Crystal Jones Office of Freight Management and Operations

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Crystal JonesOffice of Freight Managementand
Operations

• USDOT
• Federal Highway Administration
• November 2007

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Purpose and Desired Outcomes

• Purpose
• Provide an informational presentation on FHWAs
  initiatives to measure freight mobility
• Desired Outcomes
• Familiarization with the FHWA efforts to measure
  travel time on freight significant corridors and
  border crossing and delay
• Audience input and feedback on future research

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Topical Outline

• FHWA Office of Freight Management and
  Operations
• Initiative Background
• Methodology
• Current Measures
• Future Measures
• Other Data Applications
• Challenges and Opportunities
• Future Research
• Summary and Conclusions

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FHWA - Office of Freight Management and
Operations Objectives

• Understand the magnitude and geography of
  freight moving on the nations transportation
  system, including international freight
• Develop strategies, analytical tools,
  institutional arrangements, and professional
  capacities for all levels of government to
  address freight movement
• Understand and promote the economic benefits of
  freight transportation
• Encourage innovative freight technology
  operations
• Enforce commercial vehicle size and weight
  requirements

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Strategic Objective - Global ConnectivityFacili
tate a more efficient domestic and global
transportation system that enables economic
growth and development

• Desired Outcomes
• Reduce/Remove transportation-related barriers to
  trade
• More efficient movement of cargo throughout the
  supply chain
• Goals
• To reduce travel time in key highway freight
  corridors
• To reduce delays of commercial vehicles processed
  at National Highway System border crossings
• Outcome Measures
• Travel Time and Reliability on Freight
  Significant Highways
• Border Crossing Time

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What are Freight Performance Indicators?

• Point-to-point travel times on selected
  freight-significant highways
• Crossing times at international borders
• Condition of connectors between NHS and
  intermodal terminals
• Cost of highway freight per ton-mile
• Cargo insurance rates
• Customer satisfaction.
• Hours of delay per 1,000 vehicle miles on
  selected freight-significant highways

http//www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/freight_analys
is/perform_meas/fpmtraveltime/index.htm
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Why Speed and Reliability?

• Improve customer service, transit speed and
  reliability -LM Transportation Services, Inc.
• Improve Freight Delivery Speed and
  Reliability -Georgia Regional Transportation
  Authority
• help you move freight across borders and through
  ports of entry with greater speed and
  reliability
• - Schneider National
  Inc.
• FedEx Freight is known for exceptional service,
  reliability and on-time performance
• - FEDEX Freight
• BAX Global specializes in transporting cargo for
  customers who value speed, reliability and high
  levels of cost-efficient service.
• - BAX Global

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Background and Methodology

• What?
• Use trucks as probes.
• Why?
• Provides a quantifiable basis to engage public
  and private sector and investigate and explore
  causes of delay.
• How?
• Partnership with American Transportation Research
  Institute, data providers, and motor carriers.
• Where?
• 25 major US interstates.
• Land border crossings.
• 5 US/Canada crossings.
• US/Mexico under development.

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Original 5 Study Corridors
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25 Corridors
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Data Collection and Analysis

• Data Characteristics
• ID, Time Stamp, Lat, Long, Interstate Identifier

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Data Processing Procedures

• Import raw vehicle location data into a database
• Project data to route references and remove
  outliers
• Generate trips by sorting data using a unique
  truck ID and time
• Calculate average speed for each trip and remove
  speed outliers
• Perform segmentation per specified, or
  pre-defined, segment size

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Current Measures -

• Freight Significant Corridors
• Average Operating Speeds (entire Corridor)
• Travel Time Reliability (Buffer Index)
• Borders (US/Canada)
• Total Crossing Time
• Crossing Time Reliability (Buffer Index)

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What is travel time reliability?

