Publications

Summary:
This paper introduces a novel quay crane design, a double girder bridge crane (DGBC). DGBC is capable of handling containers of two adjacent bays simultaneously, avoiding crane collisions, saving traveling and repositioning costs, and eventually improving terminal efficiency. This problem is formulated as a resource-constrained project scheduling to minimize the maximum completion time.

Summary:
Roadway tolls are designed to raise revenue to fund transportation investments and manage travel demand and as such may affect transportation system performance and route choice. Yet, limited research has quantified the impact of tolling on truck speed and route choice because of the lack of truck-specific movement data.

Summary:
As available data has increased and as the national transportation funding bills have moved toward objective evaluation, departments of transportation (DOTs) throughout the country have begun to develop tools to measure the impacts of different projects. Increasingly, DOTs recognize the freight transportation system is necessarily multimodal. However, few DOTs have clearly stated objective tools to make multimodal freight project comparisons.

Summary:
This report discusses the travel costs associated with the closure of roads in the greater Centralia/Chehalis, Washington region due to 100-year flood conditions starting on the Chehalis River. The costs were computed for roadway closures on I-5, US 12, and SR 6, and are based on estimated road closure durations supplied by WSDOT. The computed costs are only those directly related to travel that would otherwise have occurred on the roads affected by the flooding closures.

Summary:
While researchers have found relationships between passenger vehicle travel and smart growth development patterns, similar relationships have not been extensively studied between urban form and goods movement trip-making patterns. In rural areas, where shopping choice is more limited, goods movement delivery has the potential to be relatively more important than in more urban areas.

Summary:
Smart growth design, a strategy for improving the quality of life in urban areas, has typically focused on the areas of passenger travel, land use and nonmotorized transport adoption. The role of goods movement is often ignored in discussions of smart growth. This article reports on National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 24, which addresses the importance of the relationship between smart growth and goods movement.

Summary:
The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) partnered with the University of Washington to explore how commercial vehicle parking in Seattle’s downtown area affects the safety of bicyclists. The hypothesis was that increased truck access to SDOT’s commercial vehicle loading zones (CVLZs) can positively contribute to bicycle safety.

Summary:
While recent urban planning efforts have focused on the management of growth into developed areas, the research community has not examined the impacts of these development patterns on urban goods movement. Successful implementation of growth strategies has multiple environmental and social benefits but also raises the demand for intra-urban goods movement, potentially increasing conflicts between modes of travel and worsening air quality.

Summary:
This report documents the use of the National Performance Monitoring Research Data Set (NPMRDS) for the computation of freight performance measures on Interstate highways in Washington state. The report documents the data availability and specific data quality issues identified with NPMRDS. It then describes a recommended initial set of quality assurance tests that are needed before WSDOT begins producing freight performance measures.

Summary:
Truck probe data collected by global positioning system (GPS) devices has gained increased attention as a source of truck mobility data, including measuring truck travel time reliability. Most reliability studies that apply GPS data are based on travel time observations retrieved from GPS data. The major challenges to using GPS data are small, nonrandom observation sets and low reading frequency.

Summary:
In an age of expanding online commerce, is home delivery greener than sending full truckloads of goods to stores and then customers driving to them? A detailed regional study finds compelling answers. Readers who were teenagers in the 1980s may remember driving to a Sam Goody store to buy music. You probably also remember your disappointment when sometimes the tape or CD wasn’t in stock when you arrived. Perhaps you returned to your car and headed for Tower Records to...

Summary:
Bicycling is being encouraged across the US and the world as a low-impact, environmentally friendly mode of transportation. In the US, many states and cities, especially cities facing congestion issues, are encouraging cycling as an alternative to automobiles. However, as cities grow and consumption increases, freight traffic in cities will increase as well, leading to higher amounts of interactions between cyclists and trucks.

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.