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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Freight-Demand Modeling to Support Public-Sector Decision Making. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14445.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Freight-Demand Modeling to Support Public-Sector Decision Making. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14445.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Freight-Demand Modeling to Support Public-Sector Decision Making. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14445.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Freight-Demand Modeling to Support Public-Sector Decision Making. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14445.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Freight-Demand Modeling to Support Public-Sector Decision Making. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14445.
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Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

TRANSPORTAT ION RESEARCH BOARD WASHINGTON, D.C. 2010 www.TRB.org N A T I O N A L C O O P E R A T I V E F R E I G H T R E S E A R C H P R O G R A M NCFRP REPORT 8 Subscriber Categories Data and Information Technology • Freight Transportation • Marine Transportation • Motor Carriers Planning and Forecasting • Policy • Railroads Freight-Demand Modeling to Support Public-Sector Decision Making CAMBRIDGE SYSTEMATICS, INC. Cambridge, MA A N D GEOSTATS, LLP Atlanta, GA Research sponsored by the Research and Innovative Technology Administration

NATIONAL COOPERATIVE FREIGHT RESEARCH PROGRAM America’s freight transportation system makes critical contributions to the nation’s economy, security, and quality of life. The freight transportation system in the United States is a complex, decentralized, and dynamic network of private and public entities, involving all modes of transportation—trucking, rail, waterways, air, and pipelines. In recent years, the demand for freight transportation service has been increasing fueled by growth in international trade; however, bottlenecks or congestion points in the system are exposing the inadequacies of current infrastructure and operations to meet the growing demand for freight. Strategic operational and investment decisions by governments at all levels will be necessary to maintain freight system performance, and will in turn require sound technical guidance based on research. The National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) is a cooperative research program sponsored by the Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) under Grant No. DTOS59-06-G-00039 and administered by the Transportation Research Board (TRB). The program was authorized in 2005 with the passage of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU). On September 6, 2006, a contract to begin work was executed between RITA and The National Academies. The NCFRP will carry out applied research on problems facing the freight industry that are not being adequately addressed by existing research programs. Program guidance is provided by an Oversight Committee comprised of a representative cross section of freight stakeholders appointed by the National Research Council of The National Academies. The NCFRP Oversight Committee meets annually to formulate the research program by identifying the highest priority projects and defining funding levels and expected products. Research problem statements recommending research needs for consideration by the Oversight Committee are solicited annually, but may be submitted to TRB at any time. Each selected project is assigned to a panel, appointed by TRB, which provides technical guidance and counsel throughout the life of the project. Heavy emphasis is placed on including members representing the intended users of the research products. The NCFRP will produce a series of research reports and other products such as guidebooks for practitioners. Primary emphasis will be placed on disseminating NCFRP results to the intended end-users of the research: freight shippers and carriers, service providers, suppliers, and public officials. Published reports of the NATIONAL COOPERATIVE FREIGHT RESEARCH PROGRAM are available from: Transportation Research Board Business Office 500 Fifth Street, NW Washington, DC 20001 and can be ordered through the Internet at: http://www.national-academies.org/trb/bookstore Printed in the United States of America NCFRP REPORT 8 Project NCFRP-6 ISSN 1947-5659 ISBN 978-0-309-15513-7 Library of Congress Control Number 2010938056 © 2010 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. COPYRIGHT INFORMATION Authors herein are responsible for the authenticity of their materials and for obtaining written permissions from publishers or persons who own the copyright to any previously published or copyrighted material used herein. Cooperative Research Programs (CRP) grants permission to reproduce material in this publication for classroom and not-for-profit purposes. Permission is given with the understanding that none of the material will be used to imply TRB, AASHTO, FAA, FHWA, FMCSA, FTA, RITA, or PHMSA endorsement of a particular product, method, or practice. It is expected that those reproducing the material in this document for educational and not- for-profit uses will give appropriate acknowledgment of the source of any reprinted or reproduced material. For other uses of the material, request permission from CRP. NOTICE The project that is the subject of this report was a part of the National Cooperative Freight Research Program, conducted by the Transportation Research Board with the approval of the Governing Board of the National Research Council. The members of the technical panel selected to monitor this project and to review this report were chosen for their special competencies and with regard for appropriate balance. The report was reviewed by the technical panel and accepted for publication according to procedures established and overseen by the Transportation Research Board and approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council. The opinions and conclusions expressed or implied in this report are those of the researchers who performed the research and are not necessarily those of the Transportation Research Board, the National Research Council, or the program sponsors. The Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, the National Research Council, and the sponsors of the National Cooperative Freight Research Program do not endorse products or manufacturers. Trade or manufacturers’ names appear herein solely because they are considered essential to the object of the report.

