Improved Freight Modeling of Containerized Cargo Shipments between Ocean Port, Handling Facility, and Final Market for Regional Policy and Planning

The proposed research will address an emerging need by local, state and regional transportation planners and policymakers to better understand the transportation characteristics, functions and dynamics of ocean port-to-handling facility and handling facility-to-final market freight movements. The research will also address a gap in the academic literature for freight transportation models that capture underlying economic forces. This research effort will focus on the development and refinement of a regional freight model of urban container movements from the port to a handling facility and beyond. Existing regional transportation planning models and analytical tools have evolved from passenger travel demand models that are ill-suited to fully capture the business decisions and economic influences driving urban freight flows and have been further constrained by access to appropriate freight data. This research activity proposes a modeling approach which will capture the fundamental economic choices individual shippers consider when trading-off the marginal benefits/costs associated with warehouse inventory management/control relative to transportation access and flow while incorporating the primary freight generation activity centers (warehouse/distribution centers) in the Puget Sound region. This work will identify, evaluate and incorporate data for the Puget Sound region recently available from a variety of existing sources. Some data collection may also be necessary. The final product of this research study will be an improved tool to understand current and future freight movements through the Puget Sound region, and a methodology which will expand the current state of knowledge, and may be applied in other regions, both domestic and international. It will allow more in-depth and timely evaluation and analysis of different local/regional transportation policy initiatives such as the impact of migration of the main warehousing region, and development of inland inter-modal port facilities.