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Freight Performance Measure PrimerCHAPTER 6. BEST PRACTICES AND RECOMMENDED FREIGHT PERFORMANCE MEASURESBEST PRACTICES: PRIVATE SECTORBillions of tons of freight worth trillions of dollars move in the United States every year. Trucks account for over 70 percent of the value of all domestic shipments, while rail dominates the long-distance freight market (shipments over 500 miles). Freight performance measures are a key ingredient to successfully, efficiently, and safely moving freight within, into, and out of the United States. Performance measures can vary in meaning between the private sector and the public sector. The public sector is interested in measuring the effect of policy decisions, such as total shipments, commodity flows, and asset management. The public sector is also interested in measuring the success of regulations and standards.. These include environmental and safety measures, such as emissions of criteria pollutants, employee injuries, and fatalities. The private sector interests are related but different. Providers are interested in economic measures, such as financial performance, equipment performance, loads, employees, and customer service. While the private sector is also concerned about fatalities and injuries, they also measure the effects of these incidents on insurance costs and liability. There is a lack of uniformity across the main modes of freight transportation, and less agreement among modes as to the most critical performance measures. Although each mode of freight transportation has its own performance measurement needs, many of the measures across the modes emphasize the financial aspects. Despite the lack of uniformity or consensus of performance measures, several measures do tend to represent all modes of freight transport:
The trucking industry is interested in regulations that restrict operational flexibility, rising costs, the cost of satisfying regulations, congestion impacts, and improving safety. Trucking industry issues generally fall into the following subject areas:
The freight transport industry is dominated by Class I railroads, which comprise over 90 percent of freight rail revenue. Thus, the rail performance measures focus primarily on those Class I railroads. Rail freight performance measures typically consist of the following components:
BEST PRACTICES: PUBLIC SECTORMost State departments of transportation (DOTs) track general performance measures. There are few, however, that have a robust freight performance measurement system in place. Several States, including Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, and Washington, have well-established freight programs that offer lessons learned. This primer highlights a few of the States that have proactively developed their freight programs. MarylandThe Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) has a long history of freight planning and freight performance measurement. MDOT, unlike transportation administrations in many other States, is the umbrella organization to other business units including the State Highway Administration, Maryland Transportation Authority, Maryland Port Administration, Maryland Aviation Administration, Maryland Transit Administration, and the Motor Vehicle Administration. While each business unit under the MDOT umbrella is a key component to MDOT's freight planning efforts, it is the Office of Freight and Multimodalism that is the lynch pin that holds these efforts together. In 2009, MDOT published the Maryland Statewide Freight Plan. This Plan included a comprehensive review of the current and future freight system in Maryland and outlined policies and projects necessary to ensure the safe and efficient movement of freight in, out, within, and through Maryland. The Plan concluded that freight is expected to grow in the region by 100 percent by 2035 and identified 138 freight-related projects to address future freight demand, including 95 highway projects, 26 rail projects, and 17 port projects with a value of over $35 billion. Many of these projects have begun construction, and more are in the planning and design phases. In 2014, the Office of Freight and Multimodalism developed the Strategic Goods Movement Plan, a guiding document for planning and programming. This five-year plan is an update to the 2009 Statewide Freight Plan. However, unlike the Statewide Freight Plan that focused on projects, the Strategic Goods Movement Plan emphasizes policy positions and strategic planning based on qualitative and quantitative analysis. This Plan analyzed trends and long-range projections and was developed with support from multiple stakeholders, including the Freight Stakeholder Advisory Committee, which assisted in identifying issues and outcomes to improve the safety and efficiency of freight transportation. The Freight Stakeholder Advisory Committee consisted of freight stakeholders from the private sector, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), and the public sector. OhioThe Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) initiated a statewide freight study in 2013 to understand how Ohio's freight infrastructure is being utilized. The two purposes of the study were to 1) plan and prioritize future strategic investments in Ohio's freight infrastructure, and 2) guide future economic development activities to make the most efficient use of the existing freight infrastructure. The results of the freight study will help inform and guide the State transportation plan (Parsons Brinckerhoff 2013). The ODOT studied the freight system challenges that policy makers should be aware of and be prepared to address. The study concluded that truck productivity is down primarily due to driver shortages and changes in Federal regulations. It also noted that, although the interstate system is the trunk line for shippers and carriers, the U.S. and State routes provide much of the access to major customers. The study also included several observations: manufacturing is making a comeback in the United States; air cargo, while still essential to business, has changed and no longer requires major hub operations; and Federal investment in locks and dams is inadequate on the inland waterway system. The study evaluated several strategies that would not only benefit Ohio, but would be beneficial for many States and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs). Some of the strategies include:
