Truck Trips Research Articles

Analysis of Freight Corridors Using GPS Data on Trucks

Trucks remain an important link for today's supply chains because the majority of goods in the United States and around the world are delivered to their final destination by trucks. With increasing roadway network congestion, obtaining detailed truck trip data to assist with freight transportation planning and operations is crucial. Recent advances in GPS devices enable various public and private transportation agencies to obtain more precise information about truck travel patterns. The main objective of this study was to develop a methodology for processing raw GPS data and to develop freight performance measures. Two algorithms were proposed to estimate bidirectional link speeds and to analyze truck trips. A case study for the state of Tennessee is presented to evaluate the proposed methodology.

Estimation of Statewide Origin–Destination Truck Flows from Large Streams of GPS Data

This paper demonstrates the use of large streams of truck GPS data from the American Transportation Research Institute for the estimation of statewide freight truck flows in Florida. Raw GPS data streams, which comprised more than 145 million GPS records, were used to derive a database of more than 1.2 million truck trips that started or ended in Florida. The paper sheds light on the extent to which the trips derived from the GPS data captured the observed truck traffic flows in Florida. The paper includes insights into ( a) the truck type composition, ( b) the proportion of the observed truck traffic flows covered by the data, and ( c) the geographical differences in the coverage. The paper applies origin–destination (O-D) matrix estimation to combine the GPS data with the observed truck traffic volumes at different locations within and outside Florida to derive an O-D table of truck flows within, into, and out of the state. The procedures, implementation details, and findings discussed in the paper are expected to be useful to agencies that are considering the use of GPS data in freight travel demand modeling.

Regional Freight Demand Estimation Using Korean Commodity Flow Survey Data

A commodity flow survey (CFS) is conducted to analyse commodity flow characteristics and to compile statistics for goods movement in several countries. In Korea, the CFS has been conducted every five years since 1998. Freight travel information collected through this survey is mainly used to estimate freight demand as well as freight statistics. This paper provides details of the Korean CFS and introduces a procedure for regional freight demand estimation. Though freight demand focuses on commodity flow, the conversion of commodity flow into the equivalent number of trucks and traffic assignment for truck trips is also presented.

Hydraulic Fracturing: A Critical Physical Geography Review

AbstractTaking a critical physical geography approach, this article provides the first side‐by‐side review of the physical and social literature on hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” as it is frequently referred to. We note the striking disparities between the physical science literature's description of the relatively manageable impacts of fracking and the almost apocalyptic tone taken in some popular press and critical social science literature. We argue that these disparities may be a result of the dramatic shift in the geography of energy production in the US. The rise of fracking has redistributed environmental injustices beyond traditional national sacrifice zones, such as Appalachia, and towards regions that in many cases are wealthier than Appalachia and have not recently borne the brunt of energy production, causing profound social, cultural, and economic shocks. Reviewing the physical and social science literature together suggests that we reconsider the fracking research agenda. Studies of the physical impacts of hydraulic fracturing should be expanded to address communities' concerns about habitat fragmentation and the impacts of the myriad truck trips required to service fracking wells, neither of which currently are given much attention. Social science research on fracking could benefit from an increase in comparative work, assessing the relative economic and social impacts in regions where energy production is ramping up in relation to regions where it is declining.

