Rail Freight Solutions to Roadway Congestion--Final Report and Guidebook (2007) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 106-123
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From page 106... ...
The Guidebook's framework moves progressively through analyses of increasing complexity, and data should be thought of as following in its path. Data of several sorts may be needed to support freight planning studies: • Traffic flows, depicting freight by lane and mode -- for identifying trends, traffic distances and densities, and diversion possibilities; • Traffic volumes on infrastructure -- for determining truck contribution to highway demand, overall traffic activity, and rail requirements; • Congestion on highways -- which is the specific problem being addressed, and information will be needed in areas like level of service, recurring and non-recurring problems, and temporal variations; • Freight customer characteristics -- such as who is shipping or receiving what commodities within the area of interest, annual volumes, service sensitivity, loading/unloading needs and capabilities, rail access, and modal usage; • Commodity characteristics -- value per pound, product density, perishability, storage requirements, equipment needs, and so forth; and • Carrier characteristics -- such as actual or typical service, cost parameters, capacity indications, and asset ownership.
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From page 107... ...
Many of the data sources discussed are readily available, either as part of the data sets that State DOTs, economic development agencies, toll authorities, and other public agencies already collect or as part of a commercial data service. However, there are many incremental ways in which State DOTs could further leverage their freight data streams.
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From page 108... ...
The types of data most commonly collected and used for assessing rail freight solutions are • Commodity flow data, • Traffic count data, • Commodity characteristics, • Maps & inventories of rail infrastructure and service, • Railroad engineering cost data, • Shipper characteristics & needs -- establishment data, • Modal service and cost parameters, • Trend Data -- traffic & economic projections, and • Institutional and privacy factors. The remainder of this chapter reviews eight types of data and concludes with a look at the institutional and privacy factors that can affect the accessibility of information and the rules governing its use.
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From page 109... ...
Intercity commodity flow data is collected through surveys, exchanges, or legal reporting requirements. The STB Waybill sample is a mandated collection from rail carrier records, and the CFS as an aspect of the Census also is a legal obligation on freight shippers, who are its respondents.
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From page 110... ...
have a significant portion of heavy truck traffic. Facility-level traffic count data are needed first and foremost to assess the level of congestion on existing roads and highways and to determine whether or not trucks are prevalent in the congested area.
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From page 111... ...
How can the data be collected? Traffic count data in fact are collected in a number of different ways.
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From page 112... ...
Also, in certain locations on the highway network, through trucking may fill one or more lanes of highway, especially where multiple routes converge at or near major cities or geography causes traffic to be funneled along a coast or mountain range. In that sense, the accuracy of the traffic count, which gives an idea of overall levels of congestion, is less critical than the accuracy of the distribution of vehicle types that measure proportion of total congestion for which trucks or heavy trucks are responsible.
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From page 113... ...
Some web news services and investment information services also carry up-to-theminute as well as historical commodity price data for selected commodities on their websites; however, getting it to a form usable for rail freight assessment may represent significant work. Tonnage-to-volume and tonnage-to-value conversion matrixes also can be an element of commercial freight flow databases, whose equipment type classifications help to address storage and equipment requirements as well.
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From page 114... ...
• How important are grade crossings (rail-highway and also rail-rail) in terms of delays to highway traffic and to rail traffic?
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From page 115... ...
Elements like yard and mainline condition and utilization can be reliably defined and can be substantive indicators of performance and capacity. Public agencies planning rail freight schemes with capital components based on upgrade of rail infrastructure must ensure that railroad carriers are part of the dialogue and planning process.
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From page 116... ...
Are there readily available sources for the data? Again, a series of factors and applications appear in the Guidebook that can serve as a resource for project evaluations.
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From page 117... ...
GIS analysis of establishment data alongside a reasonably detailed rail network will show the proximity of businesses to rail lines, and this can be used for a first approximation of access. How can the data be collected?
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From page 118... ...
What kind of data would be useful? Modal service and cost parameters are used to assess whether a rail freight solution is in fact feasible from a shipper's point of view.
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From page 119... ...
Price data are rarely possible to observe directly and therefore must be obtained through modeling, interviews, and other cooperative methods. Levels of Accuracy and Precision For typical rail freight diversion applications, service times need to be known to within one day, or perhaps half a day.
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From page 120... ...
traffic trends. Economic trends serve to suggest how fast the economy might grow in future and can be used to infer how costs, service levels, and other attributes of freight transportation may change over a long planning horizon.
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From page 121... ...
6.11 Institutional and Privacy Factors To develop a successful rail freight diversion scheme or other rail freight solutions, three basic types of data are needed. The planner should have an understanding of (1)
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From page 122... ...
With a stake in the process, it becomes much easier to acquire financial data needed for planning and budgeting on the public side; also, planners will develop a better understanding of whether rail freight diversion plans can work or not and how much they may cost. Railroad Capacity and Reliability Public planners are aware that it can be difficult to persuade railroads to release seemingly ‘spare' capacity on their tracks that is not currently in use because, once an operating agreement is entered into, it will be difficult for the railway to remove that traffic, replace it with more profitable business, and not cause a public-relations problem.
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From page 123... ...
The establishment of clear contracts limiting the application of data for planning purposes and the use of vetted intermediaries to process it help to create a trusted framework for information exchange. 6.12 Data Environment There are special issues concerning the electronic data environment in railroad and motor carriers alike that are worth understanding.
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