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Nicole Coene
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you in the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Nicole Coene and I will moderate today’s seminar. Today’s topic is: Highlighted FHWA Freight Transportation Initiatives - Intermodal Connectors and Freight Analysis Framework.
Before I go any further, I do want to let those of you who are calling into the teleconference for the audio know that you need to mute your computer speakers or else you will be hearing your audio over the computer as well.
Today we’ll have three presentations, given by:
Vidya Mysore is a lead freight data and analysis specialist at FHWA Resource Center. Vidya leads and advises several freight data and applications programs that support for better Freight Transportation programs at FHWA and state DOTs & MPOs around the country. Some of the key Freight projects are; SHRP2 C20 (Freight data and model advancement) Implementation Plan, Freight Analysis Framework, and National Freight Network Program.
Before joining FHWA, Vidya was a manager at Florida DOT where he led major advancement in transportation systems planning and modeling applications practices in the state of Florida. Some of his accomplishments are: Supply-Chain Freight modeling practices, statewide project prioritization and selection processes, Toll roads design & revenue forecasting and ITS project evaluation planning tool - just to name few.
Vidya hold master’s degrees in Transportation Engineering and in Urban and Regional Planning from The Ohio State University, and a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Bangalore University, India.
Dike N. Ahanotu is a Principal in the Atlanta office of Cambridge Systematics with fifteen years of experience in developing state DOT and MPO freight plans, analyzing freight transportation data, and conducting research to integrate best practices into the freight planning and programming process. Prior to joining Cambridge Systematics, Dr. Ahanotu was an Associate at McKinsey & Co., an international management consulting firm. Dr. Ahanotu received a Doctorate degree in Civil Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering with a Minor in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Today’s seminar will last 90 minutes, with 60 minutes allocated for the speakers, and the final 30 minutes for audience Question and Answer. If during the presentations you think of a question, you can type it into the chat area. Please make sure you send your question to “Everyone” and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentations, but I will start off the question and answer session with the questions typed into the chat box. If time allows, we will open up the phone lines for questions as well. If we run out of time and are unable to address all questions we will attempt to get written responses from the presenters to the unanswered questions.
The PowerPoint presentations used during the seminar are available for download from the file download box in the lower right corner of your screen. The presentations will also be available online within the next few weeks, along with a recording and a transcript. I will notify all attendees once these materials are posted online.
Talking Freight seminars are eligible for 1.5 certification maintenance credits for AICP members. In order to obtain credit for today’s seminar, you must have logged in with your first and last name or if you are attending with a group of people you must type your first and last name into the chat box. I have included more detailed instructions in the file share box on how to obtain your credits after the seminar.
For those of you, who are not AICP members but would like to receive PDH credits for this webinar, please note that FHWA does not formally offer PDHs, however, it may be possible to receive PDHs for your participation in Talking Freight if you are able to self-certify. To possibly receive PDHs, please download the agenda from the file download box and submit this agenda to your respective licensing agency.
Finally, I encourage everyone to please also download the evaluation form from the file share box and submit this form to me after you have filled it out.
I’m now going to turn it over to Tiffany Julien of FHWA Office of Operations to get us started.
Tiffany Julien
Thank you very much Nicole. Hello everyone. I would like to share with you some information on the Freight Intermodal Connectors study. The Office of Freight Management and Operations has underway to evaluate the condition and performance of the NHS connectors and identify needed improvement. The agenda for today's presentation is as follows: there will be an Overview of the Study, Key Findings from the Literature Review, Description of Case Study Processes and Findings, Analysis of Connector Characteristics, Use, Conditions and Performance, Cost to Improve and Operate on Connectors, Supply Chain Implications as well as Next Steps and Future Research. Before we get started, I would like to provide you with some background information.
Freights Intermodal Connectors are connectors that provide the last mile connection between major intermodal facilities. For example ports, airports, intermodal rail yards, and the National Highway System. Although the officially designate network of NHS intermodal connectors account for less than 1% of the total NHS mileage, these roads are critical for the timely and reliable movement of freight. FHWA first inventoried freight intermodal connectors in 1998 and reported on them in the 2000 and NHS Intermodal Freight Connectors Report to Congress. While the inventory of freight connectors has periodically been updated throughout the years, there is not been a comprehensive assessment for approximately 15 years. The objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the condition and performance of a representative sample of the NHS Freight Intermodal Connectors. I would now like to turn it over to Dike Ahanotu.