OregonIn 2005, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) established a statewide traffic mobility program. This program has been extremely successful with coordination efforts, forecasting conflicts, and resolving freight related issues. ODOT has developed a close partnership with the trucking industry, holding regular meetings to discuss policy issues. Within Oregon, the Oregon Transportation Commission (OTC) makes decisions about investments on the highways and, to a lesser extent, for other freight-moving modes. The OTC uses several broad criteria for making investment decisions, which vary by funding program. For example, projects that support freight mobility was one of the prioritization factors established for the 2008–2011 Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (McMullen et al. 2010). Because of this legislation, the OTC was directed to consider factors such as transportation cost reduction, multi-modal connections, system efficiency, project costs, and economic benefits in selecting projects. WashingtonThe Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) worked with three State Freight Plan technical teams (urban goods movement, rural economies, and the State's global gateways) to identify and prioritize WSDOT's truck freight performance goals. WSDOT coordinated with over 60 freight stakeholders to serve on these teams, including carriers, local governments, ports, air quality experts, laborers, and academic experts. These stakeholders helped determine performance goals that align with both State and Federal policies and are most important to shippers, carriers, and residents of Washington. These goals will track the performance of the State's truck freight economic corridors. WSDOT worked with MPOs, the technical teams, and its regional transportation planning organization to develop the truck performance measures and to develop criteria used to define State truck, rail, and waterway freight economic corridors. These criteria will be used to evaluate State truck freight economic corridors, such as slow speeds, resiliency, bottlenecks, truck collisions, and locations with poor state of freight repair. I-95 Corridor CoalitionI-95 spans 1,917 miles along the eastern seaboard and carries an average of over 10,000 trucks per day, with peak daily truck traffic of over 31,000. I-95 carries approximately 35 percent of the Nation's vehicle miles traveled and carries over 5.3 billion tons of freight each year. The I-95 Corridor Coalition (I-95 CC) was formed in the early 1990s as a partnership of transportation agencies, toll authorities, public safety, and related organizations spanning the entire east coast from Maine to Florida. The purpose of the I-95CC is to provide a forum for decision-makers to address transportation and operations issues. The I-95CC focuses its efforts on the long-distance movement of freight, passengers, and travel that stretches through multiple jurisdictions and often across multiple modes. The I-95 CC understands that with the volumes of traffic and the amount of freight being moved along I-95, multi-modal and multi-State performance measures are essential to promoting a safer and more efficient movement of goods and people. In 2016, the Coalition, in conjunction with FHWA, completed a study that evaluated the development of freight performance measures across multi-State supply chains. The study produced a framework for measuring performance, data and measurement techniques, identification of short-term solutions for defining critical trade lanes, and longer-term solutions for improved data and multi-modal approaches. U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway AdministrationThe FHWA is leading efforts in the United States to implement a Freight Fluidity System of performance measures and analysis. The Freight Fluidity System (USDOT 2015) spans across the freight modes and incorporates multi-modal freight movement data on key freight corridors and infrastructure to reveal congestion points and trends. This information has been used to identify where operational investments are most needed to improve the system and can help to realize economic and environmental improvement opportunities. State and local DOTs and MPOs can apply this tool both broadly at the total system level and specifically on congestion points. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR A COMPREHENSIVE FREIGHT PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT PROGRAMMany options can be considered when investigating the development of performance measures. Statewide, system-wide, corridor-wide, or individual routes are just a few of the possibilities. The development of a Freight Advisory Committee (FAC) is recommended. Freight advisory groups can play a key role in selecting the most appropriate freight performance measures. These committees can be made up of any number of public and private freight stakeholders. A FAC should consist of stakeholders from State DOTs, motor truck associations, railroads, ports, air freight, economic development organizations, freight shippers and receivers, logistics companies, agricultural industry, and other relevant freight stakeholders as deemed necessary. The Oregon DOT "Freight Performance Measures: Approach Analysis" report researched each State DOT's long-range plans. Table 7 shows the most-cited goals and the number of States reporting those goals.
The aim of most DOTs and MPOs is to increase infrastructure efficiency through focused investments. Therefore, measures need to be developed that predict the impact of investment on transportation flows through the entire State and to project potential modal shifts. This, however, will likely require performance measures for multiple modes. To better evaluate the performance of the freight transportation system, data relating each of the major policy goals for freight by mode is required. Obtaining this data is a first step in developing metrics that are useful to decision-makers for policy analysis. Most safety-related freight performance measures include the number of accidents or fatalities from incidents involving freight vehicles on a segment of roadway. Safety measures would quantify the amount of loss and damage because of the accident or fatality, or the total cost of freight loss and damage from crashes divided by the total freight vehicle miles traveled. This measure could also be considered as a system performance measure. Table 8 below presents performance measures that States and MPOs could include in their freight planning efforts. Some of these performance measures will be identified by FHWA as the proposed rule making process is finalized. Other measures were derived from a research of States and MPOs currently measuring freight performance.
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United States Department of Transportation - Federal Highway Administration |
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