Audio files require the Windows Media Player.
"Improving Freight System Performance in Metropolitan Areas" by Jose Holguin-Veras (RPI), Dan Haake (CDM Smith), and Jeff Wojtowicz (RPI) (6.7 MB)
Nicole Coene
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you to 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 Improving Freight System Performance in Metropolitan Areas.
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 have four presentations, given by:
Dr. José Holguín-Veras is the William H. Hart Professor and Director of the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations Center of Excellence for Sustainable Urban Freight Systems at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He has had numerous leading positions at professional organizations including World Conference of Transportation Research, the Association for European Transport, Transportation Research Board, and Pan-American Conferences of Traffic and Transportation Engineering. He received his Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin; a Masters in Science from the Universidad Central de Venezuela and a Bachelors in Science from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo.
Dr. Holguin-Veras' current research activities focus on freight transportation modeling and economics, and humanitarian logistics. His research has led to major changes in transportation policy and substantial improvements in the ability to improve urban freight systems. His work on humanitarian logistics has played an influential role in disaster response procedures, and has led to deeper insight into how best to respond to large disasters and catastrophic events.
Mr. Jeffrey Wojtowicz is a senior research engineer at the Center for Infrastructure, Transportation and the Environment (CITE) at RPI. He is also the Assistant Director of Administration at the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations Center of Excellence for Sustainable Urban Freight Systems. He received his bachelors of science in Civil and Environmental Engineering and his masters of Science in Transportation Engineering from RPI. His research interests include freight systems, intelligent transportation systems, traffic signal systems, traffic modeling and emergency response from planned special events and traffic incident management. He has been project manager for research that has resulted in the ITS America "Best of ITS" award in the area of Research and Innovation for a real-time route guidance project and four project of the year awards from ITS-New York.
Mr. Dan Haake has a history of working with local, state and national partners to solve complex and politically sensitive transportation challenges. At CDM Smith, Mr. Haake leads freight planning projects for clients throughout the United States.
Prior to CDM Smith, Mr. Haake administered the nationally recognized MPO freight-planning program; where he led a multi-jurisdictional effort to prioritize and accelerate a project portfolio to alleviate congestion threatening the Rickenbacker Inland Port. In 2012, the partnership's success culminated with the award of a fully funded TIGER IV grant to complete the final project in the portfolio.
Mr. Haake's work has been recognized by national organizations for innovation, collaboration and overall excellence. In 2013, Ball State named him a Graduate of the Last Decade for his dedication to public service and the university.
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 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 Jose Holguin-Veras Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to get started.
Jose Holguin-Veras
Fantastic. It is my pleasure to introduce today's webinar. And doing so what I would like to do is first acknowledge the contributions of a number of individuals who have significantly contributed to this important project. What I want to do today is introduce the overall subject to provide an overview of the public sector initiative that can be considered to improve urban freight. We are going to discuss case studies. We are going to have a small discussion of closing thoughts and at the end, your question and answers.
The first thing we need to highlight is why do we need the planning guide produced by NCFRP 33? To start, freight is the physical expression of the economy. We send money in one direction and one with cargo and the opposite. For that reason impeding freight flows is tantamount to impeding the functioning of the economy. Freight is the physical expression of the economy and should be treated as such. In addition to that, freight is a major component of GDP and is a major generator of employment. However the reality is that freight traffic produces a number of externalities. This is undeniable.
Freight traffic is a major consumer of resources and produces externalities in the form of pollution, noise, accidents, etc. Freight is a very complex issue. The production and consumption of normal goods is a socially beneficial activity. Freight is good, however, freight traffic creates problems. Part of the complexity of this issue is there is no easy solution or magic bullets, which leads to a situation where more multi-prong approaches are needed. It is complex and there are multiple stakeholders to deal with.
What I would like now is to do is give you an overview of the products from NCFRP 33. There are four major products I would like to highlight. The first one is the traditional planning guide in hard copies or files that you can download. We also have an electronic version that we are going to keep up-to-date with new developments and demonstrate in a couple of minutes.
In addition we have software that municipal governments, cities, and departments of transportation can use to estimate freight trip generation. You do not need to write down these URLs. They have been provided to you both in the chat box and at the end of the presentation.
I want to start with the initiative selector. One of the challenges for new entrants into the field of freight transportation is to get an idea of what kind of solutions or initiatives could be considered to address a given freight issue. In order to make it easier we have codify the wide spectrum of initiatives that could be used to address freight issues into a dynamic webpage. It is intended to provide suggestions to individuals that need to get ideas on how to proceed.
The selector is not a replacement for proper decision making or good transportation planning. They are just suggestions that somehow need be verified in order to assess which one is more convenient for the specific condition.
The process that we use to create the initiative selector was to codify the various initiatives and characterize them in terms of the impacts across three major criteria's: the nature of the problem, the geographic scope, and the source of the problem. So essentially what this is doing is to simply scan through the database of initiatives to provide suggestions. We want to stress that we need your help in improving the Initiative Selector by sending us references and letting us know of any mistakes, sending us pictures etc. etc. We need your help in keeping this initiative selector alive and getting better over time.