CRP STAFF FOR NCFRP REPORT 8 Christopher W. Jenks, Director, Cooperative Research Programs Crawford F. Jencks, Deputy Director, Cooperative Research Programs William C. Rogers, Senior Program Officer Charlotte Thomas, Senior Program Assistant Eileen P. Delaney, Director of Publications Hilary Freer, Senior Editor NCFRP PROJECT 6 PANEL Freight Research Projects Michael D. Meyer, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA (Chair) Thomas M. Corsi, University of Maryland, College Park, MD Scott R. Drumm, Port of Portland (OR), Portland, OR Charles Foster, Oakland Port Authority, Hercules, CA James Gosnell, Los Angeles, CA Dexter Muller, Memphis Regional Chamber, Memphis, TN Catherine Petersen, C J Petersen & Associates, St. Paul, MN Ronald J. Duych, RITA Liaison Rolf R. Schmitt, FHWA Liaison Caesar Singh, RITA Liaison Elaine King, TRB Liaison C O O P E R A T I V E R E S E A R C H P R O G R A M S

NCFRP Report 8: Freight-Demand Modeling to Support Public-Sector Decision Making presents an evaluation of possible improvements in freight demand models and other analy- sis tools and provides a guidebook to assist model developers in implementing these improvements. The report is especially valuable for its findings of general satisfaction with methods available to support freight planning, but concerns with the data available to sup- port that planning. As such, the report focuses on ways to use existing data to develop data inputs for the model, showing that existing and readily available data can be used to develop the inputs required by freight models. The report will enable decisionmakers at a range of geographical levels to improve the usability of freight demand models. While the private sector is largely responsible for developing and managing the nation’s freight flow system, public agencies at all levels face important investment and policy deci- sions that may affect those flows. As a result, many states, metropolitan planning organiza- tions, regional agencies, and federal government agencies have undertaken their own mod- eling efforts in order to better understand the large and shifting increases in traffic in the nation’s freight flows. Given the projected growth in freight and its importance to national, state, and regional economies, public-sector agencies need improved capabilities to analyze freight demand. Under NCFRP Project 6, Cambridge Systematics was asked to (1) investigate, identify, and report on high-priority, high-payoff improvements in freight-demand models and other analysis tools; (2) conduct further research on a selected number of these improve- ments; and (3) develop a guidebook to assist model developers in implementing these improvements. To accomplish the project objectives, the research team (1) developed a framework for categorizing how current models are used; (2) interviewed public decisionmakers to gauge their satisfaction with current models; (3) conducted research on critical gaps in existing models to advance the state of freight modeling in the short term; and (4) developed a guidebook that describes a process that could be followed in the development and applica- tion of freight forecasts to support public decision making. F O R E W O R D By William C. Rogers Staff Officer Transportation Research Board

C O N T E N T S 1 Summary 6 Chapter 1 Introduction 7 Chapter 2 Current Needs and Practices 7 2.1 Overview of Outreach Efforts 7 2.2 Public-Sector Freight Analysis Needs and Available Tools 10 2.3 Gaps, Issues, and Challenges 13 Chapter 3 Research to Fill Critical Gaps 13 3.1 Topics Selected for Further Research 14 3.2 Topics Not Selected for Further Research 16 3.3 Truck Trip Generation, Distribution, and Chaining Information 22 3.4 Consideration of Temporal and Seasonal Impacts 32 3.5 Developing Mode-Choice Models for Freight Forecasting 46 Chapter 4 Guidebook 46 4.1 Step Outline 57 4.2 New Methods to Generate Freight Demand and Performance 58 Chapter 5 Conclusions and Recommendations Note: Many of the photographs, figures, and tables in this report have been converted from color to grayscale for printing. The electronic version of the report (posted on the Web at www.trb.org) retains the color versions.

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TRB’s National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 8: Freight-Demand Modeling to Support Public-Sector Decision Making explores possible improvements in freight demand models and other analysis tools and includes a guidebook to assist model developers in implementing these improvements.

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