United States-European Commission Urban Freight Twinning Initiative: Compendium of Project Summaries
Overview of Second Annual Urban Freight Roundtable at 2017 Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting

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Policy

United States

Impacts of Policy-induced Freight Modal Shifts

The increased recognition of the environmental and human impacts of supply chain activities, such as air emissions, energy consumption, noise, and congestion, has led to public pressure for action. This includes calls for public policy actions to encourage shifting freight shipping to more sustainable modes (e.g., highway to rail).

Freight mode choice is one of the most complex decision processes in transportation, due to a multiplicity of factors. Three economic agents influence freight mode choice: shippers, carriers, and receivers. An effective implementation of a desired modal shift requires a thorough understanding of how these agents respond to various transportation policies. The objective of this research is to develop a handbook for public practitioners that describes the factors shippers and carriers consider when choosing freight modes. It also provides an analytical methodology for public practitioners to quantify the probability and outcomes of policy-induced modal shifts.

The major tasks involved in this research effort include:

1. Studying the factors influencing the current modal shares of freight traffic.
2. Conducting interviews with freight agents (i.e., shippers, carriers, receivers) regarding their decisionmaking for supply chains, mode choices, and recommendations on what the public sector could do to foster the use of sustainable modes.
3. Estimating freight mode choice models using the Commodity Flow Survey’s 2012 microdata, combined with Longitudinal Business Database (LBD), modal attribute data comprising of costs and travel times of various modes.
4. Quantifying the public impacts of freight modal shifts.
5. Applying models developed to case studies.

This project is funded by the National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), and is being conducted by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), partnered with Jack Faucett and Associates.

Project Type

Research

Period of Performance

October 2013 - June 2017

Project Site(s)

Any geographic scale (national, State, or regional)

Website

http://apps.trb.org/cmsfeed/TRBNetProjectDisplay.asp?ProjectID=3534

Contact

José Holguín-Veras, Ph.D., P.E.,F.ASCE
William H. Hart Professor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
(518) 276-6221
JHV@rpi.edu

Challenges Addressed

• Modeling.
• Policy.
• Last-mile deliveries.
• Logistics.

Expected Outcomes

The project will result in a handbook that explains the factors shippers and carriers consider when choosing freight mode, and that provides a modeling framework that practitioners can use to quantify the probability and outcomes of policy-induced modal shifts.

Stakeholder Involvement

There are many stakeholders from public and private industry involved in this study:

• Public agencies: NCFRP, Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), U.S. Census Bureau.
• Private agencies: JFA, Caliper Corporation, a lot of private firms participated in the in-depth interviews.