Costs and benefits of pneumatic collection in three specific New York City cases

Truck-based collection of municipal solid waste imposes significant negative externalities on cities and constrains the efficiency of separate collection of recyclables and organics and of unit-price-based waste-reduction systems. In recent decades, hundreds of municipal-scale pneumatic collection systems have been installed in Europe and Asia. Relatively few prior studies have compared the economic or environmental impacts of these systems to those of truck collection. A critical factor to consider when making this comparison is the extent to which the findings reflect the specific geographic, demographic, and operational characteristics of the systems considered. This paper is based on three case studies that consider the specific characteristics of three locations, comparing pneumatic systems with conventional collection on the basis of actual waste tonnages, composition, sources, collection routes, truck trips, and facility locations. In one case, alternative upgrades to an existing pneumatic system are compared to a potential truck-collection operation. In the other cases, existing truck operations are compared to proposed pneumatic systems which, to reduce capital costs, would be installed without new trenching or tunneling through the use of existing linear infrastructure. For the two proposed retrofit pneumatic systems, up to 48,000 truck kilometers travelled would be avoided and energy use would be reduced by up to 60% at an incremental cost of up to $400,000 USD per year over the total operating-plus-capital cost of conventional collection. In the location where a greenfield pneumatic system is already in operation, truck collection would be both less expensive and more energy-efficient than pneumatic collection. The results demonstrate that local geographic, demographic, and operational conditions play a decisive role in determining whether pneumatic collection will reduce energy requirements, produce more or fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and cost more or less over the long-term. These findings point to the local factors that will determine the relative economic and environmental costs and benefits in specific situations.

Does road pricing affect port freight activity: Recent evidence from the port of New York and New Jersey

In this paper, we examine the movement of container freight in, out and around the third largest maritime port in the United States and the use of toll facilities by these freight movements. Understanding how road pricing affects freight activity is of significant interest to transport planners, port operators and commercial interests with regards to regional competitiveness and economic development.Using a unique survey of truck activity at two maritime terminals in the Port of New York and New Jersey, we examine the frequency of truck trips, toll costs and trip distance, and how these characteristics may affect port freight costs and operations by location.Key findings indicate that while the New York ports serve 19 states and Canada, the vast bulk of cargo moves are short haul trips of less than 50 miles one way from the port facility. We also find that toll charges in the New York City metropolitan region may represent over 50% of the total costs for a short haul truck trip into or out of a maritime port depending on the location of the port facility. The results presented suggest that road toll programs can place non-trivial costs on truck trips to/from major regional freight centers.

Special Issue on Environmental Impacts of Shale Gas Development

Shale oil and gas holds great promise as a newly accessible domestic source of energy. Shale gas is expected to grow from 23% of total U.S. dry gas production (in 2010) to more than 49% in 2035 [U.S. Energy Information Administration (U.S. EIA) 2012]. Many shale gas basins in the United States have great potential, including the Fayetteville in Arkansas, the Haynesville in Louisiana and Texas, and the Marcellus in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Similarly, shale oil basins including the Bakken (North Dakota) and the Eagle Ford (Texas) will contribute to the U.S. oil supply over the coming decades. The potential economic benefits are significant, with estimates of $5.1 trillion in capital expenditures related to the industry between 2012 and 2035 (IHS Global Insight 2012). Engineering and technological development has paved the way for this shale energy transformation through the use of directional drilling and high volume hydraulic fracturing. Similarly, research into the potential adverse impacts of shale development has increased significantly over the past few years. Research has focused on impacts on water (Vidic et al. 2013; Olmstead et al. 2013), air (Pacsi et al. 2013; Roy et al. 2014), human health (Korfmacher et al. 2013; Finkel and Law 2011), and ecology (Entrekin et al. 2011; Drohan et al. 2012). This special issue includes six papers covering important aspects of environmental issues associated with shale development. Geng et al. present results of simulation of migration of pressurized air during drilling of a well. They report that compressed air is capable of creating a high-pressure gradient in groundwater at hundreds of meters from the drill hole in a confined aquifer. Their work suggests observational wells placed prior to drilling could alert drillers to pressure buildup. Gilmore et al. evaluated the potential effect of water and wastewater truck transport associated with development of Marcellus shale gas. Their work highlights the importance of including all truck trips (including empty returns) when evaluating impacts and also suggests policy changes that could reduce impacts by improving planning. He et al. considered the formation of barium and strontium sulfate in produced water from Marcellus shale development. Formation of precipitates can interfere with reuse of produced water, and equilibrium predictions are not always reliable due to the presence of organic matter. Mauter and Palmer describe an expert elicitation related to current practices and future trends in wastewater management, focused on the Marcellus shale gas formation in Pennsylvania. Their work concludes that long-term water reuse is a viable strategy for management of produced water from shale development for companies with ongoing activity. Strong et al. evaluated the biodegradability of produced water from shale development in the Marcellus and Bakken regions. A wide range of organic compounds were found, as were many halophilic bacterial species capable of biodegradation of these organics. Wilson et al. consider shale-produced waters in comparison with other fossil fuel wastewaters to develop an anion ratio-based source identification method. Applying this method to data collected in Pennsylvania allowed identification of sources of changes in surface water quality. We would like to thank the ASCE Journal of Environmental Engineering Special Issues Editor, Dionysios D. Dionysiou, and the ASCE publishing office personnel for their support during the development of this special section. Further, we are grateful to the important contributions of the reviewers during this process.

