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Urban Freight Lab

Research Topic: Truck Travel Time Performance Measurement and Modeling

Truck travel times measure the flow of freight and identify speed trends over time. They are valuable for assessing the efficiency and performance of transportation systems and are essential for planning, designing, and building better transportation facilities.

Paper

Options for Benchmarking Performance Improvements Achieved from Construction of Freight Mobility Projects

 
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URL: https://secure.engr.oregonstate.edu/wiki/transportation/uploads/ODOT-Multimodal/Mccormack2005.pdf
Publication: Washington State Transportation Center (TRAC)
Publication Date: 2006
Summary:
This report documents the development of data collection methodologies that can be used to cost effectively measure truck movements along specific roadway corridors selected by transportation agencies in Washington State. The intent of this study was to design and test methodologies that could be used to measure the performance of freight mobility roadway improvement projects against benchmarks, or selected standards, that would be used both as part of the project selection process and to report on speed and volume improvements that resulted from completed freight mobility projects.
One technology tested was Commercial Vehicle Information System and Networks (CVISN) electronic truck transponders, which are mounted on the windshields of approximately 20,000 trucks in Washington. By using software to link the transponder reads from sites anywhere in the state, the transponder-equipped trucks could become a travel-time probe fleet. The second technology tested involved global positioning systems (GPS) placed in volunteer trucks to collect specific truck movement data at 5-second intervals. With GPS data it was possible to understand when and where the monitored trucks experienced congestion and to generate useful performance statistics.
The study found that both data collection technologies could be useful; however, the key to both technologies is whether enough instrumented vehicles pass over the roadways for which data are required. This basic condition affects whether the technologies will be effective at collecting the data required for any given benchmark project. The report also recommends the traffic data that should be collected for a benchmark program and the potential costs of using either data collection technology.

 

 

Authors: Dr. Ed McCormack, Mark Hallenbeck
Recommended Citation:
McCormack, E. D., & Hallenbeck, M. E. (2005). Options for Benchmarking Performance Improvements Achieved from Construction of Freight Mobility Projects. (No. WA-RD 607.1). Washington State Department of Transportation.
Student Thesis and Dissertations

Emissions, Cost, and Customer Service Trade-off Analyses in Pickup and Delivery Systems

URL: https://orbiscascade-washington.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01ALLIANCE_UW/1juclfo/alma99149478340001452
Publication Date: 2011
Summary:

As commercial vehicle activity grows, the environmental impacts of these movements have increasing negative effects, particularly in urban areas. The transportation sector is the largest producer of CO2 emissions in the United States, by end-use sector, accounting for 32% of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in 2008. Medium and heavy-duty trucks account for close to 22% of CO2 emissions within the transportation sector, making systems using these vehicles key contributors to air quality problems. An important well-known type of such systems is the “pickup and delivery” in which a fleet of vehicles pickups and/or delivers goods from customers.

Companies operating fleet of vehicles reduce their cost by efficiently designing the routes their vehicles follow and the schedules at which customers will be visited. This principle especially applies to pickup and delivery systems. Customers are spread out in urban regions or are located in different states which makes it critical to efficiently design the routes and schedules vehicles will follow. So far, a less costly operation has been the main focus of these companies, particularly pickup and delivery systems, and less attention has been paid to understand how cost and emissions relate and how to directly reduce the environmental impacts of their transportation activities. This is the research opportunity that motivates the present study.

While emissions from transportation activities are mostly understood broadly, this research looks carefully at relationships between cost, emissions and service quality at an individual-fleet level. This approach enables evaluation of the impact of a variety of internal changes and external policies based on different time window schemes, exposure to congestion, or impact of CO2 taxation. It this makes it possible to obtain particular and valuable insights from the changes in the relationship between cost, emissions and service quality for different fleet characteristics.

In an effort to apply the above approach to real fleets, two different case studies are approached and presented in this thesis. Each of these cases has significant differences in their fleet composition, customers’ requirements and operational features that provide this research with the opportunity to explore different scenarios.

Three research questions guide this research. They are explained in more detailed below. The present study does not seek to provide a conclusive answer for each of the research questions but does shed light on general insights and relationships for each of the different features presented in the road network, fleet composition, and customer features.

In summary, this research provides a better understanding of the relationships between fleet operating costs, emissions reductions and impacts on customer service. The insights are useful for companies trying to develop effective emission-reduction strategies. Additionally, public agencies can use these results to develop emissions reductions policies.

Authors: Felipe Sandoval
Recommended Citation:
Sandoval, Felipe (2011). Emissions, Cost, and Customer Service Trade-off Analyses in Pickup and Delivery Systems, University of Washington Master's Degree Thesis.
Thesis: Array
Paper

Evaluating Two Low-Cost Methods of Collecting Truck Generation Data Using Grocery Stores

 
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URL: https://trid.trb.org/view.aspx?id=1116646
Publication: Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Journal
Volume: 81 (6)
Pages: 34–40
Publication Date: 2011
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 showed that a combination of telephone interviews and manual counts was more effective than telephone interviews alone. Information from the telephone interview guided the manual counts and provided a baseline measurement of counts. However, the interviews underreported truck trips when compared to the manual observations.

