Publications

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:
As of June 2020, the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has infected more than eight million people worldwide. In response to the global pandemic, cities have been put under lockdown, closing non-essential businesses and banning group gatherings, limiting urban mobility, and issuing stay-at-home orders, while nations closed their borders. During these times, logistics became more important than ever in guaranteeing the uninterrupted flow of goods to city residents.

Summary:
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.

Summary:
Common-carrier parcel lockers have emerged as a secure, automated, self-service means of delivery consolidation in congested urban areas, which are believed to mitigate last-mile delivery challenges by reducing out-of-vehicle delivery times and consequently vehicle dwell times at the curb. However, little research exists to empirically demonstrate the environmental and efficiency gains from this technology.

Summary:
Seattle is one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities, presenting both opportunities and challenges for food waste. An estimated 94,500 tons of food from Seattle businesses end up in compost bins or landfills each year—some of it edible food that simply never got sold at restaurants, grocery stores, hospitals, schools or dining facilities. Meantime, members of our community remain food insecure. It makes sense for food to feed people rather than become waste.

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:
Millions of people who live and work in cities purchase goods online. As ecommerce and urban deliveries spike, there is an increasing demand for curbside loading and unloading space. To better manage city curb spaces for urban freight, city planners and decision makers need to understand commercial vehicle driver behaviors and the factors they consider when parking at the curb. Urban freight transportation is a diverse phenomenon.

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:
Intersection and non-intersection locations are commonly used as spatial units of analysis for modeling pedestrian crashes. While both location types have been previously studied, comparing results is difficult given the different data and methods used to identify crash-risk locations. In this study, a systematic and replicable protocol was developed in GIS (Geographic Information System) to create a consistent spatial unit of analysis for use in pedestrian crash modeling.

Summary:
In 2023, Portland was awarded a U.S. Department of Transportation SMART grant to pilot a Zero-Emission Delivery Zone (ZEDZ). Funding for this Stage One SMART grant will allow PBOT to trial changing three to five truck loading zones into “Zero-Emission Delivery” loading zones in downtown Portland.

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:
Cities need new load/unload space concepts to efficiently move freight, particularly as autonomous vehicles (both passenger and freight) become feasible. This research aims to: understand the importance of off-street commercial parking, understand how off-street facilities are managed, and determine whether off-street commercial parking is an underutilized resource for urban goods delivery.

Summary:
This paper documents the development of data collection methodologies that can be used to measure truck movements along specific roadway corridors in Washington State cost-effectively. The intent of this study was to design and test methodologies that could provide information to ascertain the performance of freight mobility roadway improvement projects. The benchmarks created would be used to report on speed and volume improvements that resulted from completed roadway projects.

Summary:
This study employs a multilevel model to compare the influence of land use on transportation emissions in urban and suburban areas when considering trip speed and vehicle characteristics.

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.