Estimating the Consumptive Use Costs of Shale Natural Gas Extraction on Pennsylvania Roadways

The development of natural gas resources in the Marcellus Shale formation has progressed rapidly in the last several years, particularly in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. These activities require many heavy truck trips for equipment and materials, which can damage state and local roads that were not designed for high volumes of heavy truck traffic. For state transportation agencies, one measure of costs of shale gas development is the potential degradation of roadways resulting from shale gas development. This technical note, provides a first-order an estimate of roadway consumptive use costs of additional heavy truck traffic on Pennsylvania state-maintained roadways from Marcellus Shale natural gas development in 201, estimated at 1 about $13,000–$23,000 per well for all state roadway types, or $5,000–$10,000 per well if state roads with the lowest traffic volumes are excluded. This initial estimate of costs, is based on data on the distribution of well activity and roadway type in Pennsylvania, estimates for the number of heavy truck trips to construct and operate a single well, the corresponding equivalent single-axle loadings, and estimates of roadway life and reconstruction costs by roadway maintenance class in Pennsylvania.

Freight Truck Trip Generation Modelling at Regional Level

Freight truck trip generation is a crucial part of a 4-stage model, especially in regional freight model development. Data needed to construct trip generation equations are ususally gathered at company level using the trip diary. Although this approach seems to be most suitable it may not cover all trips made by freight vehicles in analysed area. On the other hand, response rate may be unsatisfactory. Thus other methods of trip generation estimation should be explored. Based on results of roadside surveys O-D matrices for freight vehicles were estimated. In the next step, using large set of traffic measurements on national and regional roads, O-D matrices were calibrated. In order to calculate trip generations a step backwards was made. Additionally, the results of comprehensive travel studies and secondary data were used. Developed data sets were used to estimate trip generation equations, applying linear and nonlinear regression as well as artificial neural networks (ANN). The aim of this paper is to develop freight truck trip generation equations at regional level using different data sources, secondary data and indirect approaches.

Assessment of Particulate Matter Levels in Vulnerable Communities in North Charleston, South Carolina prior to Port Expansion

INTRODUCTIONThe Port of Charleston, one of the busiest US ports, currently operates five terminals. The fifth terminal is being planned for expansion to accommodate container ships from the proposed Panama Canal expansion. Such expansion is expected to increase traffic within local vulnerable North Charleston neck communities by at least 7,000 diesel truck trips per day, more than a 70% increase from the present average rate of 10,000 trucks per day. Our objective was to measure the current particulate matter (PM) concentrations in North Charleston communities as a baseline to contrast against future air pollution after the proposed port expansion.METHODSSaturation study was performed to determine spatial variability of PM in local Charleston neck communities. In addition, the temporal trends in particulate air pollution within the region were determined across several decades. With the BGI sampler, PM samples were collected for 24 hours comparable to the federal reference method protocol. Gravimetric analysis of the PM filter samples was conducted following EPA protocol.RESULTSThe range of the PM10 annual average across the region from 1982 to 2006 was 17.0–55.0 μg/m3. On only two occasions were the records of PM10 averaged above the 50.0 μg/m3 national standard. In the case of PM2.5, the annual average for 1999–2006 ranged from 11.0 to 13.5 μg/m3 and no annual average exceeded the 15.0 μg/m3 PM2.5 annual standard.CONCLUSIONSAlthough ambient PM levels have fallen in the Charleston region since the 1960s due to aggressive monitoring by the stakeholders against air pollution, local air pollution sources within the North Charleston neck communities have consistently contributed to the PM levels in the region for several decades. This baseline assessment of ambient PM will allow for comparisons with future assessments to ascertain the impact of the increased truck and port traffic on PM concentrations.