Dike Ahanotu
Thank you, Tiffany. I am going to go ahead and jump right into the literature review portion. My name is Dike Ahanotu and I am with Cambridge Systematics. Some of the key findings from the literature review which is the first portion of our study were that there has been tremendous growth for intermodal containers on both Marine mode and also on the rail mode as well. You can see on the Marine mode intermodal volumes have tripled since 1990 and on the rail side they have doubled since 1990. On the other side of the coin air cargo and barge volumes have maintained flatness through the same time period. The other key finding that we have had during the literature review was that there has been an emergence of truck-truck terminals. This really comes out of the same universe as what are often called freight villages. They are locations where a lot of times trucks are coming in with goods and the goods are unloaded and re-stuffed them into other containers and redistributed to other vehicles and then the vehicles are taken to final destinations for the final unloading of the goods. They are basically facilities where goods are being moved back and forth between trucks and not interfacing with other types of modes.
One of the ways that you can see the growth of these types of terminals is to look at U.S. Warehousing Employment and how it is grown over the past 10 years. From 2004 to 2014, you have a growth of 30% from warehousing employment. I think this goes hand-in-hand with the growth of truck-truck terminals. We have some examples of it and we call them truck-truck terminals because we're in the freight intermodal connector world and they are also known as freight villages. There is the Dallas Logistics Center in Texas, the Pureland Industrial Complex in New Jersey, and the Coastal International Logistics Center in Florida. Some of the other key finders are that the number of designated connectors that increase for all modes approximately by 30%. So, regardless it was not consistent with the number of containers that had been moved across each of the modes but just that the connectors themselves. The number of designated connectors has been growing very rapidly. When you look at some of the global trends in freight and supply chain management you can see what is happening domestically here in the United States, it indicates that port, rail, and the truck-truck intermodal terminals will continue to grow at a rapid pace in the future.
One of the other things that we did during the literature review was look at available data sources for tracking and understanding the status of Freight Intermodal Connectors. Two of the most comprehensive data sources are both operated by the FHWA. The first one being the HPMS database and it has information on roadway descriptors, volumes, and pavement conditions. The NPMRDS database, which is a relatively new database, has information on truck speeds. Following the literature review we did a case study of 18 freight intermodal terminals and this allowed us to do a deep dive into a small set of freight terminals and understand how the terminals were connecting with the different freight terminals and how different organizations are planning for the operations of freight intermodal connectors as well. Across the 18 terminals there were 60 freight intermodal connectors that were studied. Also, you will see that when you look at the modal distribution of the case studies we had a big emphasis on the ports because the Maritime Administration was doing a good partner on the study as well.
We did have case studies on rail, air cargo, and emergent industries. One being in North Dakota and that connected the use of connectors and Williston. The City of Industry is a location where there are truck-truck terminals and we wanted to look at connectors in that area. Then for the Port of Jacksonville we wanted to study the emergence of the use of LNG as a potential transport fill fuel for ships. In the terms of process, we really extracted information from the FHWA databases in terms of volume, pavement conditions and speeds. We did that across all of the connectors that were analyzed. We also did an extensive review of planning efforts that related to intermodal connectors so we looked at State DOT plans and Long-Range plans, Freight plans on the MPO side, and looked at congestion management, TIPs and Freight Plans in the field as well. Then we looked at corridor studies and freight sub area studies because we wanted to understand how intermodal corridors were presented in the plans and what types of data and issues were associated with them and what the analysis that was done and the outreach that was done to understand what improvement projects were needed. Also what funding sources were used for making these improvements?
We also interviewed both the public and private sector stakeholders to see how planning actually unfolded for freight intermodal connectors in both types of studies. We wanted to know how freight intermodal connectors were in terms of the overall plan. In terms of usage of the roadways we did see a mismatch in the roadways between roads that were designated as NHS connectors and the ones that are actually being used. It was not across the board but there were definitely cases of mismatches with roads are designated as connectors but are not being used in that way anymore. We did see a moderate truck volume across the connectors so close to 1,600 trucks per day in terms of average of trucks that are using the connectors. There was a wide range from a few hundred to several thousand trucks per day depending on which connector you are examining. In terms of pavement condition, one of the things we did was compare the pavement condition of the case study roadways to other roadways in their respective states that had the same functional classification.
What we found was that about 80% of the case study connectors actually had worse pavement conditions relative to these other similar roadways in their state. On average, the pavement condition, if you look at the International Roughness Index (IRI Value), it was about 50% higher for the freight intermodal connectors compared to the similar roadways. There was definitely much lower pavement quality for the freight intermodal connectors relative to other similarly class roadways in their states. In terms of performance we looked at speed primarily and over two thirds of connectors experience congestion and we analyzed that by looking at nighttime free flow speeds and comparing it to daytime peak hours in the morning, afternoon, and midday. In terms of the case study findings related to planning, one of the things we found is that exist in data and tools that are typically used for freight planning are not widely used for freight intermodal connectors and there are a number of reasons why this is the case. Trucks count data that exists in a lot of the current sources are not considered to be sufficiently accurate for freight intermodal connectors. A lot of time there aren’t specific counts. The truck percentages are taken from other locations and are estimated on truck counts from other locations. Travel demand models are not calibrated and specifically validated for connectors because they tend to be lower volume. They do not necessarily have accurate volumes for representation of truck activity long freight intermodal connectors.
