Publications

Summary:
Quantifying the relationship between the number and types of truck trips generated by different land uses provides information useful for traffic demand analyses, forecasting models, and a general understanding of the factors that affect truck mobility. This project evaluated data collection methodologies for determining truck trip generation rates by studying a specific kind of establishment.

Summary:
Electronic door seals (E-seals) were tested on shipping containers that traveled through ports, over borders, and on roadways. The findings showed that using these RFID devices could increase supply chain efficiency and improve the security of containerized cargo movements, particularly when E-seals replace common mechanical seals. Before the benefits of E-seals can be realized, several barriers must be addressed.

Summary:
Growing pressure to limit greenhouse gas emissions is changing the way businesses operate. A model was developed in ArcGIS to evaluate the trade-offs between cost, service quality (represented by time window guarantees), and emissions of urban pickup and delivery systems under these changing pressures. A specific case study involving a real fleet with specific operational characteristics is modeled as an emissions minimization vehicle routing problem with time windows (EVRPTW).

Summary:
Activities of commercial vehicles just prior to or just following international border crossings are not well understood. Logistical responses to border crossings are believed to increase empty miles traveled, travel times and total vehicle emissions.

Summary:
Between 1998 and 2005, employment in the U.S. warehousing industry grew at a compound annual growth rate of 22.23%, and the number of establishments increased at compound annual growth rate of 9.48%. Over this same period of time, the price for transportation fuels increased dramatically and became much more volatile. In this paper we examine the microeconomic and macroeconomic forces that have enabled such rapid growth in the warehousing industry.

Summary:
This paper uses simulation to evaluate the use of truck arrival information to reduce container rehandles during the import container retrieval process by improving terminal operations. A variety of scenarios with different levels of truck information and various container bay configurations are modeled to explore how the information quality and bay configuration affect the magnitude of benefit.

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.

Summary:
In this paper we examine the Port of Prince Rupert as a case study of the Canadian Gateway strategy. We consider the effect of the Gateway strategy on the development of a container terminal at the Port of Prince Rupert, and Prince Rupert’s effect on discretionary cargo at west coast ports in North America. Canada’s Asia-Pacific Gateway Initiative was developed specifically to increase trade between Canada and the Asia-Pacific region.

Summary:
The management of transportation systems for resilience has received significant attention in recent years. Resilience planning concerns the actions of an organization that reduce the consequences of a disruption to the system the organization manages. Little exploration has been made into the connections between resilience planning and the actions of a state department of transportation (DOT) that contribute to resilience of a freight transportation system.

Summary:
At the Pacific Highway port of entry between the United States and Canada, typical delays are known to regional carriers and internalized into schedules. Due to their relative infrequency, the largest crossing times are not internalized into schedules and cause significant disruptions to regional supply chains.

Summary:
Intra-industry trade (IIT) occurs when trading partners import and export similar products. A high volume of IIT of horizontally differentiated goods implies a deep level of regional integration, stable regional trading patterns, and potentially significant consequences from border delay. In this paper, trade between Washington State and British Columbia, Canada (the Cascade gateway), is compared with trade between Michigan State and Ontario, Canada (the Great Lakes gateway).

Summary:
A series of field operational tests completed by Washington State over a 10-year period has shown that electronic container door seals (E-seals) can increase the efficiency and improve the security of containerized cargo movement. Universal use of E-seals, along with the associated infrastructure, could provide notable improvements in security, container tracking, and transaction cost reductions.

Summary:
The economic viability and well-being of Washington State is significantly influenced by the freight transportation system serving the region.

Summary:
Establishment level employment data indicate that the warehousing industry has experienced rapid growth and restructuring since 1998. This restructuring has resulted in geographic shifts at the national, regional, and local scales. Uneven growth in warehousing establishments across the Pacific Northwest has likely exerted a significant impact on the regional transportation system, but the extent of these transportation impacts remains unknown.

Summary:
In the face of many risks of disruptions to our transportation system, including natural disasters, inclement weather, terrorist acts, work stoppages, and other potential transportation disruptions, it is imperative for freight transportation system partners to plan a transportation system that can recover quickly from disruption and to prevent long-term negative economic consequences to state and regional economies.