Just to give you an idea about what this is, this is a screenshot of the initiative selector. The idea here is you click the search criteria and then you get a set of the potential initiatives that could be considered. Once you click one of them which in this case is the Off-Hours Delivery Programs you get a one pager that summarizes what is this initiative all about. At the very bottom you are also given suggestions about initiatives that could also be related to or help to address problems you have specified. It is to give you suggestions but also to help explore the planning guide in a dynamic fashion and where to look for potential solutions. The overarching process that should be used when addressing freight issues is related to the traditional decision making process, in which you need to start to identify the causes of the problem, then you move to the goals and objectives. Then you identify the performance measures etc. etc. In the end you implement, monitor, and reassess a problem.
Now before all of that you need to make sure you have the facts right. A good place to start is to get a solid idea about freight integration. The screenshot that you have here is basically about NCFRP 19 Freight Trip Generation and Land Use. This is an important project that developed establishment-level model that uses a basic statistics about economic activity to produce an estimate about freight traffic. The good thing about this is that software is free and you can use publicly available data specifically the zip code business data. You can download this and the link is provided in this slide.
Obviously, these models are far from perfect, but they are pretty good and better than most. They will give you an idea about freight traffic in your areas.
Now just to give you a sense about the kind of analysis that you could do, what you have here is basically a summary of freight trip generation for the largest metropolitan area in the county, New York. In addition we have three different instances corresponding to the 75th percentile, the 50th percentile, and the 25th percentile leveling in Pennsylvania.
You can see here the type of outputs produced by this so far. It is worthy of notice that in the case of the If you notice in the case of New York the software estimates that about 1 million deliveries are produced in the metropolitan area. If that number may sound too high for you, keep in mind that in 1964, the last time the survey was conduct it, they estimated it to 2.8 million freight trips. These numbers only include freight intensive sectors that are the ones that primarily use freight. However, the reality is that households receive deliveries and also non-freight intensive sectors like education, public government, etc. They all receive freight and once you account for that, these numbers are likely to more than double. Freight activity is very significant.
Something else that is important to highlight is the fact that the bulk of the traffic is produced by small establishments. It is not produced by freight terminals. It is not produced by ports. It is produced by small establishments that receive deliveries for the daily activities. Again, all of that is a product of the freight distribution that we suggest you use.
What can the public sector do in order to improve the performance of human freight? There are a number of things that could be considered. This slide gives us a sense of the number of possibilities. In NCFRP 33 we have classified the different initiatives into seven major groups going from infrastructure management all the way do to demand management. Within each of them there are subgroups. Basically not all initiatives are used at the state that it should. Some of them are quite underused. There are also many actors both in the public sector and private sector. The presentation of initiatives has to be some undertaking to the engagement of all stakeholders. That's why we believe that the stakeholder process is important to the process of addressing freight issues. With that, I'm going hand it over to Dan Haake to continue.
Dan Haake
The report itself and the planning guide focus both on supply-side and demand-side solutions. First I want to talk about the supply-side solutions and often the most visual portion of our supply-side initiatives that are described in our reports are really infrastructure projects. They are the most visible and are the most complicated. As Jose mentioned freight investment has many different actors and owners. It's very different than any other types of transportation. Over the next two slides I'm going to talk about a wide spectrum of initiatives. Everything from new roads to intermodal terminals to small scale neighborhood improvements. The scale of cost ownership, responsibility, and stakeholder involvement will be different for each.
So major infrastructure projects, these are these initiatives that seem to be considered kind of quote, un-quote game changer projects. These are ring roads. A great example of this is the HOT project on 495 project where you both have public sector partners and private sector partners involved in the development. You have new intermodal terminals and even some intermodals have received public sector investments but at the end of the day the railroads still own some of those intermodal terminals and it's an added complexity that's different than building a traditional highway project. And then you have what is called Freight Cluster Development or more commonly called a freight village where the public and the private sector work with developers and land use authorities to really develop a master plan community and a great example of this is an Alliance in Texas and Pureland in the southern New Jersey, Philadelphia area.
The key take away is that these major initiatives do not happen in a vacuum. They only happen in tandem with what we call a freight quality partnership which is really a regional effort to accomplish your goal. I will talk more on that specific partnership issue later and move on to minor investments. We spent a lot of time talking about the game changers along the way. But we shouldn't just count the impact of minor freight investments. Freight is very unique. These small investments usually have the greatest impacts proportionally. Some examples of this would be acceleration lanes in urban areas with unique topography. A great example of this in Pittsburgh. Another is geometric constraints. Roads were often built and bridges were built 30-50 years ago and the land uses that drive the traffic on those roads are very different than when those roads were built. And also more recently, ensuring that complete street strategies are truly complete and that you can get goods delivered to the store so when you want to go buy a gallon of milk, you can.
With that I'm going to turn it over to Jeff to talk about parking and loading management.
Jeffrey Wojtowicz
I am Jeff Wojtowicz with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the initiatives that I am going to present this afternoon are going to transition from the typical supply related initiatives towards initiatives considered to have both supply and demand components associated with them.