The NPMRDS database is relatively new so when these studies occurred they weren’t widely known or used at the time. For most of the planning studies, when they did emphasize freight intermodal connectors they actually connected new data to understand the volume and activity of trucks and other vehicles while on the connectors themselves. In terms of the types of studies that were done they primarily emphasized congestion and local community issues. Pavement condition was rarely mentioned in these studies. Along the lines of stakeholder coordination we found that connector can be owned by a variety of stakeholders ranging from states, counties, and cities and several often cross several jurisdictions and require the jurisdictions to cooperate and coming up with solutions for any freight intermodal connector issues. In terms of motivation they fall into two primary camps: here are states that are concerned about economic development and preserving the efficiency of the trucks moving in and out of these terminals and then you have local communities that are concerned about how their neighborhoods are being affected by trucks moving close to where they live and where they are driving in cars and walking on the streets.
In terms of coordination one of the things we found that was pretty consistent is that there is not an institutional thrust to have freight intermodal connectors included in planning efforts and typically when that does happen it is because there is a freight champion that understands the importance of the freight intermodal connector. These freight champions tend to be people with long-term public sector experience and extensive relationships into the freight private sector as well. Along on the lines of funding we found that FDOT was the one state that had an actively Freight Intermodal Connector Program. The two listed are the Freight Connector Operational Quick Fix Program and the Intermodal Access Program. There may be other programs out there but I did find one program that was approved by state legislation but never funded. There may be other programs because we did not look across all states.
To complement the case study process that I just discussed one of the other things we did was that we looked broadly across all of the connectors that have been designated by FHWA and looked at the characteristics and usage of the connectors were as well. In total what you have are about 798 connector terminals, across the entire U. S. and about 40% of those are port related terminals. Rail is about 25%, air cargo is another 25%, the rest are pipeline terminals, and across the terminals there are a little over 1,200 connectors. The characteristics you will find across the connectors is that you have a fair number of very low capacity roadways, about half are just two lanes, 40% have either three or four lanes and then another 10% that go back and forth between two, three, and four lanes. The average length of one connector is 1 mile to a little less than 1 mile but 71% of all of the connectors are less than 1 mile and you have a long tail on the other side were connectors can be more than 1 mile. I think the longest one was up to 7 miles long. On average the biggest difference you will see is that the connectors owned by local agent are averaged to be about 0.7 miles and the ones owned by state are averaged to be about 1.7 miles in length. In terms of data availability we have NPMRDS and HPMS as some of the main data sources. These had over half of the connectors with 88% having total volumes and truck volumes data, 82% having pavement conditions data, and a little more than half having truck speeds data. These sources also provided good data availability across the board and across these categories.
In terms of the summary use data the average number of truck on the full connector database is 786 trucks per day. What you will see is that there is actually, in terms of counts of vehicles on the connectors they are very concentrated within a small number of connectors. You will see of the 1.4 million annual trucks VMT on connectors about half of that is occurring on just 5% of the connectors. If you look at the top 50% of the connectors then you have 90% of the truck VMT on the top 50% of connectors. In terms of the ownership of the roadways this is split roughly 50-50 in terms of state versus local ownership. When you look at the VMT that goes on the state owned versus local connectors about 71% are on the state and 29% on the local. Looking again broadly at the connectors, if you look at pavement condition we are talking about an average IRI value or International Reference Indicator of 211 which rate as mediocre in the munipalities. The cities average about 257 and states average155 in IRI value. Over 90% of the connectors are somewhere between fair, mediocre, and poor in terms of how they rate and over one third are rated as poor. Looking at the performance data the average speeds on intermodal connectors as you will see a big difference between rural and urban connectors. We use the speed data to look at delays. You will see that there are 4237 truck delays on freight intermodal connectors and even more hours of auto delay were recorded as well. Daytime speeds are 11% less than free flow speeds with rail and port connectors having the worst congestions with 21% and 14% lower speeds respectively for each of these modes. We did see there area an actual relationship between speeds and pavement conditions whereas the pavement condition got worse the speed got slower.
