Integrating Freight into Transportation Planning and Project-Selection Processes

By the year 2020, at even moderate rates of economic growth, the total domestic tonnage of freight carried by all U.S. freight systems will increase by about 67%, and international trade will nearly double. With ongoing growth in travel demand on virtually every system of transportation in the United States, transportation capacity is seriously inadequate. Congestion, reliability, safety, and system preservation will be major problems for the foreseeable future, despite improved operational efficiencies. The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) and the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) emphasized the need for state and metropolitan multimodal and intermodal transportation planning and programming activities to include freight along with passenger transportation. The traditional planning and project-selection processes have not adequately accounted for freight movement and freight needs. Some states and metropolitan areas have made significant progress in integrating freight considerations into their planning processes and in developing solutions to facilitate freight movements. Others need more guidance on how to better incorporate the needs of freight into their planning and project-selection processes. Improvements are needed in procedures, methods, processes, and cooperative mechanisms for freight planning and programming at both the state and MPO levels. The objective of this project is to develop a framework for incorporating freight needs for all modes into transportation planning and priority programming by state, regional, metropolitan, local, and special transportation agencies. This framework should be presented in a guidebook format and illustrated with examples of best practices for considering freight in transportation planning and priority programming decision making.

• Record URL:
  http://www.trb.org/TRBNet/ProjectDisplay.asp?ProjectID=929

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $300000.00
• Contract Numbers:

  Project 8-53

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Federal Highway Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590

  American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)

  444 North Capitol Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001

  National Cooperative Highway Research Program

  Transportation Research Board
  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Project Managers:

  McCready, Ronald

• Performing Organizations:

  Cambridge Systematics, Incorporated

  150 Cambridge Park Drive, Suite 4000
  Cambridge, MA  United States  02140-2369
• Principal Investigators:

  Brogan, James

• Start Date: 20060124
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 20070331
• Source Data: RiP Project 10560

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Economic growth; Freight transportation; Multimodal transportation; Research projects; State departments of transportation; Transportation planning
• Identifier Terms: Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991; National Cooperative Highway Research Program
• Subject Areas: Economics; Freight Transportation; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01460727
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: National Cooperative Highway Research Program
• Contract Numbers: Project 8-53
• Files: RiP, USDOT
• Created Date: Jan 3 2013 1:31PM