The first group that I will present is the parking and loading areas management group. It is no surprise that parking is a major challenge for all vehicle users in metropolitan areas, however in many cases parking restrictions have been developed over the years to improve passenger vehicle parking but not commercial parking. This can lead to trucks double parking, unreliable delivery times, and unsafe conflicts with other users including passenger vehicles and pedestrians. Through our research it has been found in New York City that a typical carrier pays between $500 and $1,000 per truck per month in parking fines. So it is a substantial cost to do business in these metropolitan areas.
The first group of initiatives within this area that I am going to talk about is related to on-street parking. Typically, on-street parking has been the traditional way for deliveries to be made in urban areas. When parking on-street it is ideal to park in close proximity to where the delivery is going to be made,but that is not always the case. Sometimes they have to park several blocks away and use hand carts to make their deliveries. When properly implemented these initiatives tend to improve congestion, reduce miles traveled, and enhance safety. The first initiative within this group is freight parking and loading zones, which focuses on allocating curb space for parking and loading activities. Parking places for loading zone related strategies focused on designating and enforcing curbside parking, reallocating curb space, revising signage, and identifying potential freight vehicle parking locations. So if you look at the image that is on the top left, that is in London and they had designated certain areas where the sidewalk has enough space and they used pavement markings to actually get some of the freight parking and loading zones off of the street and on to the sidewalk. It has proven to be a good way to get the freight traffic off of the street and not block thru traffic.
The second initiative in this group is the implementation of loading and parking restrictions such as prohibiting commercial parking on residential streets or introducing time of day parking restrictions. The image at the lower left corner shows an example of an area that is designated as a loading zone for certain hours of the day where is it to be used as a loading zone from 9:30 A.M to 4 P.M but no other parking is allowed there.
Peak Hour Clearways is an initiative that prohibits curbside parking or stopping during the peak hours. This initiative can help reduce congestion during the peak hours but it might face private sector opposition if implemented. And the last on on-street parking is vehicle reservation systems. This allows drivers to reserve a curbside parking space in advance of their delivery. This initiative requires coordination with the carriers, shippers, and receivers. It also requires strict law enforcement. It is a relatively new idea for commercial vehicles but it has been used for passenger vehicles in the past and for commercial vehicles it is gaining traction in some areas.
Now moving on to the off-street parking and loading group of initiatives. Many buildings and metropolitan areas were not designed to handle the current truck sizes and volumes. Many of the building codes for these buildings and even the actual building code can be outdated. It is necessary to ensure that the new building codes account for the proper amount of freight being generated and an efficient amount of parking and loading facilities are considered. Enhancing building codes however could receive push-back from the private sector. They could require high capital investments and it is also likely that it would require a political consensus since it is going to be a major change to the entire city.
The next one, the timesharing of parking spaces allows for specific carriers to schedule the use of the parking spaces. This includes coordinating the time of pick-ups and deliveries with carriers, shippers, and receivers. And even some cases even passenger vehicles. Next, many large establishments with loading docks often have limited space for maneuvering and often have insufficient or outdated loading docks. The initiative of upgrading parking areas and loading docks recommends redesigning the loading docks to accommodate the geometric needs for the current and future tracks and many of these loading docks were built 50 years ago when trucks were smaller. Now truck sizes have increased and now trucks will park at a loading dock and it will protrude into the street. Sometimes these initiatives can be expensive and also might require additional space within the building, which in many metropolitan areas the additional space is likely used for something that is generating more revenue so they would prefer to use it as a space that generates more revenue as oppose to using it for storage space.
Improved staging areas is another off-street parking initiative, this initiative fosters the development of off-street facilities to conduct loading, unloading, and other freight related activities. The picture in the lower right-hand corner shows an improvised staging area that we saw in New York City, were basically a truck parks and then uses another parking spot behind it to take out all of the packages from the truck, sort them, and then an army of people basically take them to the final destination. So yes it is a staging area but it is not an ideal staging area and this staging area should be done outside of the urban core then make the distribution as soon as it arrives and not tying up this other parking space which could be used by another vehicle.
The last initiative in this group is related to truck stops and parking outside to metropolitan areas. It seeks to create adequate truck parking outside of the urban areas. These areas can give drivers relief during peak times or drivers can park there safely until it is closer to their scheduled delivery time.
The next group I will talk about vehicle related strategies that include emission standards, low noise delivery programs and regulations. These initiatives seek to improve environmental conditions by fostering the use of technologies and practices that reduce the negative externalities that are produced by commercial vehicles. If implemented these strategies require coordination, control, and enforcement between many different agencies. So for vehicle emissions standards they have help foster the use of vehicles that produce less environmental impacts and they are better for the environmental, however, emission standards have resulted in the need for changes in vehicle fleets which has which increases the investment, maintenance, and operating cost. Emission standards can take the form of alternative fuel emissions such as electric, natural gas, or even hybrid engines. Vehicle designs and components such as aerodynamic changes, low resistance tires can also impact vehicle emissions. And since it can be expensive for fleets to make these changes, it is advantageous if voluntary programs are put into place that will accelerate the use of these technologies. A couple examples of these include the Hunts Point Clean Truck Program and the Ports of Long Beach and LA Cleans Truck Program. Basically with these programs, funds have help to cover the cost of retrofit technologies for existing trucks or if you sign up to scrap your existing truck, funds can be made available to offset the cost of a new truck that complies with these regulations.
