Publications

Summary:
This report summarizes the work completed under the SHRP2 (Strategic Highway Research Program 2) Local Freight Data program. Supply chain firm interviews and truck counts were conducted to better understand the Food Distribution System in the Puget Sound. Interviews explored key business challenges, operations, and potential responses to natural gas incentives. Truck counts were conducted at grocery stores, and observations included truck type, time of day, stop duration, and parking behavior.

Summary:
Predicting truck (heavy vehicle) travel time is a principal component of freight project prioritization and planning. However, most existing travel time prediction models are designed for passenger vehicles and fail to make truck specific forecasts or use truck specific data. Little is known about the impact of this limitation, or how truck travel time prediction could be improved in response to freight investments with an improved methodology.

Summary:
There is little research on the behavioral interaction between bicycle lanes and commercial vehicle loading zones (CVLZ) in the United States. These interactions are important to understand, to preempt increasing conflicts between truckers and bicyclists. In this study, a bicycling simulator experiment examined bicycle and truck interactions. The experiment was successfully completed by 48 participants.

Summary:
Freight systems are a critical yet complex component of the transportation domain. Understanding the dynamic of freight movements will help in better management of freight demand and eventually improve freight system efficiency. This paper presents a series of data-mining algorithms to extract an individual truck’s trip-chaining information from multi-day GPS data.

Summary:
Freight transport is a challenging economic sector, as it is essential for the functioning of production and distribution systems but and the same time is at the origin of many nuisances such as congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and noise. When responding to these issues, planners dispose nowadays of a growing body of freight data that can be used for the implementation of policies towards achieving smart mobility.

Summary:
Pickup and delivery operations are an essential part of urban goods movements. However, rapid urban growth, increasing demand, and higher customer expectations have amplified the challenges of urban freight movement. In recent years, the industry has emphasized improving last-mile operations with the intent of focusing on what has been described as the last leg of the supply chain.

Summary:
The objective of this paper is to develop a methodology for forecasting freeway vehicle travel time reliability for transportation planning using probe GPS data. Travel time reliability is measured using the coefficient of variation of the GPS spot (instantaneous) speed distribution. The proposed approach establishes relationships between travel time reliability and roadway traffic density in order to forecast reliability given future traffic conditions.

Summary:
The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) completed an evaluation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems’ (UAS) ability to operate in winter weather and in mountainous terrain in support of snow avalanche monitoring. Vendors flew nine multi-rotor, rotary-wing, and fixed wing aircraft on four increasingly difficult missions ranging from flights over a nearby road and bridge to a 2.3 kilometer flight to a 1300 meter mountain to inspect avalanche features.

Summary:
The demand for truck transportation increases alongside growth in population and economic activity. As both truck and passenger traffic outstrip roadway capacity, the result is congestion, which the freight community experiences as truck bottlenecks. This NCHRP project produced a Guidebook that provides state-of-the-practice information to transportation professionals on practices and measures for identifying, classifying, evaluating, and mitigating truck freight bottlenecks.

Summary:
More than 80 percent of Americans have purchased goods online and, in 2016, more than 8 percent of all retail sales in the U.S. took place online. The growth of ecommerce is putting increasing pressure on local governments to rethink how they manage street curb parking and alley operations for trucks and other delivery vehicles. It is also forcing building developers and managers to plan for the influx of online goods. To develop practical solutions to these problems, in 2016...

Summary:
This research report investigates the relationship between pedestrians and bicyclists on paths parallel to railroad tracks and with a road perpendicular to the path. The possible conflicts at intersections within these design parameters are of concern to ODOT, and therefore, has been recognized as an opportunity to conduct research that improves this type of intersection.

Summary:
In recent years the focus on and prioritization of the notion of local food, food access and sustainability has been increasing throughout the U.S., especially in urban areas. The rising demand and growing preference for local produce in turn leads to changes in how we transport food. The supply chains found in urban areas are already complicated and costly, and as demand changes this poses a challenge if the local food movement is to be accommodated in our cities. A...

Summary:
This report provides a guidebook for conducting benefit-cost analyses of proposed infrastructure investments on multimodal, multi-jurisdictional freight corridors for public and private decision-makers and other stakeholders at local, state, regional, and national levels to arrive at more informed investment decisions.