Publications

Summary:
Container terminals are important intermodal interfaces between marine and land transport networks. These interfaces have historically been sources of congestion and logistical inefficiencies. Exacerbated by growing trade volumes, the terminals have become bottlenecks in the port-related supply chain. This research explores using truck arrival information to integrate drayage truck and container terminal operations and improve intermodal system efficiency.

Summary:
This paper presents a model for planning an air charter service for pre-scheduled group travel. This model is used to investigate the competitiveness of such an enterprise for student athlete travel in conference sports. The relevant demand subset to be served by a limited charter fleet is identified through a comparison with existing scheduled travel options. Further, the routing and scheduling of the charter aircraft is performed within the same framework.

Summary:
In order to support WSDOT in development of the Washington State Freight Mobility Plan, this document presents recommendations for criteria to be used in defining the Washington state truck intermodal network. The state does not have an existing definition of the freight truck-intermodal system.

Summary:
North American rail terminals need productivity improvements to handle increasing rail volumes and improve terminal performance. This paper examines the benefits of double cycling in wide-span gantry terminals that use automated transfer management systems.

Summary:
This article provides an overview of the applications of operations research (OR) techniques to marine container terminals. The article begins by providing a summary of marine container terminal operations. Following this, a series of decision problems are identified, to which OR techniques have been applied. These include quayside, yard, and landside decision problems. In each section, the problems, technical approaches, and outcomes are described.

Summary:
Despite their heavy use of the road transportation system, little data is available on trip generation rates for trucks. In this paper, truck trip rates from grocery stores are used in a case study to evaluate and compare two simple methods for collecting data on truck trip generation: telephone interviews and manual counts. The findings from this study showed that grocery stores generated an average of 18 truck trips per day on a typical peak period weekday. The results also...

Summary:
This report assesses the feasibility of a public use bike-share system for Seattle, Washington. Colloquially referred to as “bike-share” or “bike-sharing,” such systems are considered a form of public transportation. Bike-share bicycles are intended for short-term use and are accessible via automated check-out systems.

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.

Summary:
This research offers a novel formulation for including emissions into fleet assignment and vehicle routing and for the trade-offs faced by fleet operators between cost, emissions, and service quality. This approach enables evaluation of the impact of a variety of internal changes (e.g. time window schemes) and external policies (e.g. spatial restrictions), and enables comparisons of the relative impacts on fleet emissions.

Summary:
Although trucks move larger volumes of goods than other modes of transportation, public agencies know little about their travel patterns and how the roadway network performs for trucks. Trucking companies use data from the Global Positioning System (GPS) provided by commercial vendors to dispatch and track their equipment.

Summary:
Public transportation could be an important component of a solution to providing mobility while reducing traffic congestion and the environmental impact of transportation. However, from a customer perspective, a mobility choice is only a choice if it is fast, comfortable and reliable. This research looks at the reliability of public transportation and the use of easy-to-access information to combat the inherent unreliability and other barriers to increased use that exist in the system.

Summary:
This paper presents a systematic methodology for identifying and ranking bottlenecks using probe data collected by commercial GPS fleet management devices. This methodology is based on the hypotheses that truck speed distributions can be represented by either a unimodal or bimodal probability density function, and it proposes a new reliability measure for evaluating roadway performance.

Summary:
The ability to fully understand and accurately characterize freight vehicle route choices is important in helping to inform regional and state decisions. This project recommends improvements to WSDOT’s Statewide Freight GIS Network Model to more accurately characterize freight vehicle route choice. This capability, when combined with regional and sub-national commodity flow data, will be a key attribute of an effective statewide freight modeling system.

Summary:
The effective and efficient movement of freight is essential to the economic well-being of our country but freight transport also adversely impacts our society by contributing to a large number of crashes, including those resulting in injuries and fatalities.

Summary:
A factor that influences transit ridership but has not received much attention from researchers is weather. This paper examines the effects of weather on bus ridership in Pierce County, Washington, for the years 2006–2008. Separate ordinary least squares regression models were estimated for each season, as weather conditions may have different effects depending on the time of year. Four weather variables were considered: wind, temperature, rain, and snow.