Also for vehicle related strategies the next group of initiatives is related to noise. It is no surprise that trucks and deliveries can create unwanted noise pollution. Delivery noise can be problematic especially in residential areas, near schools and hospitals. These strategies are designed to allow deliveries to be made with minimal noise impact to the surrounding communities. In the U.S the noise policies are often left to the local agencies although the EPA provides some basic guidelines for them to follow. Other programs have been established such as the Piek Programs in the Netherlands which provides limits to the amounts of noise that deliveries can produce. Some policies need to be carefully considered for example, such as the image that you see on the upper right hand corner that sign you typically see in mountainous towns and cities where they have restrictions on truck engine brakes. A lot of people think that truck engine brakes are noisy and not needed but these provide significant safety benefits to the community by allowing the trucks to slow down without using the traditional braking system. But it could be a matter of training the drivers not to use them when they are not needed.
The plot on the bottom is a noise profile that we collected in New York City of a typical delivery truck and you can see that during the course of delivery there are several deliveries during the peaks such as pushing the carts on the sidewalk, moving the ramps, closing the back door, closing the lift, and often times these can be eliminated by just by making the driver aware of these short-term noise impacts and training the driver and giving him the proper knowledge as to what is going on and how it impacts the community.
Reducing delivery noise also helps facilitate other programs such as off-hour deliveries. Wwhen the noise level is reduced you can shift other deliveries to times of the day when people, when traditionally it might have negatively impacted people. Here are just a few pictures of the whole spectrum of different noise reduction technologies that could be put in place. The picture at top left shows electric and alternative fuel trucks. Those are quite expensive but the other images show more low cost options such as a coating that you put outside the trailer that reduces the noise as people are moving around the trailer or the body of the truck. Low noise delivery carts that could simply mean putting rubbing wheels on the cart instead of metal wheels and that will have significant noise reduction impacts. And even low noise lift platforms which basically is putting rubber bumpers in certain spots so there is not an impact on the pavement when it goes up and down can have significant impacts.
The next group of initiatives is related to traffic management and this aims to improve traffic conditions using techniques from engineering and access control and vehicle related restrictions, time access restrictions, and traffic control and lane management. For access and vehicle related restrictions it is limiting access to freight vehicles to a certain target area. These initiatives include vehicle size and weight restrictions, truck routes, engine-related restrictions, low emission zones which are popular in Europe, and load factor restrictions. These initiatives are usually not well received by the carriers due to the operation changes and the costs associated with them. In this case these initiatives are implemented for safety reasons. But in other cases they have been implemented as a means to remove trucks from streets. And this is not always the best answer in terms of trying to solve some of the problems. Low emission zones are meant just for those that may not know what a low emission zone is. Low emission zones are environmentally sensitive areas where access to both passenger and freight vehicle is constrained. These zones can provide carriers incentives to switch to designated vehicles that meet the environmental standards. And it turns out that many operators tend to operate the most efficient vehicles to haul their cargo. If you have a small load to carry you're not generally going to use a tractor trailer to haul it into the city. Conversely, if they have 10 vans worth of cargo to bring into the city chances are they want to do it in a trailer and not 10 individual vans. So the carriers are often maximizing which vehicle type they are using based on the cargo they are hauling on any trip. It is also important to note that research has clearly shown that these restrictions could lead to counter-productive effects of congestion and pollution.
The next is time access restrictions. They impose restrictions on the times at which freight activity can take place with the intent to reduce freight traffic during congested times of the day in specific sections of a city. So the map on the left is an example of these restrictions in China. There are several cities in China that have implemented restrictions as well as Rome.
But the three main types of time access restrictions are daytime delivery restrictions, daytime delivery bans, and nighttime delivery bans. The relaxation of delivery windows can reduce congestion by allowing the peak traffic to spread out over more hours. Implementing any of these initiatives requires a great deal of planning that considers the characteristics of the areas freight movement industry's and land use, and it involves extensive stakeholder engagement. In some cases without their knowledge building owners and sometimes receivers have imposed delivery time restrictions.
The two pictures at the lower right are typical around many urban buildings especially near the loading docks where they have signage on the outside wall that says what the hours are for either the freight elevator or for deliveries. When you start asking around "how come those signs are there and who decided on the hours?" It often goes back decades and nobody really knows why they are there. The signs started out there 20-30-40 years ago and they just leave it there and follow those rules. They often don't have any reason why that sign might be there.
