Freight and Land Use Travel Demand Evaluation: Final Report
Section 4: Summary of Key Findings
This project documented best practices and tools for understanding and analyzing how land use, local economic development, and demographic factors drive freight movement, trip generation, and freight demand analysis. This information was gathered through a combination of activities that included a literature review and stakeholder outreach. Key findings include the following:
Recent models have improved estimated freight generation using commodity flow data that estimates trip generation as a function of characteristics such as establishment size employment, and type of economic activity performed.
The improved understanding of trip generation and land use increases the importance of maintaining a good inventory of the types and locations of freight-generating land uses.
The advent of e-commerce has increased the complexity of the relationship between manufacturing and the ultimate destination for individual goods delivery.
Local land use context may influence freight generation and the spatial distribution of freight and land use activities may warrant additional consideration.
There is a range of strategies for accommodating demand for goods movement and operations given the context-sensitivity of particularly freight-sensitive land uses.
The integration of goods movement and livability is increasingly relevant as many communities move away from greenfield development and segregated land uses to a greater reliance on mixing uses and redeveloping in a more compact and transportation-efficient form.
Consideration of the last-mile is a basic concern in the integration of land use and freight planning, particularly given increased urbanization and mixing of land uses, increased e-commerce delivery directly to residences, and managing potentially adverse community effects of greater freight traffic.
Practices for local and regional Transportation Impact Assessments can be improved through consideration of goods movement, including site freight trip generation by business type, consideration of freight trip attraction for non-industrial uses, and curb loading zone availability in urban environments.
Analysis of the movement of both people and goods can benefit from scenario planning that evaluates both land use and transportation system actions on travel needs.
The current state of the practice in travel demand modeling tools is changing from conventional "four-step" travel demand models to advanced BBFMs that consider supply chain and delivery systems are being developed to provide a more complete understanding of freight movement and forecasting. The SHRP2 C20 process included four useful case studies on BBFMs; three at the regional level (Phoenix, Arizona; Baltimore, Maryland; Portland, Oregon) and another related to statewide application (Wisconsin).
Investment decisions in transportation infrastructure and services have long benefited from a robust data collection, compilation, and analysis. Recent advancements in transportation data collection have led to improved data quality, greater temporal coverage, wider geographical coverage, and differing population characteristics. A strategic plan for fusing the wide range of public freight data and encouraging private data-sharing can help further the understanding of the relationship between freight trip generation and land use, particularly at the local and regional level.
This report also included insights that relate specifically to integrating land use, demographics, and economic discussions into the QRFM.
