00:49 GMT

A reliable system for the flow of goods is critical to the U.S. economy and to our quality of life. However, this activity is adversely affected by congested conditions and scarcity of suitable spaces for loading and unloading vehicles, and itself contributes to urban congestion, emissions, energy use and safety hazards. The proposed study seeks to help policy makers, planners, and other practitioners to identify and assess alternatives for ensuring efficient and reliable freight movement by trucks in large urban areas while minimizing the negative impacts (e.g., congestion, air pollution, safety, etc.) of freight deliveries. A set of alternatives called urban delivery integration (UDI) strategies will be analyzed. These include (1) improved routing and scheduling efficiency, (2) consolidation of goods for multiple shippers and customers on common vehicles, and (3) restrictions of deliveries to relatively uncongested periods. To analyze such alternatives, the project will identify and classify various UDI-related schemes through literature review and discussions with private and public sector experts, and develop new algorithms for efficiently managing urban goods deliveries. These algorithms will determine through optimization procedures (1) which vehicles should carry each shipment, and (2) how the multi-stop tours should be routed and scheduled for each vehicle, subject to constraints on vehicle capabilities, costs, pick-up and delivery times, work rules, service quality, environmental effects, energy consumption, and other relevant factors.

Green Modes of Transportation for Connecticut's Mixed Use Developments

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 01:00:44 GMT

The project multi-disciplinary team will create a dynamic business and transportation model for the delivery of goods fro the existing and proposed commercial establishments located in downtown Storrs, Connecticut. These models will demonstrate how the delivery of goods can be transformed from the existing ad-hoc, carbon producing affair to an organized systematic approach which will increase profits for the local businesses, use green modes of transportation and functionally/symbolically begin to change the approach to Connecticut's transportation needs. The team will create a flexible, replaceable process which can be used for other towns in the state and region.

Innovative Freight Logistics Partnering in the Material Reuse Sector

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:41:55 GMT

New York City's Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability issued an updated version of PlaNYC, the city's comprehensive long range plan to improve the environment and quality of life for future New Yorkers, in April 2011. Among many goals stated in the plan, the city aims to divert 75 percent of solid waste from landfills by 2030. A primary initiative identified to achieve this goal is to increase material reuse in the city. Materials that are no longer needed by individuals and businesses can be redistributed to others in need rather than placed in a landfill. Having recognized the potential for material reuse in the city, the Department of Sanitation established the New York City (NYC) WasteMatch service in 1997. WasteMatch, which is operated by the NYC Materials Exchange Development Program (MEDP) at the City College of New York, provides a web-based matching service to find potential users for donated materials. Currently, the MEDP includes 53 non-profit and for-profit partner agencies, and since its inception, WasteMatch has diverted more than 25,000 tons of material from landfills. A broad range of diverted materials include books, computers, bicycles, office furniture, and building materials. The potential for continued growth in the volume of diverted material is severely constrained by logistical challenges in transporting donated goods. Materials can only be donated for reuse if: (1) a secondary user can be identified, (2) that secondary user has available transportation resources to move a load, and (3) the secondary user can meet the sometimes strict time constraints of the donating agency to make an exchange. The transportation options available to reuse agencies vary considerably. While a few agencies have their own fleet of trucks available for goods exchange, many others with limited staff and monetary resources are required to hire commercial carriers, to rent vehicles, or even to rely on volunteer drivers to pick up donated goods. Smaller agencies, whose pick-up needs are infrequent or irregular, are often required to hire a carrier or vehicle for an individual movement at the last minute, usually at a high cost. If vehicles or drivers are not available at the necessary time, the opportunity for reuse is lost. At the same time that material reuse agencies are in need of freight capacity, there are a large number of commercial trucks operating in the city with excess capacity. According to the NYC Department of Transportation, more than 100,000 freight deliveries are made every day in Manhattan alone. Many of the trucks delivering goods to city destinations return to their origin empty, leading to inefficient operations for the carrier as well as for the city's highway network. This empty backhaul capacity could potentially be utilized to meet the needs of the material reuse sector without increasing the total volume of freight traffic on New York City's streets. The goal of this research is to explore the opportunity for innovative partnering between material reuse agencies and commercial carriers to leverage available freight capacity to enable material exchange. This project will examine potential individual or joint contracting structures to allow for more reliable freight availability to reuse agencies, as well as potential incentives to encourage commercial carriers to offer low cost or even no-cost freight transportation services to these agencies. A survey of the reuse agencies currently participating in WasteMatch will be performed to characterize the transportation needs of the reuse sector. A second survey of commercial carriers will also be performed to explore the availability of freight capacity, to identify appropriate incentives, and to examine any operational or regulatory barriers that might inhibit potential partnering structures. The transportation needs of the material reuse sector have been relatively unexplored in academic literature. This study will provide a synthesis of the state of the practice for transportation logistics in the material reuse sector and will provide an analysis of feasible alternatives for partnering between commercial carriers and material reuse agencies. Ultimately, the results of this study will serve as a source of information for cities looking to increase material reuse and as a basis for development of a pilot partnership program here in New York City.

Long-Range Strategic Issues Facing the Transportation Industry

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 14:40:25 GMT

The transportation industry will face new and emerging challenges in the future that will dramatically reshape transportation priorities and needs. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) recognizes that research can help ensure that transportation practitioners are equipped to deal with future challenges facing the industry over the next 30 to 40 years. These challenges may derive from the impacts of major global trends, such as climate change, changes in the cost of fuels, and new technology, and from domestic trends, such as changing demographics and lifestyle expectations, changes in land use patterns, and limitations in current transportation finance methods. AASHTO has allocated $5,000,000 to examine longer-term strategic issues both global and domestic that will likely affect state departments of transportation (DOTs) and directed $1,000,000 to each of the following projects: (1) Potential Changes in Goods Movement and Freight in Changing Economic Systems and Demand; (2) Framework for Advance Adoption of New Technologies to Improve System Performance; (3) Approaches to Enhance Preservation, Maintenance, and Renewal of Highway Infrastructure; (4) Effects of Changing Transportation Energy Supplies and Alternative Fuel Sources on Transportation; and (5) Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Transportation Infrastructure and Operations, and Adaptation Approaches. The 2008 report, "Long-Range Strategic Issues Facing the Transportation Industry" prepared by ICF International of Fairfax, Virginia, presents a framework for this effort and identifies future issues and trends, which may create new challenges for the transportation industry, based on a literature scan of work conducted by futurists, demographers, economists, and other experts. Research conducted for this project will focus on a longer timeframe (30 to 40 years) than are typically examined in the NCHRP programs. Although some of the future challenges facing the transportation industry are emerging today, the goal of this research is to look beyond and focus on the longer term consequences. Independently, and in combination, these trends may have significant implications for the transportation system. Many of the trends and forces affecting the future are interrelated and the crosscutting linkages between trends and forces that will affect transportation in the future will be examined. Research conducted for this project should consider the following two goals: (1) anticipate the future issues that may be approaching so that transportation agencies are better prepared to respond to new and emerging challenges; and (2) explore visions of what the future should look like, so that transportation agencies can help shape the future through their decision-making.

Resilence of Freight Transportation Networks

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:52:31 GMT

No summary provided.