We did take a high level examination of some of the costs associated with both the deficiencies of intermodal connectors and estimating what it would cost to improve the connector conditions as. If you look at pavement condition itself and what that means in terms of vehicle operating costs there are a couple of different methodologies out there that we looked at to develop estimates of the what impact is of poor pavement condition on vehicle operating costs. Using the methodology from the NCHRP 720 study we estimated about $31 million annually to operate on poor pavement conditions. When we used the HERS-ST values it went as high as $335 million. It's a pretty wide range overall but compared to what it would cost to improve the pavement condition we estimated that it would be about $2.2 billion to improve pavement condition so that all of the freight intermodal connectors are rated as good. We also looked at delay in a similar fashion. We looked at truck and auto delay on freight intermodal connectors we were looking at a $353 million cost of the connector delay and $3.2 billion needed to increase connector capacity such that the delay goes away. That $3.2 billion also does not include any ROW costs.
Another element of the study that we look that is freight intermodal connectors and how they fit in with longer and larger truck trips that occur. This slide shows a trip from the Port of Savannah to Atlanta. You will see, just starting from the bottom right the freight intermodal connectors is a very short segment relative to the entire trip. It is about a 205 mile trip and the freight intermodal connectors are just a few miles long and that can be compared to travel on an urban interstate. In terms of this particular truck trip the delay is more likely to be caused by what is happening on the urban interstates as opposed to what is happening on the connectors themselves. We did these examples across all of the modes and different types of truck trips to figure out how the intermodal connectors compare to some of the other truck trips that are important. In this example it actually shows truck trips leaving the BNSF yard in Memphis along Lamar Avenue and you'll see in the middle there is a purple start where there is a range of destinations they really travel on quite a few more number of roads relative to the runs that are actually designated for freight intermodal connector use. We talked a bit about the mismatch between what is happening and where the connectors are designated.
This illustrates the difficulty in trying to match up connectors with actual activity. Those were some of the examples that we looked at in terms of supply chain implications and we did have several more that are the report itself. That is a high level quick view of some of the items that covered on the freight intermodal connectors study. Some of the next steps, there are just two and one is to complete the final report and then do the final edits on some of the case studies. There is going to be future research that is going to be occurring for freight intermodal connectors that cover some of the topics using the findings that we did in previous research and applying that to planning and policy related to intermodal connectors. That is going to be looking at and examining criteria for connector designation. Does that need to change and does the truck volume criteria need to change? Is there a need to add new types of terminals? These are some of the questions we will be answering. We need to identify options for improving connector data quality so that the planning estimate efforts we have made can be more accurate. We also want to work with existing programs to refine performance measures for freight intermodal connectors. That includes some of the characteristics that we talked about today in terms of use, condition, and performance but also talking about funding and tracking how much resources that would be needed to allocate for connectors. Then developing guidelines for incorporating freight intermodal connector studies and multimodal connector’s studies as well. This is an overview of this study. You heard Tiffany talking at the beginning she is the FHWA Project Manager. If you have any questions that go beyond today she is the right person to send your questions to.
That concludes my presentation for today. Thank you.
Nicole Coene
Thank you Dike Ahanotu. We will now move on to Vidya Mysore from the FHWA Freight Resource Center.
Vidya Mysore
This is Vidya Mysore from the Freight Analysis and the FHWA Resource Center. Today I am going to briefly introduce you to FAF4, a new freight commodities data and information for freight professionals and also for everyone around the country who are incorporating the freight transportation program at the State DOTs and MPOs. During the webinar I will be talking about the Freight Analysis Framework (FAF). This is a critical freight data source for the division and many other freight practices in the country.
In today's agenda what I would like to quickly give you is a brief introduction to FAF and gear towards folks who do not have a chance to use it or learn it themselves in the past so there are some slides that I will walk you through. Also what is new in FAF4 and I will share that with you. We will talk about how the commodity flow data values this information and also discuss non-CFS. The next important thing is that I will walk you through quickly is where to find this data and what information is available and how to access this information. There is more forecasting information and network analysis. The product of the FAF4 is what I will share with you. So what is FAF? It is freight analysis framework that will be used as a key public resource for national level freight studies and analysis within the U.S. It consists of downloadable data set and a web-based tool that allows you to extract new and download specific information.
The FAF integrates data from a number of sources displaying freight movement among the states and major metropolitan areas by all modes of transportation. You can see that this graph on the picture shows you a very good data source for a national picture. If used correctly it could be easily adapted and used in the State DOTs, some bigger metropolitan areas, and organizations around the country. On this slide what I would like to quickly give you is some very familiar information that when you look at the picture you can see that the dark shaded color states California, Texas, and Florida the majority of those commodities tend within this country. At the same time there are other states especially in the middle of the country where you can see that the domestic movement might be happening across the states. This is pretty obvious information but FAF will give you some factual knowledge about the domestic value over each state.