The last group within traffic management is related to traffic control and lane management. These initiatives promote the effective use of available road capacity by optimizing the location of the lane rights of way. These initiatives could also reduce travel delays and improve reliability, mobility, and safety. The picture at the top left shows a restricted multi-use lane in Barcelona, Spain and you can there is a VMS sign on the pole and basically based on the time of day it changes are based on what vehicles are allowed and there might be a bus that is allowed in that lane. Other times it is deliveries and these have been found to be very beneficial except in some cases they could be confusing because you don't know what to expect in any given time. The image at the lower left shows extensive truck lanes. Truck lanes can provide improvements to truck operations, including better reliability and improved safety. But they are often costly basically because you are duplicating infrastructure and it requires a significant amount of right of way to build these exclusive truck lanes.
The last one is control traffic initiatives, which can be used to monitor and control signs and other technologies. When real time traffic information can be passed back to the drivers and they are able to make more informed decisions and hopefully improve congestion. At this time I am going to turn it back over to Jose.
Jose Holguin-Veras
The next group of initiatives focuses on the use of monetary signals to induce beneficial changes in traffic and demand patterns. There are three major groups, pricing, incentives, and taxation. One of the key thoughts is that parking pricing can be very beneficial, particularly, if we increase the location of parking spaces and price them. This will provide delivery spaces for the trucks to make deliveries but also generate revenues. Time-of-day-pricing has also been considered but the empirical experience indicate that time-of-day pricing has a limited impact to manage freight traffic. That was the case for London. That was the case in New York City. Other alternatives exist like incentives. At the top left you have FORS, which the Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme that is organized by traffic for London. It awards different levels of recognition to companies that follow best practices. This is an example we could use.
The next group of initiatives focuses on logistical management that try to change the way in which deliveries take place. It changes the way of logistics. The three major groups as indicated in the slides. The area of cargo consolidation to many it is an appealing concept. There have been a number of trials in urban consolidation centers and most of them have failed. These centers somehow consolidate the cargo that has been destined to a congested CBD. Â
As you can see in this picture from Sweden, they consolidation deliveries in this area and then make deliveries to the CBD using this electric vehiclt. It is appealing but getting them to do this concept to work can be a challenge. Out of 150 trials less than 20 are in operation. Somehow it is a concept that has potential but has to be properly designed in order for it to succeed. Obviously in the age of ITS, there are basically a number of solutions that could play an important role like providing real-time information to truck drivers. Vertical height detection systems to allow trucks to keep from hitting bridges and tunnels and all of those things could play a role in increasing the overall efficiency of freight activity, reducing those negative environmental externalities. The other group of initiatives focuses on changing the last mile aspects. There are a number of initiatives that have great potential for instance time slotting of deliveries. In many large freight traffic generators, like large buildings in urban areas, there tend to be crowding of deliveries in the early morning. These types of systems are like appointment systems that allow deliveries to take place throughout the day, thus reducing the impacts they produced on the city. On the top right, you have one of these delivery lockers that is managed by USPS. All of these things can reduce and mitigate traffic by changing the destination of deliveries.
An important group of initiatives is related to demand/land use management. These initiative seek to change the nature of freight demand. This initiative does not seek to modify traffic or to modify logistics. It focuses on trying to alter demand in the most efficient way. It is broken down into key major subgroups. One is demand management and the other is the land use policy. The land use policy is intended to modify demand but it is more long term than the other ones. Examples include off-hour deliveries, staggered deliveries, receiver-led consolidation, and mode shift programs. All of these things deal with the modification of demand. Starting with off-hour delivery problems, this initiative seeks to shift part of the traffic to increase deliveries in the off-hours. There are two good examples of these things in the U.S include the off-hourly delivery program in New York City and the Peer Pass Program in California.
The off-hour delivery program in New York City has succeeded in switching to the off-hours about 4% of the establishments in the food sector in Manhattan. Again this 4% is what has been achieved as part of the research program. Now if you have a full implementation of this we are positive that could move more in excess of 20% of traffic to Manhattan during the off-hours. This has led to a number of successful pilots of off-hour deliveries and we have a number of additional ones being planned for Washington D.C, Orlando, Florida, and others. Basically they have been quite a success.
An important approach that has not been widely used in the U.S is the concept of delivery and servicing plans that was pioneered by Transport for London. This initiative tried to manage the freight and service traffic that exist. This building that you see here is the headquarters of the Surface Transportation Directorate of Transport for London. They tried to find out how many truck trips, how many deliveries, and service trips were going to that building. They found that three cafeterias in that building were getting different deliveries of milk from different vendors. So the question was why do you have all these vendors for the same type of milk. So they decided on a way to produce milk in bulk from only one vendor. That helped reduced the freight traffic going to the building. This allowed them to reduce freight traffic going to the building by 20%.
In the U.S we conducted a survey to access whether or not receivers could consolidate deliveries and guess what? About 20% of them indicated that they could reduce the number of deliveries theycreate. We need to seek to reduce freight traffic because of the way it is created and managing by means of traffic management or logistical management is going to be a challenge. Meanly when to use and how to approach to mitigate these externalities produced by freight traffic.
Dan Haake
Another thing that is important to consider is stakeholder engagement. I mentioned earlier that the freight system is unique and that there a private sector owners and actors and it results in more than one public that transportation planners need to address. It is obvious that there is the normal public, the public that you prepare your public outreach plans for, but also that private sector users and owners that own a big part of the system. Even though if you don't realize it, there are some day to day decisions that really impact the entire system overall, therefore, your public involvement process needs to be very different.
