Paper

Review of Performance Metrics for Community-Based Planning for Resilience of the Transportation System

Publication: Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board

Volume: 2604

Pages: 44-53

Publication Date: 2017

Summary:

Community resilience depends on the resilience of the lifeline infrastructure and the performance of the disaster-related functions of local governments. State and federal resilience plans and guidelines acknowledge the importance of the transportation system as a critical lifeline in planning for community resilience and in helping local governments to set recovery goals. However, a widely accepted definition of the resilience of the transportation system and a structure for its measurement are not available. This paper provides a literature review that summarizes the metrics used to assess the resilience of the transportation system and a categorization of the assessment approaches at three levels of analysis (the asset, network, and systems levels). Furthermore, this paper ties these metrics to relevant dimensions of community resilience. This work addresses a key first step required to enhance the efficiency of planning related to transportation system resilience by providing (a) a standard terminology with which efforts to enhance the resilience of the transportation system can be developed, (b) an approach to organize planning and research efforts related to the resilience of the transportation system, and (c) identification of the gaps in measurement of the performance of the resilience of the transportation system.

Authors: Dr. Anne GoodchildJosé Luis Machado León

Recommended Citation:
Machado, Jose Luis, and Anne Goodchild. Review of Performance Metrics for Community-Based Planning for Resilience of the Transportation System. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Transportation Research Record, 2604(1), 44–53. https://doi.org/10.3141/2604-06

Paper

Impact of Truck Arrival Information on System Efficiency at Container Terminals

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/2162-03

Publication: Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board

Volume: 2162

Publication Date: 2014

Summary:

This paper quantifies the benefits to drayage trucks and container terminals from a data-sharing strategy designed to improve operations at the drayage truck-container terminal interface. This paper proposes a simple rule for using truck information to reduce container rehandling work and suggests a method for evaluating yard crane productivity and truck transaction time. Various scenarios with different levels of information quality are considered to explore how information quality affects system efficiency (i.e., truck wait time and yard crane productivity). Different block configurations and truck arrival rates are also investigated to evaluate the effectiveness of truck information under various system configurations. The research demonstrates that a small amount of truck information can significantly improve crane productivity and reduce truck delay, especially for those terminals operating near capacity or using intensive container stacking, and that complete truck arrival sequence information is not necessary for system improvement.

Authors: Dr. Anne Goodchild, Wenjuan Zhao

Recommended Citation:
Zhao, Wenjuan, and Anne V. Goodchild. "Impact of truck arrival information on system efficiency at container terminals." Transportation Research Record 2162, no. 1 (2010): 17-24.

Paper

Evaluating the Accuracy of GPS Spot Speeds for Estimating Truck Travel Speed

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/2246-13

Publication: Transportation Research Record

Volume: 2011

Pages: 101–110

Publication Date: 2011

Summary:

A number of trucking companies use Global Positioning System (GPS) devices for fleet management. Data extracted from these devices can provide valuable traffic information such as spot (instantaneous) speeds and vehicle trajectory. However, the accuracy of GPS spot speeds has not been fully explored, and there is concern about their use for estimating truck travel speed. This concern was addressed by initially comparing GPS spot speeds with speeds estimated from dual-loop detectors. A simple speed estimation method based on GPS spot speeds was devised to estimate link travel speed, and that method was compared with space mean speed estimation based on GPS vehicle location and time data. The analysis demonstrated that aggregated GPS spot speeds generally matched loop detector speeds and captured travel conditions over time and space. Speed estimation based on GPS spot speeds was sufficiently accurate in comparison with space mean speeds, with a mean absolute difference of less than 6%. It is concluded that GPS spot speed data provide an alternative for measuring freight corridor performance and truck travel characteristics.

Authors: Dr. Anne GoodchildDr. Ed McCormack, Wenjuan Zhao

Recommended Citation:
Zhao, Wenjuan, Anne V. Goodchild, and Edward D. McCormack. "Evaluating the accuracy of spot speed data from global positioning systems for estimating truck travel speed." Transportation Research Record 2246, no. 1 (2011): 101-110.

Paper

Service Time Variability at the Blaine, Washington International Border Crossing and the Impact on Regional Supply Chains

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URL: https://doi.org/10.3141%2F2066-08

Publication: Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board

Volume: 2066

Pages: 71-78

Publication Date: 2008

Summary:

Variable service times at vehicle processing facilities (borders, weigh stations, landside marine port gates) cause transportation planning challenges for companies that regularly visit them. Companies must either build more time into their schedules than is necessary, and therefore underutilize their equipment, or risk missing delivery windows or exceeding hours of service regulations, actions that can result in fines, lost business opportunities, or other logistical costs. Border crossing times are examined at Blaine, Washington, between Whatcom County, Washington, and the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, Canada, to assess the variability in crossing times at this border crossing and the impact of this variability on regional supply chains. Variability data collected for bidirectional trade are presented. Directional, daily, hourly, and seasonal variations are examined, and interviews are conducted with regional carriers to better understand the current response to variability, the benefit of a reduction in variability, and how that is related to the goods moved or to other business operating characteristics. This paper describes the level of variability in border crossing times and carriers’ responses to this variability and shows that the primary strategy used, increasing buffer times, reduces carrier productivity. However, this cost is negligible because of the current nature of the industry.