Authors: Dr. Ed McCormack, Alon Bassok
Recommended Citation:
McCormack, Edward, and Alon Bassok. "Evaluating Two Low-Cost Methods of Collecting Truck Generation Data Using Grocery Stores." Institute of Transportation Engineers. ITE Journal 81, no. 6 (2011): 34.
Paper

GPS Truck Data Performance Measures Program in Washington State

 
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URL: https://wadot.wa.gov/NR/rdonlyres/B7A5D60C-BF99-412F-9444-BA513768DC93/0/TPMFinalreportver2_17June2011.pdf
Publication: Washington State Transportation Center (TRAC)
Publication Date: 2011
Summary:

The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), Transportation Northwest at the University of Washington (UW), and the Washington Trucking Associations (WTA) have partnered on a research effort to collect and analyze global positioning systems (GPS) truck data from commercial, invehicle, truck fleet management systems. This effort was funded by the Washington State Legislature, and its purpose is to develop a statewide freight performance measures program for use by WSDOT. This document reviews the program’s previous phases and provides details about the latest phase of the program. The report also provides references to the technical documents that support the program.

Authors: Dr. Ed McCormack, Wenjuan Zhao
Recommended Citation:
McCormack, E. D., Zhao, W., & Tabat, D. (2011). GPS Truck Data Performance Measures Program in Washington State. Washington State Department of Transportation, Office of Research.
Student Thesis and Dissertations

Economic Implications of the Use of Technology in Commercial Vehicle Operations

URL: https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/21986
Publication Date: 2012
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. Technology has been used increasingly to facilitate safety and operational improvements within commercial vehicle operations, but motor carriers operate on small profit margins, limiting their ability to make large investments without also seeing an economic benefit from such technologies. This dissertation explores the economic implications associated with using onboard monitoring systems to enhance safety in commercial vehicle operations.

First, to better understand how electronic on-board systems work, paper-based methods of recording driver hours of service are compared to automated (or electronically recorded) hours of service for three motor carriers using process analysis. This analysis addressed the differences between manual (paper-based) and electronic methods of recording hours of service, specifically as they relate to the frequencies and magnitude of the errors. Potential errors are categorized by operations within an information-based process and the findings suggest that a reduction of errors can be achieved with an electronic system.

A benefit-cost analysis provides a better understanding of the economic implications of onboard monitoring systems from the perspective of the carrier. In addition to the benefits of reduced crashes, benefits associated with electronic recording of hours of service, reduced mileage, and reduced fuel costs are considered. A sensitivity analysis is used and demonstrates that on-board monitoring systems are economically viable under a wide range of conditions. Results indicate that, for some fleet types, reducing crashes and improving hours of service recording, provides a net benefit of close to $300,000 over the five-year expected lifespan of the system. Furthermore, when exploring additional benefits such as reduced fuel consumption and reduced vehicle miles, benefits can be upwards of seven times more than safety-related benefits. This research also shows that net positive benefits are possible in large and small-sized fleets. Results can be used to inform policies for motivating or mandating carriers to use such systems and to inform carriers regarding the value of system investment.

Authors: Kelly A. Pitera
Recommended Citation:
Pitera, Kelly Ann. "Economic Implications of the Use of Technology in Commercial Vehicle Operations." PhD diss., 2012.
Thesis: Array
Paper

Evaluating the Accuracy of GPS Spot Speeds for Estimating Truck Travel Speed

 
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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/2246-13
Publication: Transportation Research Record
Volume: 2011
Pages: 101–110
Publication Date: 2011
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. A simple speed estimation method based on GPS spot speeds was devised to estimate link travel speed, and that method was compared with space mean speed estimation based on GPS vehicle location and time data. The analysis demonstrated that aggregated GPS spot speeds generally matched loop detector speeds and captured travel conditions over time and space. Speed estimation based on GPS spot speeds was sufficiently accurate in comparison with space mean speeds, with a mean absolute difference of less than 6%. It is concluded that GPS spot speed data provide an alternative for measuring freight corridor performance and truck travel characteristics.

Authors: Dr. Anne GoodchildDr. Ed McCormack, Wenjuan Zhao
Recommended Citation:
Zhao, Wenjuan, Anne V. Goodchild, and Edward D. McCormack. "Evaluating the accuracy of spot speed data from global positioning systems for estimating truck travel speed." Transportation Research Record 2246, no. 1 (2011): 101-110.
Paper

GPS Tracking of Freight Vehicles to Identify and Classify Bottlenecks

URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6338666
Publication: Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), 2012 15th International IEEE Conference
Publication Date: 2012
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.