A great way to begin this process is by identifying a freight champion at your agency that will try to carry the freight flag. A great example of this is Ted Dalaburg at the Philadelphia PO. Back in the 90's he wanted the agency to act as a regional facilitator and edge carrying issues and it really matured freight planning for MPO's. Quite frankly many MPO's have adopted his approach and when I used to work for this one MPO, we whole-heartedly adopted this approach. It is a really important vehicle that someone actually owns freight and acts as a facilitator. Another great way to get stakeholders involved is the creation of a state advisory council. This is something that is encouraged by MAP-21, but it is just a good idea overall. There are many different ways to create one, but the main thing is that it is important to have one. It is important to get that private sector perspective. At the end of the day they are really your customers. They have a very unique perspective of the system that the data may not show so they're a really important to stakeholder group to have involved.
Also for a minute, I wanted to talk about elected officials. Ultimately they make most of the investment decisions and in some case all of the decisions. Those elected officials are primarily interested in job creation and economic development which is exactly what freight it. So it is important for those freight champions to be able to translate the technical background and analysis of freight into the kind of language that people can understand.
The report includes six case studies. Each case study presents real world examples of how to use the initiative examples in the report within the transportation decision making process. Today I am going to focus on two case studies, one in Toledo and the other in the Seattle region. The one thing I want to point out before I get in to the case studies is that all six; the commonality between them was partnership. Partnership is critical to the success of all transportation work. Freight is unique because it is not only multi-modal but the private sector owns the majority of the freight system so it's kind of a unique beast.
The first case study is Toledo's airline yard. Over the past decade I have read a lot of case studies where many have focused on communities overcoming some sort of freight challenge. This case study is very different. The Toledo Region itself functions as a three-state interconnected region. That would include Detroit, Toledo itself, and Fort Wayne. Many people in that region call it Lake Erie West, it is kind of a mega-region concept. The area itself is home to 6 million people not counting those that live in Canada, which should be included as well. Â
Toledo serves as a nexus highways, railroads, and maritime. For example the Port of Toledo is a major railway port that it was so important to the economy back in 1835 that the states of Ohio and Michigan actually had a shooting war over it., over the dividing between Ohio and Michigan, many people account that to the animosity between Ohio State and the University of Michigan. So it is kind of unique and a lot of people don't know that freight was the basis of that.
But anyways back to the case study. In the early 2000's, the region realized that its economic success was tied primarily to the automotive sector. So the team at TMACOG, their MPO, the city of Toledo, and the University of Toledo's Intermodal Institute created a partnership that looked at diversifying the region's economy through its natural freight and they called this group the Joint Intermodal Task Force for Transportation and Logistics. However, they took a completely different approach from many of the communities that were interested in building intermodal yards and freight infrastructure. The JIFT approachrf Norfolk Southern Railroad with a solid business case on why the improvements and the yard itself were good both the railroad and the region. The approach really took the railroad by surprise. The reactions of the proposal were mixed. Initial they did not see much of an intermodal market in Toledo but they agreed to take a look at the numbers and the analysis. After analyzing the proposal the railroads decided that the operational improvements that the "Y" between the two main lines on the map, on the slide there is a railroad that goes north, which is their main line to Detroit. The railroad that goes east to West is the main line between Chicago and New York.
Really the issue was trains had to come up from New York and had to back up in to the yard so they created a way to alleviate that bottle-neck. After they analyzed the improvements the railroad decided they were going to invest 3 1/2 million dollars for improvements. Since the project was completed, traffic has picked up so much in the intermodal yard that Norfolk Southern is actually offering direct service between the West Coast and Toledo, which effective means that there is enough traffic to justify an entire train or at least a large block of rail cars between the two OD pairs. The operational improvements also added fluidity on the Norfolk Southern system especially the East to West route, which is one of the heaviest routes in their system throughout the Toledo metro area which means decreased cost and increased opportunities for regional businesses to utilize the railroads. And then I heard just last week when I was in Ohio that Norfolk Southern is actually looking at ways to double capacity at the intermodal yard. It is definitely a proactive case study. Something has just been largely flown under the radar that has many lessons learned for our country.
The next case study is the Fast Corridor in the Seattle region. Unlike the other case studies in the guide, this fast corridor was started by the private sector. In 1992 WASHDOT formed a freight council to provide input into their transportation plan. It just so happen that one of the members of their staff was also a member of the Region Council Policy Board. That member recognized the importance of freight in the community and began to really be the champion within the MPO board and start to push for change through the overall agency process. Working with the MPO staff this member began to build freight planning as their overall planning process and it led to the development of their initial freight plan and a freight quality partnership that ultimate lead to the creation of the Fast Corridor.
Researchers have compared the success of this partnership with the Alameda Corridor although while both groups worked to improve their metro's freight networks. They really had different approaches and purposes. In Los Angeles, the other corridor group responded to an immediate need, whereas the Fast Corridor group worked to enhance the network in anticipation of future growth. The fast partner capitalized on potential business opportunities that might result from service interruptions in other West Coast ports so essential their goal was to increase resiliency within the regional freight network to capture some of that potential. They were really proactive with this instead of just waiting for the volumes to increase. Over the past 20 years, the group stuck around which has shown us versatility.