Authors: Dr. Anne Goodchild, Steve Globerman, Susan Albrecht

Recommended Citation:
Goodchild, Anne Victoria, Susan Albrecht, and Steven Globerman. "Service time variability at the Blaine, Washington, international border crossing and the impact on regional supply chains." (2007).

Paper

An Empirical Taxonomy of Common Curb Zoning Configurations in Seattle

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URL: https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.32446

Publication: Findings

Publication Date: 2022

Summary:

We utilize an unsupervised learning algorithm called-modes clustering (Huang 1998), which is similar to the better-known-means method (Hartigan and Wong 1979), but with a dissimilarity measure designed for categorical variables (Cao et al. 2012), originally developed for analyzing sequential categorical data such as gene sequences (Goodall 1966), but also amenable to curb zoning types. For a specified, the-modes algorithm finds the top vectors that minimize a distance to all sample vectors in the training dataset. The resulting top modes are representative of distinct clusters of sample vectors, with cluster membership determined by the closest mode. The parameter is chosen through cross-validation by holding out portions of the available training data and finding the smallest that largely minimizes the within-cluster variation in this hold-out set (also called the “elbow method”). We utilize basic matching dissimilarity, as implemented in (Vos 2015). For two vectors and of length, where each element attains categorical values, matching dissimilarity is defined as, where denotes the indicator vector, with value 1 where the bracketed condition is true and 0 otherwise. We’ve chosen this measure of dissimilarity between two sets of categorical variables for a number of reasons: 1) its simplicity, 2) successful use in categorical data clustering (Goodall 1966), and 3) its sensitivity to the ordering of values when vectors and are ordered, specific to how we have chosen to represent curb zoning data.

Authors: Thomas MaxnerDr. Andisheh Ranjbari, Chase Dowling

Recommended Citation:
Dowling, Chase P., Thomas Maxner, and Andisheh Ranjbari. 2022. “An Empirical Taxonomy of Common Curb Zoning Configurations in Seattle.” Findings, February. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.32446

Paper

Curbspace Management Challenges and Opportunities from Public and Private Sector Perspectives

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URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03611981211027156

Publication: Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board

Publication Date: 2021

Summary:

Through structured interviews with public agency and private company staff and a review of existing pilot project evaluations and curb management guidelines, this study surveys contemporary approaches to curb space management in 14 U.S. cities and documents the challenges and opportunities associated with them. A total of 17 public agencies (including public works departments, transportation agencies, and metropolitan planning organizations) in every census region of the U.S. and 10 technology companies were interviewed.

The results show that the top curb management concerns among public officials are enforcement and communication, data collection and management, and interagency coordination. Interviewees reported success with policies such as allocating zones for passenger pick-ups and drop-offs, incentives for off-peak delivery, and requiring data sharing in exchange for reservable or additional curb spaces. Technology company representatives discussed new tools and technologies for curb management, including smart parking reservation systems, occupancy sensors and cameras, and automated enforcement. Both public and private sector staff expressed a desire for citywide policy goals around curb management, more consistent curb regulations across jurisdictions, and a common data standard for encoding curb information.

Authors: Caleb DiehlDr. Andisheh RanjbariDr. Anne Goodchild

Recommended Citation:
Diehl, C., Ranjbari, A., & Goodchild, A. (2021). Curbspace Management Challenges and Opportunities from Public and Private Sector Perspectives. Transportation Research Record. https://doi.org/10.1177/03611981211027156

Paper

Options for Benchmarking Performance Improvements Achieved from Construction of Freight Mobility Projects

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URL: https://secure.engr.oregonstate.edu/wiki/transportation/uploads/ODOT-Multimodal/Mccormack2005.pdf

Publication: Washington State Transportation Center (TRAC)

Publication Date: 2006

Summary:

This report documents the development of data collection methodologies that can be used to cost effectively measure truck movements along specific roadway corridors selected by transportation agencies in Washington State. The intent of this study was to design and test methodologies that could be used to measure the performance of freight mobility roadway improvement projects against benchmarks, or selected standards, that would be used both as part of the project selection process and to report on speed and volume improvements that resulted from completed freight mobility projects.

One technology tested was Commercial Vehicle Information System and Networks (CVISN) electronic truck transponders, which are mounted on the windshields of approximately 20,000 trucks in Washington. By using software to link the transponder reads from sites anywhere in the state, the transponder-equipped trucks could become a travel-time probe fleet. The second technology tested involved global positioning systems (GPS) placed in volunteer trucks to collect specific truck movement data at 5-second intervals. With GPS data it was possible to understand when and where the monitored trucks experienced congestion and to generate useful performance statistics.