A Survey of Transportation Problems

This paper aims at being a guide to understand the different types of transportation problems by presenting a survey of mathematical models and algorithms used to solve different types of transportation modes (ship, plane, train, bus, truck, Motorcycle, Cars, and others) by air, water, space, cables, tubes, and road. Some problems are as follows: bus scheduling problem, delivery problem, combining truck trip problem, open vehicle routing problem, helicopter routing problem, truck loading problem, truck dispatching problem, truck routing problem, truck transportation problem, vehicle routing problem and variants, convoy routing problem, railroad blocking problem (RBP), inventory routing problem (IRP), air traffic flow management problem (TFMP), cash transportation vehicle routing problem, and so forth.

Planning truck carriers operations in a cooperative environment

This paper proposes a heuristic approach for planning the activity of multiple carriers cooperating with the goal of eliminating empty truck trips while maximizing the cost saving resulting from their collaboration. The approach foresees three main phases: in the first step, the transportation demand is decomposed in two parts based on freight flows trade-off; in the second step, a linear optimization model, which takes into account compensation mechanisms among carriers, allows to combine two by two trips belonging to different carriers in order to decrease the number of empty movements. In this second phase, the importance of customers is explicitly taken into account by assigning to each trip a preference value. Finally, in the third step, a second optimization problem enables assigning, for each carrier, trucks to trips with the goal of minimizing their travel costs. The proposed heuristic approach has been tested on some instances and the results obtained are analyzed and discussed in the paper.

Scheduling a log transport system using simulated annealing

The log truck scheduling problem under capacity constraints and time window constraints is an NP-hard problem that involves the design of best possible routes for a set of trucks serving multiple loggers and mills. The objective is to minimize the total unloaded miles traveled by the trucks. In this paper, a simulated annealing – a meta-heuristic optimization method – that interacts with a deterministic simulation model of the log transport system, in which the precedence and temporal relations among activities are explicitly accounted for, is proposed. The results obtained by solving a small size problem consisting of four trucks, two mills, three loggers, and four truck trips showed that the best solution could be found in less than two minutes. In addition, the solution method is tested using data provided by a log delivery trucking firm located in Mississippi. The firm operates sixty-eight trucks to deliver loads from twenty-two logging operations to thirteen mill destinations. The routes assigned by a supervisory person are used as a benchmark to compare the manual generated solution to the solution obtained using the proposed method.

Research on Freight Truck Operation Characteristics Based on GPS Data

The GPS data of trucks, which records the truck operation state in real time, can provide a large number of basic information for freight transportation planning and management. The paper studies the Application of GPS data mining in freight transportation. The paper analyses the freight truck utilization, the spatial-temporal features of truck trips, the flux, flow of freight corridors and some related traffic information by matching the truck tracks into Google Earth, coordinate transformation, trip division and other methods. Through comparing the results of sample data analysis with the actual situation, the method to analysis freight truck operation characteristics based on GPS data is proven with strong reliability.

Public financing of private freight rail infrastructure to reduce highway congestion: A case study of public policy and decision making in the United States

As goods movement continues to increase it is expected to outpace infrastructure capacity in the United States. Moving a larger share of goods by rail rather than truck is a potentially cost effective part of a solution. Freight rail not only offers a substitute for truck trips but is a cleaner, more energy efficient, and safer alternative. Recently a number of private freight rail projects have received public funding. The public funds are aimed at increasing freight rail capacity with the goal of diverting some goods currently moved by truck to rail. While the benefits of moving goods by rail are relatively clear, it is unclear if public decision makers can effectively identify strategic rail investments that will achieve their policy goals. This study critically examines the analytical methods, models, and data that are commonly used to support decisions to provide public funds for private freight rail projects. This is accomplished through a case study of California’s Trade Corridors Improvement Fund program which provided $680 million for 11 freight rail projects. The study’s contributions include identifying critical analytical flaws and challenges affecting the benefit estimates that public funding decisions rely on. Improvements to current evaluation methods are also identified as are regulatory reforms and policy interventions that may offer more effective and reliable outcomes.