• Consistency or dependability in travel times
  measured from
• Day-to-day and/or
• Across different times of day
• For Freight (for a trade lane, origin-destination
  pair, across the border)
• Not focused on typical delay (capacity-demand) so
  much as unexpected delay

Averages dont tell the full story
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Reliability Measures

• FPM Buffer Index
• Extra of Time Needed to Travel a segment of a
  highway and arrive On-Time, 95 of the Time

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Measures for different uses/users
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Commercial Vehicle Average Speeds I-95
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Other Travel Time Measures

• Measures of average travel time
• Average travel time in peak period in major metro
  areas
• city-to-city travel time
• shipper point-to-point travel time
• Measures of delay (or added travel time)
• hours of delay per 1000 vehicle-mile
• percent of corridor experiencing AM/PM peak delay
  
• Reliability Measures
• Annual hours of incident-based delay
• Annual hours of work-zone based delay
• Annual hours of weather-based delay

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FPM Border Component (US/CN)

• Data Available from 05/01/06 to present for 5
  Crossings
• Blaine (Pacific Highway) Blaine, WA
• Pembina Pembina, ND
• Ambassador Bridge Detroit, MI
• Peace Bridge Buffalo, NY
• Champlain Champlain, NY
• Effort looks at crossings as well as
  transportation network that supports the
  crossings

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Data Collection at Ambassador
4 US Approaches

• Michigan Route 3
• Interstate 75
• Interstate 94
• Interstate 96

3 CN Approaches

• Provincial 401
• ON Provincial 3
• E.C. Row EXPY

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Blaine (May 06 to Mar 07)
Average Crossing Time
45
39
40
40
40
39
38
38
37
35
39
36
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35
35
34
33
32
32
31
31
31
30
25
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Into Canada
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Time(Minutes)
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Into US
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15
10
5
0
May-
Jun-
Jul-06
Aug-
Sep-
Oct-
Nov-
Dec-
Jan-
Feb-
Mar-
06
06
06
06
06
06
06
07
07
07
Month
SOURCE FHWA/ATRI FREIGHT PEFORMANCE MEASUREMENT
PROGRAM. THIS INFORMATION IS PRELIMINARY.
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Data Applications

• State/MPO Performance Measurement
• Recurring Congestion and Delay
• Non-Recurring Congestionand Delay
• Weather
• Work Zone
• Incidents
• Other
• Trucking Parking Analysis
• Travel Demand Analysis

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Freight Measures

• Freight tonnage by mode
• Average travel speeds for trucks on selected
  roadway sections
• Percent of trucks using advanced technology at
  Missouri weigh stations
• Interstate motor carrier mileage
• Percent of satisfied motor carriers
• Customer satisfaction with timeliness of Motor
  Carrier Services response

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Cascading Effect

• Supplement breaks down measures for internal use
• Districts and divisions have their own Trackers
• Individual performance plans

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Focused Strategies
Average Travel Speeds for Trucks on Selected
Roadway Sections 2006 Calendar Year Comparison
for Interstate 70
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Recurring Congestion
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Weather Example
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Truck Parking
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Truck Travel Demand
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Truck Travel Demand
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Benefits and Issues of Probe Vehicle Systems

• Benefits
• Accurate data collection that directly measures
  traffic conditions (freight)
• Data collection that covers a wide area (not just
  urban/metropolitan areas)
• Issues
• Data Processing and Management
• Privacy/Data Sharing
• Data Quality

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Perfect data does not exist

• Dont let the perfect be the enemy of the good
• What quality is good enough?
• Start using what you have and plan for
  improvements

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What quality is good enough?
1674
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What quality is good enough?
1788
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What quality is good enough?
1849
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What quality is good enough?
2007
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What quality is good enough?
2003-2004
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What quality is good enough?
2005
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What quality is good enough?
2006- 2007
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What quality is good enough?
Beyond 2007
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Key Next Steps

• Develop a Web-based tool to disseminate data
  primary audiences are public transportation
  agencies (e.g. State DOTs) and Academia
• Directional
• Time of Day
• City Pairs
• Expanding beyond the interstate system
• Enhance data by adding additional vendors/fleets
• Partner with public agencies and universities to
  apply the results
• Decision Support Tools
• Trend Analysis
• Demand Modeling
• Forecasting Models
• Cost Benefit/Analysis
• Before and After Assessments
• Expand US/Cda Data Collection by up to 10
  crossings
• Expand to US/Mexico Border

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Additional information

• January 2006 report
• Travel Time Reliability Making It There On Time,
  All The Time
• http//www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov
• Contacts
• Crystal Jones, FHWA, 202-366-2976