This is the most commonly asked question “Why do we need the FAF? The FAF is excellent information of freight to identify transportation priorities. It can simply answer the question what modes are being used and how to the flows compared to other states and regions? What are the transportation impacts of these flows? Probably you have seen some of these pictures or graphs or on a map in the recent past when you have looked into State Freight Plans or freight projects. The important information here is that this FAF database will help you identify and quantify some of the freight transportation economic demand. This is key information in this database. Of course, this data is so valuable to develop some of the analytical tools of the freight transportation model. When it comes to the value of this model to be useful to that intermodal connector, obviously he made the point that the models are currently not capable of answering some of these questions. So if you pay attention and use the data wisely there is a possibility that you could keep the FAF data as an input to access the network analysis information. In summary, what does the FAF help us answer? FAF does give you the commodity, weight, and value. These commodities are broken into SPGT codes and these codes are for any state-level analysis well broken down. If you use the number of commodities that are out there are almost 43 of them, there is a necessity to understand them because in time the State DOT and MPOs understand the FAF for that region usually they will come to less than 50% of the commodity to added value out of these FAF. So this kind of exceptional information can be available. Keep in mind the FAF database is very important for long distance movement. Typically this type of data can be usable when you are trying to assess the FAF origin-destination which can potentially be greater than 50 miles. That is when you start using the network for analysis that we shared with you all.
This shows a very good flow of the database that you can access. Today the goal is to share the FAF website and I will share that with you at the end of the presentation. You can still access the older version of the database which is the FAF3. In the database you have the data sources which are on the left side of the screen, and in the middle that is all about how the data sources combine together to create the network type of data analysis and then they also share with you typical types of information but not specific knowledge itself. You will have the chance and a reason to use it and they can share this information later. At the end of the graph on the right side bar are user tools. These are tools shared in various forms. For example: origin-destination tabulation extraction tool and the State summary statistics table. Many states use this at the state-level. You can also go to another HEPGIS website to map this information into a data source for other geographies of interests. Another user tool that would be of interest is the GIS shapefiles. If you want to map this in a zonal structure, that is also available.
Today I am going to focus on just the data source on the screen, that is on the left side that is the commodity flow survey and the other data sources and then the origin-destination tabulation extraction tool table on the right side. So in summary, how is FAF developed? It is based on the National Data Source, the CFS. The key information, because this question often comes to us, is can I use the FAF data for my local region? The answer to this question is that that is where you start. Certainly, it is very important to supplement the FAF data with some of your local data collection. I will show you how to process and collect some of that data if you do not have it. Getting into the real information the FAF4 enhancements, there are two parts to it: the Commodity Flow Survey Improvements which will be spoken in the context of 2012 because that is the latest information that we have and then the Non-Commodity Flow Survey which almost constitutes about one third of the total value by what we call non-CFS data information.
So CFS improvement, let’s talk about that. This is key information that is conducted every 5 years in connections with the economic census. FAF4 is based on the 2012 CFS survey data with approximately 120,000 establishments which are freight transportation and the industries focused on manufacturing, wholesale, and other selected establishments. This serves only as a part of domestic movement because the information that is thrown together also has some limitations because of the confidential act of going into the information. So CFS is the result of information on origin-destination, commodities, the mode, weight and the value. An important part of why this will be very strong and reliable is because the data collected in 2012 is a much better technique than what you see on the screen. This was a 60% submission of electronic information. It used to be paper that people had to fill out, but starting in 2012 the folks who were submitting decided to do it electronically. It gives you good quality information and answers to the questions. So in the survey almost 60% of the data came through electronically. This is a good time to point this out because energy is a hot topic for many reasons. In the past the reason that energy sector but that information sometimes would get mixed up with, for example, gasoline commodities. We have to find a way for the commodities to be separated out and then clearly document where they are supposed to belong.
This is when I ask how can I get more zones? My state does not have many zones and I would like to have them. Unfortunately this year it is kind of like a building block of the past. When it comes to the FAF zonal structure it has to rely on the CFS. This commodity flow survey geography is being shared by the census and I will share that with you in a moment at the end of the presentation. The good news is that the much more dominant regions and metropolitan areas such as New Jersey or California are going to be broken apart from the rest of the state for more focus on geography. The number of domestic geographic areas has gone from 123 to 132 from FAF3 to FAF4 and we want this to cover all of the CFS data. I do want to make this point that this is an introductory webinar. I am not to go into too much detail about the data quality information but all of this information we will be sharing with you, especially for folks that are trying to evaluate information I will give you contact to access this data. For those that are interested while I am talking, you can download the information from the file share pod and we can talk about it later during the session. So here’s a quick look at how the picture looks like when it comes to FAF. The blue is all 2012 Commodity Flow Survey and the red is all from other data sources. For example, I just touched on the energy sector. The map on this picture at the bottom displays information from the SCTG Commodity code 1-42 and the vertically axis displays the percentages from the CFS and from Non-CFS. For example, the crude oil is listed here from the SCTG 16 and this data comes from an outside data source that has all been documented in another file. So there is one good example to show you when FAF is coming from CFS.
