Evaluation of Infrastructure Impacts from Freight Movements near Seaports

American ports constitute an important driver for economic development at local, regional, and national levels. In light of this importance, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) officially establishes eligibility for surface transportation infrastructure located within a port terminal. Additionally, MAP-21 allows a state to designate a road near a port as a critical freight corridor if the road is a rural principal arterial roadway and has a minimum of 25 percent of the annual average daily traffic of the road measured in passenger vehicle equivalent units from trucks, or if the road provides access to energy exploration, development, installation, or deduction areas, or if the road connects the primary freight network or interstate systems to facilities that handle more than 50,000 twenty foot equivalent units per year or 500,000 tons per year of bulk commodities. While the economic benefits from ports are clear the true impacts from port related freight traffic with respect to infrastructure costs is less well studied. Complicating the evaluation, these impacts are likely to contain spatial and temporal variations, and an understanding of these effects will support important planning and assessment studies. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impacts of the ports on the pavement infrastructure in both time and space domains. The study centers on a hypothesis that the increased movement of goods and increase in commercial activity associated with ports also creates a heretofore unaccounted for and potential negative impact on the pavement infrastructure thereby lowering the true benefits of port expansions/development. However, this impact will likely not be consistent along the entire corridor and this study will seek to establish the size and necessary build-out time for infrastructure surrounding the ports.

• Record URL:
  http://www.ntc.umd.edu/node/121

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $67611.00
• Contract Numbers:

  DTRT13-G-UTC30

  NTC2015-MU-R-03

• Sponsor Organizations:

  National Transportation Center @ Maryland, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology (OST-R), U.S. Department of Transportation (US DOT)

  1173 Glenn L. Martin Hall
  University of Maryland
  College Park, Maryland  United States  20742
• Project Managers:

  Zhang, Lei

• Performing Organizations:

  University of New Orleans Transportation Institute

  368 Milneburg Hall
  2000 Lakeshore Dr.
  New Orleans, LA  United States  70148

  Arizona State University, Tempe

  Tempe, AZ  United States 
• Principal Investigators:

  Stich, Bethany

  Underwood, Shane

• Start Date: 20150101
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 20151231
• Source Data: RiP Project 39037

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Economic impacts; Freight traffic; Infrastructure; Pavements; Seaports
• Identifier Terms: Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21)
• Subject Areas: Economics; Freight Transportation; Marine Transportation; Pavements; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01554120
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: National Transportation Center @ Maryland, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology (OST-R), U.S. Department of Transportation (US DOT)
• Contract Numbers: DTRT13-G-UTC30, NTC2015-MU-R-03
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Feb 26 2015 1:01AM