Authors: Dr. Ed McCormack, Wenjuan Zhao, Daniel J. Dailey
Recommended Citation:
McCormack, E., Zhao, W., & Dailey, D. J. (2012, September). GPS Tracking of Freight Vehicles to Identify and Classify Bottlenecks. In 2012 15th International IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (pp. 1245-1249). IEEE.
Student Thesis and Dissertations

Economic Characteristics of Drayage Drivers at the Port of Seattle

URL: https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/33670
Publication Date: 2014
Summary:

The Port of Seattle surveyed drayage truckers serving the port in 2006, 2008, and surveyed drivers again in 2013 in partnership with the University of Washington. This thesis describes the methodology used to survey drayage drivers at the Port of Seattle, describes the economic conditions of drayage drivers at the port and changes in economic conditions since previous surveys, and attempts to model driver earnings based on other driver characteristics.

By increasing the number of days that the survey was distributed, and by soliciting driver feedback to make the survey understandable and relevant to drivers, the 2013 survey was able to gather a larger survey size than previous efforts (290 responses in 2013, compared to 99 responses in 2008 and 167 responses in 2006).

From 2008 to 2013, there was a reduction in the number of drivers working five or more days per week, from 80% in 2008 to 70% in 2013. The percentage of drivers doing work other than port trucking has increased from 8% in 2008 to 37% in 2013. Findings suggest that due to changing conditions at the Port of Seattle, there is a growing population of drivers that do port trucking as a part-time job in combination with other forms of work, rather than a full-time occupation.

Attempts at modeling driver earnings based on other factors (English as a second language, trip type, doing work other than port trucking, and average hours worked per week) did not discover strong relationships between these factors and earnings. It is recommended that future efforts in this area use higher resolution earnings data than the data available from the 2013 survey.

Authors: Jerome Drescher
Recommended Citation:
Drescher, Jerome (2014). Economic Characteristics of Drayage Drivers at the Port of Seattle, University of Washington Master's Degree Thesis.
Thesis: Array
Paper

Processing Commercial GPS Data to Develop Web-Based Truck Performance Measure Program

 
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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/2246-12
Publication: Transportation Research Record
Volume: 2011
Pages: 92–100
Publication Date: 2011
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. This research collected GPS data from approximately 2,500 trucks in the Puget Sound, Washington, region and evaluated the feasibility of processing these data to support a statewide network performance measures program. The program monitors truck travel time and system reliability and will guide freight investment decisions by public agencies. While other studies have used a limited number of project-specific GPS devices to collect frequent location readings, which permit a fine-grained analysis of specific roadway segments, this study used data that involved less frequent readings but that were collected from a larger number of trucks for more than a year. Automated processing was used to clean and format the data, which encompassed millions of data points. Because a performance measurement program ultimately monitored trips generated by trucks as they travel between origins and destinations, an algorithm was developed to extract this information and geocode each truck’s location to the roadway network and to traffic analysis zones. Measures were developed to quantify truck travel characteristics and performance between zones. To simplify the process and provide a better communications platform for the analysis, the researchers developed a Google Maps-based online system to compute the measures and show the trucks’ routes graphically.

Authors: Dr. Ed McCormack, Xiaolei Ma, Yinhai Wang
Recommended Citation:
Ma, Xiaolei, Edward D. McCormack, and Yinhai Wang. "Processing commercial global positioning system data to develop a web-based truck performance measures program." Transportation Research Record 2246, no. 1 (2011): 92-100.
Article

Developing Roadway Performance Measures Using Commercial GPS Data from Trucks

 
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URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287183573_Developing_roadway_performance_measures_using_commercial_gps_data_from_trucks
Publication: Institute of Transportation Engineers. ITE Journal,
Volume: 84(6)
Pages: 36-40
Publication Date: 2014
Summary:
Global positioning system (GPS) devices that are installed in trucks and used for fleet management are increasingly common. Raw data from these devices present an opportunity for public agencies to use these trucks as probe vehicles to better monitor roadway operations and to quantify transportation system efficiency. Several North American programs have demonstrated that these truck GPS data can be used for a variety of performance measurement applications including locating roadway bottlenecks for trucks, providing travel reliability data, and informing planning and engineering processes. This paper discusses why these private sector GPS truck data are available, suggests how a public agency might acquire these data, provides some examples of the use of these data by transportation organizations, and covers some of the steps needed to make the GPS useful. In a performance measurement program, the GPS-equipped trucks are a small subset of all trucks on the network.

 

 

Authors: Dr. Ed McCormack
Recommended Citation:
McCormack, E. (2014). Developing Roadway Performance Measures Using Commercial GPS Data from Trucks. Institute of Transportation Engineers. ITE Journal, 84(6), 36-40.