The study found that both data collection technologies could be useful; however, the key to both technologies is whether enough instrumented vehicles pass over the roadways for which data are required. This basic condition affects whether the technologies will be effective at collecting the data required for any given benchmark project. The report also recommends the traffic data that should be collected for a benchmark program and the potential costs of using either data collection technology.

Authors: Dr. Ed McCormack, Mark Hallenbeck

Recommended Citation:
McCormack, E. D., & Hallenbeck, M. E. (2005). Options for Benchmarking Performance Improvements Achieved from Construction of Freight Mobility Projects. (No. WA-RD 607.1). Washington State Department of Transportation.

Paper

A Mobile Application for Collecting Task Time Data for Value Stream Mapping of the Final 50 Feet of Urban Goods Delivery Processes

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URL: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1541931218621410

Publication: Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting

Volume: 62

Pages: 1808-1812

Publication Date: 2018

Summary:

Delivery options have become very diverse with online shoppers demanding faster delivery options (e.g, 2-day delivery, same day delivery options) and more personalized services. For this reason, transportation planners, retailers, and delivery companies are seeking ways to better understand how best to deliver goods and services in urban areas while minimizing disruption to traffic, parking, and building operations. This includes understanding vertical and horizontal goods movements within urban areas.

The goal of this project is to capture the delivery processes within urban buildings in order to minimize these disruptions. This is achieved using a systems approach to understanding the flow of activities and workers as they deliver goods within urban buildings. A mobile application was designed to collect the start and stop times for each task within the delivery process for 31 carriers as they deliver goods within a 62-story office building.

The process flow map helped identify bottlenecks and areas for improvements in the final segment of the delivery operations: the final 50 feet. It also highlighted consistent tasks conducted by all carriers as well as differences with given carrier type. This information is useful to help decision-makers plan appropriately for the design of future cities that encompass a variety of delivery processes.

Authors: Haena KimDr. Anne Goodchild, Linda Ng Boyle

Recommended Citation:
Kim, Haena, Linda Ng Boyle, and Anne Goodchild. (2018) "A Mobile Application for Collecting Task Time Data for Value Stream Mapping of the Final 50 Feet of Urban Goods Delivery Processes." In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 62(1), 1808–1812. https://doi.org/10.1177/1541931218621410

Paper

Urban Form and Last-Mile Goods Movement: Factors Affecting Vehicle Miles Travelled and Emissions

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URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2016.09.015

Publication: Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment

Volume: 61 (A)

Pages: 217-229

Publication Date: 2018

Summary:

There are established relationships between urban form and passenger travel, but less is known about urban form and goods movement. The work presented in this paper evaluates how the design of a delivery service and the urban form in which it operates affects its performance, as measured by vehicle miles traveled, CO2, NOx, and PM10 emissions.

This work compares simulated amounts of VMT, CO2, NOx, and PM10 generated by last-mile travel in several different development patterns and in many different goods movement structures, including various warehouse locations. Last-mile travel includes personal travel or delivery vehicles delivering goods to customers. Regression models for each goods movement scheme and models that compare sets of goods movement schemes were developed. The most influential variables in all models were measures of roadway density and proximity of a service area to the regional warehouse.

These efforts will support urban planning for goods movement, inform policies designed to mitigate the impacts of goods movement vehicles, and provide insights into achieving sustainability targets, especially as online shopping and goods delivery become more prevalent.

Authors: Dr. Anne Goodchild, Erica Wygonik

Recommended Citation:
Wygonik, Erica and Anne Goodchild. (2018) Urban Form and Last-Mile Goods Movement: Factors Affecting Vehicle Miles Travelled and Emissions. Transportation Research. Part D, Transport and Environment, 61, 217–229. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2016.09.015

Paper

Truck Travel Time Reliability and Prediction in a Port Drayage Network

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/mel.2011.24

Publication: Maritime Economics & Logistics

Volume: 13 (4)

Pages: 387-418

Publication Date: 2011

Summary:

This article will explore the reliability of the port drayage network. Port drayage is an important component of the marine intermodal system and affects the efficiency of the intermodal supply chain. Sharing and utilizing drayage truck arrival information could improve both port drayage and port operational efficiency. In this article two reliability measures are used to evaluate how the travel time reliability changes with trip origins and across drayage networks. The truck routing choices between Origin-Destination (OD) pairs are examined. A simple method is proposed to predict the 95 percent confidence interval of travel time between any OD pair and is validated with global positioning system (GPS) data. The results presented in this article demonstrate that the proposed travel time prediction method is sufficient for predicting truck arrival time windows at the terminal and can be translated into truck arrival group information.

Authors: Dr. Anne Goodchild, Wenjuan Zhao

Recommended Citation:
Zhao, Wenjuan, and Anne V. Goodchild. "Truck travel time reliability and prediction in a port drayage network." Maritime Economics & Logistics 13, no. 4 (2011): 387-418.