Let's quickly touch onto some of the CFS data and non-CFS data. As you can see here there a longer list of them and the important part of this is if you want to capture agriculture data for farm-based shipments, fisheries or all of this information is here. For example for farming and natural resources we would call the next 11. Construction is probably more important to urban areas where the economy is booming in the service industries. We saw information come from non-CFS data sources and then of course retail information too. Much of this information is much more fine-tuned and better collected including international trade data going into the non-CFS that feeds into the FAF. For the benefit of everybody for this webinar I am only focusing on the high level information. Last Friday, December 11, 2015 we had an extensive hour and a half long webinar and looking at the participants here today a few of them are presenting and certainly they would be happy to share with you but if not that webinar information will go into a lot more detail. Information will also be available very shortly in a recording of that webinar and in some of the information that I will share with you after my presentation. The webinar will help those of you who want to look into this a little more about the value of this information before you use it.
Quickly I want to touch on how the vast majority of our country is agriculture. This data on agriculture is sent to us from the USDA and this database all comes from the USDA: Census of Agriculture from 2012 and 2013 statistics. This feeds into some of those farming and logging information. Basically this slide is saying the same thing here. This information is much more rapid and contains better quality information that it is very well documented. The FAF data is very good to use for some of those very highly urbanized states and it is good for some places in the middle of the country where this data is really good right now. Similarly we have touched on construction and demolition, retails, and services industries. This is an important data source for all of us. It is also a very quick way to access the FAF4. We call this horse group data. It is not clearly focused and it is important that this is properly allocated and assigned and has the correct codes because the data comes from various sources and have to be fused into that and into domestic zones.
So quickly looking into accessing the data the FAF4 tool online, this database is available online. You can see on this website again that there is contact information at the end and it gives you data to access it. You can see on the screen how you can access this data by the tabulation that has been extracted. Also the complete database can be downloaded but keep in mind this is just 2012 data. I will show you any information later in addition to 2012. This data has been broken down into various segments. It includes domestic flows in which I indicated earlier as well as import and export flows. For those interested in states like California or New York or Maryland this information has been very well documented.
As I said that if you decide to click on one of those links here are some of the screenshots that I am showing you on the screen. This red circle has been highlighted in this data only has 2012 the blue line is highlighting 2012. Information for the other areas will be available within the next few months for the upcoming years. In summary of this, if you want to download there is a link on the left side here and you can access that and learn on your own about an overview of information. We have put together a very good user guide especially for the non-data analyst where you can browse through it and understand the big picture of what the FAF4 shares. This is a good user guide document.
What is coming next? I think going forward is more important. If you go there now you do not have this map that you see on the screen. This is what we used to call a bleeding map, this red color, I do not know why it is so popular but it is very popular. In this map you see here is FAF3. The FAF4 map which is in 2012 is the base year and we will provide the forecasting years. This data will be aligned and as soon as this is aligned our goal is to build a network analysis to share the information just like we shared FAF3 before. Just be patient and we will bring this information to you as soon as we can. Some of the frequently asked questions from the December 11, 2015 webinar presented some very good questions and we have additional facts on some of the data. We will share this data and it will be available. In the meantime I will give you the contact information of where to get it. This is a very fascinating question and the way that we answered it. How different are the FAF 3.5 and the FAF4 totals and mode shares, in 2012? You can see on the screen how it is been constructed and compared. There are three obvious reasons when trying to compare this and our immediate response to these are that you do not need to compare them and we do not recommend comparing these. We can discuss that later and treat this as new information and do not compare it to previous information.
For example, the FAF3.5 is based on census information from 2000 and FAF3 is based on census information from 2007 and the FAF4 is based on data from 2012. We quantities vary. We do not want you to compare them. At the moment we do not recommend that you compare them. If you need other information please feel free to contact us and we will be happy to share that with you. This slide demonstrates upcoming FAF4 products. FAF4.0 was released in October 2015. FAF4.1, 2, and 3 are the rest of the information that will complete that package and we will get that to you. FAF is only helpful at the national level. You have to connect the dots from some of the basic information from national data and local data. One form of information is from commercial establishment surveys. There is a webinar that we are scheduling on January 28, 2016 that information will be shared with you before the end of the week so please plan to attend.