The Phase Space as a New Representation of the Dynamical Behaviour of Temperature and Enthalpy in a Reefer monitored with a Multidistributed Sensors Network

The study of temperature gradients in cold stores and containers is a critical issue in the food industry for the quality assurance of products during transport, as well as for minimizing losses. The objective of this work is to develop a new methodology of data analysis based on phase space graphs of temperature and enthalpy, collected by means of multidistributed, low cost and autonomous wireless sensors and loggers. A transoceanic refrigerated transport of lemons in a reefer container ship from Montevideo (Uruguay) to Cartagena (Spain) was monitored with a network of 39 semi-passive TurboTag RFID loggers and 13 i-button loggers. Transport included intermodal transit from transoceanic to short shipping vessels and a truck trip. Data analysis is carried out using qualitative phase diagrams computed on the basis of Takens–Ruelle reconstruction of attractors. Fruit stress is quantified in terms of the phase diagram area which characterizes the cyclic behaviour of temperature. Areas within the enthalpy phase diagram computed for the short sea shipping transport were 5 times higher than those computed for the long sea shipping, with coefficients of variation above 100 % for both periods. This new methodology for data analysis highlights the significant heterogeneity of thermohygrometric conditions at different locations in the container.

지역간과 대도시 화물자동차 통행발생 특성 비교

본 연구는 지역적 범위에 따른 화물자동차의 통행발생 특성을 비교 분석함으로써 지역간 및 대도시 화물수요모형 추정의 차이점을 도출하고 지역적 범위에 적합한 화물수요모형 개발의 필요성을 제시하고자 하였다. 지역간 및 대도시 화물자동차의 통행발생 특성을 분석하기 위하여 화물자동차 속성, 출발지 특성, 도착지 특성, 적재품목을 고려한 서열로짓모형을 구축하였으며, 이를 통하여 다양한 특성이 화물자동차의 통행발생에 미치는 영향을 정량적으로 분석하였다. 분석결과, 지역간 화물자동차와 대도시 화물자동차의 통행발생 특성은 화물자동차 속성, 출발지 특성, 도착지 특성, 적재품목에서 모두 서로 상이한 것으로 나타났다. 특히 지역간 화물자동차는 대도시와 달리 출발지 및 도착지 유형이 제조업이고, 출발지 및 도착지의 산업단지 생산액이 클수록 통행수가 많은 것으로 나타났다. this study is to deduct the difference between regional and urban commercial trips by analyzing the characteristics of the regional and urban truck movements. To achieve this, we investigated the relation between the number of truck trips and various truck generation attributes such as truck attributes, origin and destination attributes, and commodity type using ordered logit models, which are separately estimated for regional and urban truck movements using truck diary data of Korea Transport Database (KTDB). According to the estimation results, regional and urban truck movements have different characteristics in truck attributes, origin and destination attributes and commodity type. Especially, the number of regional trucks trips increased as origin and destination are manufactural area and as the total value of products of industrial area in origin and destination increase.