Initially the group focused on capturing big wins with some of the corridor strategies in ISTEA and TEA-21. But MAP-21 required a different strategy. Today that group is focused on programs that are too small for the one municipality to handle. One of the major changes in MAP-21 was the major consolidation of highway programs. Several of the programs were appealed including concluding the High Priority Project Program which had been the main fund source for the program. Although MAP-21 carries the authorization there were no appropriations made for the actual program. So where does that leave the remaining Fast projects? Today that group is primarily focused of projects that are too small for the State DOT to focus one but too large for one municipality to handle. So as a group they handle challenges that no single entity could resolve. This has really provided high-quality results but also increased buying from the private sector freight partners and their keeping those freight partners engaged because showing results.
Jurisdiction whose projects that were delayed commonly shift their projects and allocations to other jurisdictions projects if those projects are ready to move forward. Simply the group thinks as a region and that focused has really sustained this relationship throughout the years and through all of those changes.
So the lessons learned from this partnership directly apply to regions looking to improve their communities and looking to capture future freight opportunities. Although the project's initial wins came from being able to fund projects through the Borders and Corridors Program, the group really strategically positioned themselves in the long term to also pursued forthcoming non-traditional highway funding. For example, they used their strategy and partnership to approach the ARRA funding in 2009. So today, the Fast Corridor partnership has begun to serve more as for the formal fact of the region. It utilizes the member's institutional knowledge about the previous corridor development and the group itself has the technical and policy level experience that will be beneficial to take on the challenges of the future. Two really great case studies showing some active and proactive leadership of both the public and private sector working together to achieve goals.
With that I will turn it back to Jose to provide some closing remarks.
Jose Holguin-Veras
The main goal of NFRCP 33 is to outline a process to improving the freight system performance in all dimensions: environmental, social, livability, and economic. There is a wide range of initiatives that should be considered. Some of them are very good and some of them are underused. There are no magic bullets, and we need to use multi-prong approaches involving freight demand changes, demand management, and traffic management because the reality is that the traditional approaches that we have been using are not working. We also need to acknowledge that every situation is different because local conditions matter a great deal. The material that has been presented here are nothing more than entry point. We need to stress that we need to know that research and experimentation are needed. Technical training is also needed to foster widespread changes.
We need to undertake a holistic transformation of supply chains to induce changes in receiver's behavior. We also need to modify demand. We cannot continue to cope with the traffic networks we need to determine how to use freight demand to manage these approaches. It is also important because of the pervasive nature of freight activity in urban areas. Freight is not the only activity that takes place at ports. Freight takes place at every neighborhood, at every block etc. etc. So we need to obtain a fine-level detail on freight activity at the block and neighborhood level to find the best solutions. In doing so, we need to embrace a collaborative approach involving all key stakeholders whom all have something to contribute to the solution of freight issues. The private sector, the public sector, local communities they all play a major role in finding proper solutions. We also need to transform existing freight policy and embrace innovation in urban freight.
Nicole Coene
We will now go through some of the questions and comments that were provided in the chat. The first comment was "Loading zones were not considered with some of the commercial building designs. Do any of our speakers have comments regarding that?"
Jose Holguin-Veras
That's an issue. We have some of the landmark buildings in our cities like the Waldorf, Macy's, the Empire State Building etc. etc that generate large amounts of deliveries. Many of those buildings do not have the number of loading zones they need to accommodate the traffic they produce. We need to modify the land use ordinances to make sure large buildings take care of the demand that they create. In the case of Macy's, during the Christmas season sold 15 million items. Our staff went out during the Christmas season and they found dozens of trucks lining up for delivery at Macy's when they only had five loading docks. There is no way to accommodate 15 million items in five loading docks. Basically the retail sector has to be convinced that they have to play a role in the solution of freight issues in urban cities.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Jose.
Our next you have already at dressed, but if you or the other presenters wanted to speak to it more. "Regarding the off-peak delivery model, has there been research done to show the percent of shifts that would likely shift from night time to daytime for an average city?"
Jose Holguin-Veras
We have done research on off-hour deliveries inNew York City and in Spain. We don't have data on "average cities". However, the results for NYC and Barcelona and the other Spanish citiesare remarkably similar. Off-hour deliveries could catch about 20% of the total freight traffic in the city, which is a humongous number by the way. But we don't have data for averages.
Nicole Coene
Another question that has already been answered, "In implementing these strategies, have the proponents evaluated how much the end-cost of the product or service has increased, thereby increasing cost of living, could we add that factor to the decision process some way?"
Jose Holguin-Veras
Basically the cost of cost of living is important. Some of the initiatives that have been undertaken for example urban consolidation centers can involve an additional transfer of the cargo and increases in cost. This is one of the factors that have led to many of these urban consolidation centers to close shop. Becauseonce the the public sector subsidies awarded at the start of the project ends, the consolidation centers close. There are many initiatives, like the ones in freight demand management; that do not have negative impacts on the cost of deliveries. In fact, if they are done unassisted they may lower the cost of deliveries. But there is a significant amount that does the opposite.