We will all work with you going forward. Very valuable research documents will be available. This will be much more succinct and usable. We also have a number of webinars planned in 2016 including research done on the Commercial Vehicle Survey and its applications, and SHRP2 C20 Implementation Projects that involve local freight data innovations and behavior-based Freight models. Here is my quick contact information. I am Vidya Mysore and I am at the FHWA Resource Center and there is my email address and my phone number. I do recommend you contact us by email because your email will be answered much more quickly because this information is big and only one person can know all of it so we will be able to get the right person to answer the right questions. On the right side you can see a lot of website information so please go there and download the information. On the bottom right, on the actual tabulation you can see our primary database builder and you can go there to get this information. I think that a lot of questions we have already gotten. Before you want to map this data I strongly suggest you go to the census website because, as I said this has a lot of valuable data and you can map that data however would you like it. With that, I am concluding my presentation.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Vidya Mysore. I would now like to start off the question and answer session and answer some of the questions that have been posted online. Truck volumes on connectors and averages of 700 AADTT, does that accounts for all trucks, or just trucks destined for IMC?
Dike Ahanotu
That accounts for all trucks that were counted on the roadway. So some of the trucks are destined for the intermodal terminal and some are going to usually surrounding industrial locations.
Nicole Coene
I have another question for you Dike. How does this compare to the NHS that is in the early 2000?
Dike Ahanotu
We did do some comparisons to the NHS study and I think in terms of the number of connectors. There is 32% more connectors than there were back in 2000. They did a very different type of analysis in the earlier study but they did identify that there were issues with pavement conditions and I do not think they really quantified it. They talked a little bit about roadway geometry relative to the connectors as well and there were deficiencies along many of those road ways. There is not a lot of point of direct comparison from that perspective but we can certainly look at things like volumes and the numbers of connectors and the types of connectors and overall vehicle volumes between the two.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Dike. Another question for you is: is consideration being given to expanding the NHS connector concept to include last-mile/first-mile connectors that serve major freight generators such as manufacturing sites, warehouses, and utilities?
Dike Ahanotu
I think the closest that we came to that was this new concept of truck-truck terminals which is also the emergence of freight villages. We did not look at individual manufacturing sites and I'm not sure that that is under consideration but I think a big question that is out there is how to deal with these truck-truck terminals because they have a lot of the same issues as other type of intermodal terminals. We also ask the question of should they be considered in this type of situation? I would say in a broad sense we are considering truck-truck terminals but not just singling facilities such as the manufacturing site.
Nicole Coene
Vidya Mysore, I have a question for you, how will FAF be updated to reflect the findings of Cambridge Systematics case studies?
Vidya Mysore
That is a good question probably for Cambridge but I can give a theoretical answer. The connectors are such a short length of the corridor and you may not need a model to analysis what happens on those corridors. This data depends upon that connector that is trying to connect to either the freight generator or a code and you can analyze the information in a very unique way. Feel free to contact me and I will guide you because there is no one set answer. Each case has to be really unique and we analyzed on how you want to drop down the information to the analysis. The answer is there but you have to be methodical in fine-tuning the data to the information you are looking for.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Vidya. Dike this question is for you. Poor pavement conditions on NHS freight connector network; was the study able to dig deeper and answer why the pavement conditions were worse on the NHS freight connector network? (Evaluate pavement design, pavement preventative maintenance, maintenance, etc…).
Dike Ahanotu
We did not uncover a lot of information on that again that would have been an ideal question to examine as part of the case study process where we could go deeper and ask those questions. When we did the case studies one of the things we found was that pavement condition was not one of the things that was a driver for doing these freight intermodal connectors studies in the first place. There was not a lot of information collected on why pavement connectors or why freight intermodal connectors had worse pavement conditions that that is potentially something for future research but not something we have in the existing work that was done.
Nicole Coene
Thank you. Another question for you, because of the study is there talk of new design standards for OSOW and Freight?
Dike Ahanotu
We did not examine oversize overweight issues as part of the study. Typically from intermodal terminals you are not going to have issues with the oversize overweight trucks. This does not tend to be a large issue. There are some types of commodities that do come in through ports that are allowed to carry higher weights for sure. That is not something that we directly look that in this part of this study. Again, we did the case studies it was not an issue that was addressed in any way in existing planning documents or freight intermodal connectors either.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Dike. Can you tell me when will the case studies be available?
Tiffany Julien
Hi Nicole this is Tiffany I can answer that question for you. The case studies will be available and they will be part of the final report that will be made public. We anticipate having that published to our website in early 2016. The case studies will serve as an appendix to the final report so please be on the lookout for that.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Tiffany. Vidya, I have a question for you. Can you to define retail freight? Is it a shipment from a distribution center to a local Walmart or Target?
