Freight and Land Use Travel Demand Evaluation: Final Report

Executive Summary

The transportation planning profession is experiencing a paradigm shift in the way programs and projects are developed, evaluated, implemented, and maintained for all travel modes and purposes. The most recent Federal transportation and authorizing legislation, the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, placed greater emphasis on freight and goods movement. Freight transportation drives economic prosperity. Transportation and land use planners, practitioners, and decision-makers are looking for ways to maximize productivity while also considering the effects of technological and societal trends (e.g., e-commerce and an overall increased demand for goods movement). These stakeholders must also consider how to effectively utilize improved supply chain data. Finally, stakeholders need to better understand economic trends impacting private sector operations/business models to develop and implement effective multimodal transportation policies, programs, and projects.

This report identifies and documents best practices and tools for better understanding and analyzing how land use, local economic development, and demographic factors drive freight movement, trip generation, and freight demand analysis. The primary intended audience is transportation and land use planners, travel demand modelers, and transportation engineers at multiple levels of government.

Some of the recommendations from this project will be incorporated into an update to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Quick Response Freight Manual (QRFM). The QRFM provides information on the freight transportation system and factors affecting freight demand, helps locate available data and freight-related forecasts, and guides the application of this information for developing freight forecasts. It provides techniques and transferable parameters for freight modeling and freight site planning.

This project encompassed a series of activities, each of which built upon previous findings to provide a comprehensive understanding of the state of the practice. These activities reflect different stakeholder views that were solicited during the process. Stakeholders provided perspectives on an array of topics, ranging from challenges and gaps to suggestions about key products and attributes for future development.

The project's key findings include the following:

The QRFM was a helpful resource and practical research catalyst, but should be updated to reflect contemporary issues and trends. Historically, the QFRM has been one of the FHWA's key freight documents and a driver/foundation for the last ten years of freight travel demand analysis. However, the QRFM's substantive content and format need to be updated to reflect changes in the practice as well as the growing audience for freight issues and decisionmaking.

Most analytical needs for freight data and research are well-documented, but there is less clarity and agreement on how to address the gaps. One of the first steps in the second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2) Freight Modeling and Data Improvement Program was to develop a comprehensive list of needs by freight travel demand users and those who make freight-related decisions. The SHRP2 Program developed new tools to address some of these needs. A future QRFM update could address these issues and support ongoing freight research efforts.

The definition of what constitutes freight is changing. The advent of e-commerce and on-demand deliveries has dramatically changed Americans' lives as well as the freight industry and planning fields. Many freight practitioners are experiencing challenges in how to best capture, analyze, and apply data on new trends for more effective decisionmaking.

Integrated land use, transportation, and economic modeling frameworks continue to advance, but knowledge and adoption challenges remain. Freight demand models have typically been based on population, employment, and industry-level forecasts. New models are emerging to better integrate land use, transportation, and economic activity. Widespread use of these advanced modeling tools remains a data and operational challenge.

Successful freight analysis and planning requires more diverse and broader sets of stakeholders. A more diverse group of stakeholders is needed to address challenges, including local transportation and land use planners, private industry, and elected officials.

Future products should present a set of emerging practice options, not just best practices. Given the diverse scales and contexts, it is important to not provide a "one-size-fits-all" approach, but rather sets of solutions.

From these findings and stakeholder input, a series of topics were developed, and detailed in this report:

1. Topic A covered the overall integration of land use and freight planning.
2. Topic B addressed last-mile considerations.
3. Topic C included freight modeling framework issues.
4. Topic D concerned the application and integration of public and private data sources.
5. Topic O includes elements not necessarily integral to the four topics listed above, but rather reflected new materials and practices that are ready for inclusion in the QRFM.

Each topic summarizes the relevance of certain subjects to the land use/demographics focus of this project. The purpose is to highlight best practices for understanding how land use, local economic development, and demographic factors drive freight trip generation and freight movement. The report also identifies best practices and tools for analyzing freight demand at a range of scales from statewide or regional modeling to local transportation analysis. Where general consensus exists on guidance that is ready to be put into practice, recommendations are provided on source materials that might be included in the QRFM. Where the sense is that further research and development is needed before a tool or approach can be put into widespread practice, that information is described as well.

This report serves as a strategic action plan to improve the integration of land use and demographic factors with freight demand analysis. It serves as a resource for continuing efforts by FHWA and its partners in the community of practice to improve planning for goods movement.