By the way in the planning guide, we have tried to identify how to discuss this benefit as well. The actual text you are going to have a discussion about the impacts on the final cost of goods.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Jose.
Another question, "With peak freight hour management, has anyone seen an issue of unexpected consequences with new congestion in rest areas outside of Metro areas? Safe parking is already an issue in a number of areas and I know hours-of-service is freight delivery."
Dan Haake
I think truck parking is always challenging. The freight market is changing somewhat with the hours-of-service but also the truck driver shortage. So I think that is a revolving subject and yeah there are changes and states are looking at that, but I think we are still in the early development of those changes.
Jose Holguin-Veras
In the area of traffic management, there are many initiatives that are known to have negative unintended consequences. Truck size restrictions are known to create more traffic and if the companies start to use small trucks, they are going to use more trucks. Because of the truck size restrictions they have to split the cargo in multiple vehicles. For every large truck that they take off the network they will replace it with more than two small trucks. Multiple small trucks will produce more congestion, more externalities, and more pavement damage than a big truck. That is what our research has found. There have been many initiatives that have seemed to be good but they have negative consequences and somehow the potential for unintended consequences is one of the factors that we are discussing in the planning guide.
Nicole Coene
Thank you. "Does anyone have rules of thumb for density of populations, commercial centers per capita or other points at which to start considering Metropolitan freight improvements? In New Mexico I haven't heard such urban freight issues coming, but as urban centers increase in density I am sure these will come up. Instead of being reactive when should we be proactive especially when some of corrections might require investments from various sectors ahead of issues actually arriving?"
Jeffrey Wojtowicz
At the moment I am not aware of any.
Jose Holguin-Veras
The freight generation software that we have provides you with estimates of freight activity because freight activity and freight deliveries are typically undertaken not only by big trucks. In fact in urban areas large trucks are the minority. Big trucks are 10% - 20% of the total. A big chunk of the truck traffic is being produced by delivery vans, and small trucks alike. Somehow, this is invisible to us. Take a look at the freight generation software to see how many deliveries and that will give you a sense about the magnitude of the traffic.
Nicole Coene
Thank you Jose. One last question. "How is the importance of origin and destination research for cargo flow for planning?
Dan Haake
It is incredibly important. Freight commodity data is an important tool for state and MPO freight planning. The challenge is getting that data and translating that data but also when you get down to micro scale that a lot of MPO's need companies are not willing to share their information because not only for proprietary but it can be used to steal their business.
Jose Holguin-Veras
I see two different levels of needs. For planning purposes OD data is very important. For local analysis, freight generation is vital. For example, the congestion produced at city center what matters is how many deliveries have taken place? That is good often to find out how to deal with the local needs. Something that is important to mention is service trips. Service trips might account to 1/3 - 1/2 of the traffic produced by freight. We do not know much about it.
Dan Haake
There was another NCFRP study that revealed about a hand full of freight generators or freight shippers that were responsible for the majority of trips in the urban core. It is really important to understand what goes on, it is not just the numbers.
Nicole Coene
At this time we will open up the phone lines for any questions. If you have any questions please press *1 on your keypad if you have any questions.
We will give a moment just to see has questions over the phone. We have one more comment on the chat pad. "In Seattle truck size reduction is a very popular concept with non-freight constituents. It will be beneficial to have some examples of what the negative consequences are as described by Jose."
Jose Holguin-Veras
We will be more than glad to send you materials about this. The truck size restrictions are popular with the constituents living inside the area in which the restrictions take place. If instead of large trucks the deliveries are made with small trucks, the residents inside the restricted are perceive the new situation as an improvement. If the carriers switching from big trucks to small trucks, they will sending 2 or more trucks to transport the cargo that was transported by a the big trucks. From the perspective of the rest of the Metropolitan area you have an increase in VMT and that is what happens. Â
Nicole Coene
There is an audio question over the phone from the line of Bozo.
Bozo?
There is a new concept called core center oriented development in new areas. The idea is to divide some of the rail terminals where there is waiting for or along the centers which attract more cargo movements so that the local delivery distance can be shorter as to the traditional freight village. I am wondering if any of you have comments on this new idea.
Dan Haake
I think the Toledo case study is a good example of that where a lot of the initial containers that went through the yard were domestic containers that were used by regional industries. I think that is a great example. I think the cargo area development really lines up with the freight cluster and freight village idea we discussed before.
Jose Holguin-Veras
If urban areas are major are major consuming and producing regions, about 80% moved throughout the U.S has origins and destinations going to Metro areas. All cargo has to come and go from urban areas. It is important to acknowledge the important role of freight cost to the economy and the driver.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Jose.
At this time, thank you for attending the seminar. The recording will be available within the next few weeks at the talking freight website. The next seminar will be held on June 17 with the topic to be determined. I will send out a notice and will send you the information.
That concludes today's Talking Freight webinar thank you for attending. This concludes today's conference call. You may please disconnect.