Assigning user class link flows uniquely

Static user-equilibrium traffic assignment, the standard method for predicting traffic flows on urban road networks, is based on the principle that drivers choose their own least cost routes from their origins to their destinations. This principle may be formally described by user-equilibrium conditions, which correspond to the optimal solution to a nonlinear minimization problem. Although the total flows on links of the road network are uniquely determined by this formulation, multiple user-class link flows, as well as route flows, are not. Nevertheless, professionals frequently use class link flows output by their software for project evaluation, and class route flows to perform select link analyses. These applications may result in misleading findings, for example, in scenario analyses. An additional assumption may be imposed to determine these user class link flows and route flows uniquely. A possible assumption is the condition of proportionality, namely that the proportion of vehicles on each of two alternative, equal-cost segments (sequences of links) should be the same regardless of their user class, origin or destination. This paper compares two assignments in which the order of the car and truck trip matrices was specified as car followed by truck, and truck followed by car. Although the total link flows for the two assignments are effectively equal, substantial differences exist between the user class link flows determined by the different orderings of the matrices. Post-processing to impose the condition of proportionality on the class O–D flows removes about 90% of these differences. Analyses of class link flows of cars and trucks before and after imposing the condition of proportionality for one of these assignments reveal that about half of all links experience differences in user class flows, ranging up to ±300vph. These findings offer insights into the magnitude of the differences arising from the non-uniqueness of class link flows, and identify which links are subject to differences. Imposing the condition of proportionality in multi-class traffic assignments is recommended in travel forecasting practice.

수단O/D기반 및 P/C기반 화물수요추정방식의 실증적 비교: 우리나라 컨테이너 화물을 중심으로

이 연구는 우리나라에서 현재까지 사용되어 온 (수단O/D기반)화물수요추정법의 문제점 인식을 바탕으로 P/C기반 화물수요추정법과 비교 분석을 수행하였다. 우리나라 화물수단O/D는 화물의 최초기점과 최종종점 간 운송을 수단별 통행으로 나누어 인식하면서 접근트럭통행(Access/Egress Truck Trip)에 대한 정보가 누락되어있다. 이러한 이유로 수단O/D기반 화물수요추정법은 화물의 복합수단운송을 반영하지 못하는 단점이 있다. 이에, 본 연구는 우리나라 컨테이너 화물을 중심으로 P/C표와 복합수단선택모형을 추정하여 P/C기반 화물수요추정법을 제시하고, 기존 사용되어 오던 수단O/D기반 화물수요추정법과 기종점쌍 간 전환량, 수단통행물동량, 링크물동량을 비교하였다. 비교 결과 P/C기반 화물수요추정법은 복합운송을 제대로 모사하지 못하는 기존 수단O/D기반 화물수요추정법의 문제점을 해결할 수 있는 것으로 평가되었다. This study deals with the comparative analysis between two freight demand estimation methods : Unimodal O/D based method and P/C based method. The data of access/egress truck trips has been omitted from the Korean freight unimodal O/D of KTDB. This is because KTDB's unimodal O/D has not marked the series of unlinked trips down as the whole freight intermodal transport and surveyed only the main-haul trips of them. For these reasons, freight intermodal transport mechanism has not been analysed perfectly with Korean unimodal O/D data. This study tries to estimate P/C table of Korean Import/Export container freight and develop the MCC(Multimodal Channel Choice) model. Then, comparing unimodal O/D based method and P/C based method in terms of the switch commodities between production point(the initial point of freight transport) and consumption point(the terminal point of freight transport), unimodal commodities, and commodities on links is conducted. The results show that the P/C based method is able to simulate the freight intermodal transport.

Fenced In: Intimacy and Mobility in Highlands Papua New Guinea

AbstractThis paper is organised around the analysis of an ‘event’; a truck trip from Kwima, a Maring speaking settlement in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea, to Banz in the Wahgi Valley and an evening spent on the road. The event forms a standpoint from which to assess the impact of the decline of civic space, and faltering legacy of colonial governmentality, in the Jimi since 1980. I describe the emergence of new forms of mobility based around the nexus between local forms of business and trucks. In particular I focus on new and anxious forms of masculine inside relationships, understood as a transformation of a habitus of intimacy, round which such mobility is built. I argue that this transformation should be understood in terms of the dialectical relationship between business as an expansive profit oriented project on the one hand, and its anchoring in clan defined space on the other. At the same time the event provides a vantage point to reflect on the nature of long‐term fieldwork, the methodological significance of the subjectivity of the ethnographer, and the nature of ethnographic error.