Vidya Mysore
This data was collected from the census report of the Annual Retail Trade Survey and it comes from a business background. It is more about what happened in that zone. So predominantly these are a part of the database connected. That is the kind of thing that the transportation planning elements connected to the land use of that region. We need that information to connect it to this type of a database. It is highly improbable that any national database can answer the question.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Vidya. Dike, how can a truck-truck facility be considered an intermodal terminal?
Dike Ahanotu
That is one of the question that we wanted to evaluate in our future research. From a terminology standpoint there are certainly different intermodal terminal implying that the goods are changing modes. When we did our literature review and we looked at truck-truck facilities they have a lot of the same characteristics as freight intermodal terminals in that they are not always right on the main NHS system. There are often local roads that are connecting between them to the terminals themselves and they have a lot of the same issues in terms of pavement conditions and the speeds are achievable on these roadways. They have a lot of similarities and that their economic importance of these roadways is very critical for the efficient operation of these freight facilities. Maybe if truck-truck terminals were included in this process that you have to expand the definitions and call them transfer terminals instead of intermodal terminals. Really what we are saying is that they have a lot of the same operational characteristics even though a truck-truck terminal is not technically an intermodal terminal per se.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Dike. Tiffany I think this is a question for you. Is there any timeline to expect the guidelines for MPOs?
Tiffany Julien
So with respect to developing future guidelines we have that as a second part of our study effort. We anticipate a period of performance for the second part of the study effort to take approximately10 months. As part of developing said guidelines we are planning to engage with our MPOs, stakeholders, and other state partners to develop that information. I would say that within the next 10 months we should have something available to share.
Nicole Coene
Another question for Dike, are the NHS freight network connectors that are and are not being used in the field identified by State and Latitude/Longitude/Length (connector segment) in the study?
Dike Ahanotu
There is a mapping capability that is associated with the freight intermodal connectors but I will have to double check and see exactly if the latitudinal/longitudinal information is available. Was the first part of the question about the state intermodal connectors?
Nicole Coene
It says are there any NHS freight network connectors that are not being used in the field identified by states and latitude and longitude blank?
Dike Ahanotu
We did that examination again just for the case study themselves. For each individual case study which ones that were or not being used. We did not do that system-wide across all of the connectors. That information would not be available for the broad set of connectors only for the case study locations.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Dike. When will the new red vein maps be available – in 2016?
Vidya Mysore
Yes. Most likely we should have it by the end of the summer but if not by early fall. That is all a part of our network model analysis and we are working to make that happen. I would say by fall 2016. Those were a crucial need. We still have to do some national freight projects and please can contact me for more information.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Vidya. We do have a couple of questions and I do want to give to those on the phone an opportunity to ask questions. If you would like to ask a question please press *one and your phone line will be taken off of mute.
Is there a process for having these roadways classified as an intermodal connector?
Dike Ahanotu
There is a process and I do not know if Tiffany wants to speak more on how the process unfolds. It is basically managed by the State DOTs and their interaction with the Federal Highway Administration.
Tiffany Julien
That is correct and I noticed that Bernadette Dupont from our Kentucky Division provided information on how that process works. What I can also do is provide this group with the web link to the information that speaks to how you go about designating or re-designating a freight network intermodal connector. I will share that with this group via the chat box.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Tiffany. Another question for Dike, for purposes of IMC designation/consideration, how (and why) do "freight villages" differ from "industrial parks" or "major freight generating facilities"?
Dike Ahanotu
The way the designation works currently is that you have to have an intermodal freight terminal and that is kind of the focus of the designation process. A freight intermodal connector needs to connect from the main NHS system to the freight intermodal system itself. So if you were to take a village or industrial park facility obviously were talking about more one location I have multiple access points and multiple modes to access that facility and that basically is slight privet off of the designation consideration. Again, currently, there is no consideration of an industrial park for example that only does truck to truck transfers that would not be a freight intermodal connector.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Dike. Again, if you would like to ask a question over the phone please press*one on your phone keypad.
The last question that we have in the chat pod at this time is: in the case studies, did you index the hours of the key generators along the corridors (such as a port that may have definite hours of operation due to longshoreman work rules)?
Dike Ahanotu
We did not do that systematically across all of the case studies. I know that we did talk about it qualitatively in the truck volumes on the freight intermodal connectors and I will be directly related to the operating hours of the facilities themselves. We did not do that in a quantitative fashion across all of the case studies but we did talk about the impact between operating hours and the condition of the intermodal connector itself.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Dike. At this time we do not have any more questions in the chat pod or over the phone. I am going to go ahead and wrap things up. The recorded version of this webinar will be available within the next few weeks on the website. The next seminar will be held on January 20, 2016 and the topic is Freight Transportation Resiliency. I encourage you to join the Freight Planning LISTSERV if you have not already done so. Thank you to our presenters and to everyone for attending. Please enjoy the rest of your day.
