Freight Performance Measures

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Freight Performance Measures

• Unit 4 Performance Measures

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Performance Measure

• Performance measurement is the use of statistical
  evidence to determine progress toward specific
  defined organizational objectives. (FHWA)
• Performance measurement is a way to promote
  accountability
• Every state, and the federal government, has
  performance measure standards

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Performance Measures are in Demand

• Desire to increase the accountability of public
  expenditures (limited resources)
• Need to communicate results to customers
  (accountability)
• Responsiveness to federal and state requirements
• Efficiency
• You can not manage without measures

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General Freight Performance Measures

• Reliability (maybe the most important)
• Responsiveness
• Flexibility
• Costs
• Asset Management
• Safety
• Security
• Ratio of peak period travel time to off-peak
  travel time at freight-significant nodes

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Performance Measure (Cont.)

• Ratio of variance to average minutes per trip in
  peak periods at freight-significant nodes
• Hours of incident-based delay on
  freight-significant highways
• Annual miles per truck
• Crossing time at international border crossings
• Conditions on connectors between National Highway
  Systems and terminals
• Customer Satisfaction

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Freight Performance Measures

• Lags the rest of the transportation world
• Lack of freight data a major reason
• Lack of consistent, compatible data
• No organization to support and develop a FPM
  system

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Problems with Measures

• Private sector data privacy concern, oriented
  toward markets
• Public sector oriented towards political
  boundaries
• Data collection can be burden to agencies
• Data poor and hard to find (trucks for example)
• Interaction effects

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National Freight Data Program

• Proposed national freight database
• Coordinated and compatible data sets
• Federal government takes lead role

The effectiveness and efficiency of the freight
transportation system are heavily dependent on
reliable data to inform a range of decisions at
all levels of government and in the private
sector about economic and infrastructure
investments and policy issues.
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NCFRP(National Cooperative Freight Research
Program) Report 10

• recognizing the lack of resources to create a
  new national freight data reporting structure,
  the project recommends creation of a Freight
  system Report Card that relies upon existing
  sources

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Federal Performance Measures
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Federal Performance Measures
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Federal Performance Measures USDOT

• Performance plan
• High level freight goal (market-oriented)
• A work in progress

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Federal Measures

1. Travel time measures (average travel time in peak
   period, annual hours of delay, average time at
   border crossings)
2. Reliability measures (variability of travel time
   hours of incident-based/non-recurrent delay)
3. Cost measures (average cost per ton-mile)
4. Safety or damage measures (accident rate)
5. Highway condition measures (percent of roads with
   surface condition classified as good, number of
   weight restricted bridges)
6. Economic impact measures (contribution of
   investment to GDP growth, employment impacts)
7. Industry productivity measures (ton-miles per
   employee, percent of truckloads empty)

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Example American Transportation Research
Institute (ATRI)

• Trucking organizations research arm support by
  US DOT
• Using GPS data to look at freight significant
  corridors including all of I-5

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Example WSDOT
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Example Minnesota DOT

• Minnesota has a performance based planning
  approach
• Long list of freight measures by mode
• truck
• rail
• waterways
• air cargo
• intermodal facilities
• Targeted values for measures

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Minnesota Freight Measures Study

• Market share
• Modal share
• Freight productivity
• Shipment Rates
• And many others
• Several studies to look at feasibility and
  availability of measures http//www.lrrb.org/pdf/2
  00812.pdf

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Example Minnesota DOT
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Example Minnesota FPM data study
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Example Ontario

• Long term program
• GPS data
• Well integrated into planning and engineering
  decisions

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Sustainable Performance Measures

• Green performance measures starting to appear
• Few that are freight only

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Special Need for Truck Data

• Trucks carry 70 of our freight but
• Minimal performance data on trucks available
• Existing travel time information is for cars and
  in urban corridors
• Length of delays for trucks at borders uncertain

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Freight Performance Measures

• Cost of highway freight per ton-mile
• Cargo insurance rates
• Fuel consumption of heavy trucks per ton-mile
• On-time performance for highway-freight
  deliveries
• Point-to-point travel times for selected
  freight-significant highways
• Hours of delay per 1000 vehicle-miles on
  freight-significant highways

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Technology to the rescue?
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Commercial Fleet Management GPS

• Numerous vendors sell GPS services to trucking
  companies. Used to track and dispatch trucks,
  monitor driver performance
• Report using a cellular connection
• One estimate is 25 of trucks have these GPS
• Data is a waste product of the trucking
  industry.

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In Washington State we buy this Truck GPS Data
from Vendors

• GPS vendors realize selling data is a new revenue
  stream
• One-stop shopping one GPS vendor includes a
  large number of trucking businesses
• Good technical support from the vendors for
  pushing out the data
• Relatively inexpensive (compared to a
  research-oriented data collection program)
• Less than a 0.01 a truck per day.

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Commercial GPS Data

• Includes at least lat/long, time/date stamp,
  travel direction, spot speed, truck ID
• The data is collected for trucking company
  business needs and not for public sector use
• Due to cellular cost, the trucks location report
  are often infrequent (every 10 to 15 minutes when
  moving).
• One vendor can provide many probe trucks.

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Data Acquisition - One Day of Data
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Data Challenges

• Geo-coding locating the truck on the correct
  road

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Data Issues

• Setting up a automated processing mechanism is
  necessary since the database includes millions of
  points
• Due to privacy protection - you do not know the
  trucks size, class, or cargo
• The raw data requires considerable processing
• Error checking.
• Fixing GPS signal problems.
• Geo-locating (snapping) in a GIS to roadway.
• Locating trip origins and destinations.

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What do we do with this data?

• For WSDOT
• developed methodology to identify and rank
  statewide truck highway bottlenecks
• looked at freight mobility both before and after
  construction projects
• provided truck network travel times for truck
  forecasting models
• Future plans
• explore truck travel patterns by time of day and
  season
• look at drivers trip linking behavior
• support air quality monitoring

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Example Severe truck bottleneck in Central Puget
Sound (I-5)

• Location I-5 southbound between NE 63rd St and
  NE Pacific Ave E
• Length 1.3 mile
• Daily Truck Volume 11,000
• Average truck travel speed 38 mph
• Percentage of travel speed below 35mph 48
• Travel Reliability

Time Period Reliability
AM Unreliable
Midday Unreliable
PM Unreliable
Night Reliably Fast
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Lessons learned in Washington States Truck
Performance Measure program

• Simplest way to acquire truck GPS data is to buy
  it directly from large commercial GPS vendors
• Long-term success of this program depends on
  retaining access to data owned by trucking
  companies
• they support the Washington States program
  because we protect their proprietary data and use
  the information to improve the states truck
  freight system
• To independently verify the spot speeds, compared
  the trucks GPS spot speeds to speeds from
  traffic loops (they matched)
• Currently receive GPS location reads every 10-15
  minutes when the truck is traveling, as well as
  when the truck parks
• as the cost of the technology comes down and
  market adoption increases, we will have more
  frequent reads for improved urban corridor
  analysis
• To use GPS data for before-and-after studies of
  freight projects, the program manager must track
  diversion rates on the network, and have more
  frequent reads for shorter corridor segments

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Benefits and costs of monitoring truck
performance on the state network

• Advantages of GPS truck data
• No other way to accurately track truck speeds on
  the state and local road network
• The state can monitor the performance that
  matters to trucking companies and shippers
  average speed, reliability and severe congestion
  on specific routes
• Data is available from commercial vendors now,
  and quality will improve as technology advances
  and more trucking companies install GPS units
• Costs and limitations of using GPS truck data
• This is a new service, tracking truck performance
  requires ongoing resources to obtain and analyze
  GPS data and manage the project
• At this time, vendors arent capturing enough GPS
  reads on many local roads across the state to
  analyze their performance