Research, Development, and Application of Methods to Update Freight Analysis Framework Out-of-Scope Commodity Flow Data and Truck Payload Factors

Chapter 14. Assignment Result Comparison

The Truck Payload Factors (TPF) developed in this section were assigned to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Reinventing Conditions & Performance (RIC&P) Freight Analysis Framework (FAF) Sketch planning tool. The reason for using the RIC&P tool is because of the need to check how comparable the flows are to existing methods and validate the methodology by seeing how close the new methods are to existing methods. This tool has a network that is a subset of the FAF network and is useful for comparing the truck flows using the current payload factors with the new payload factors. These truck flows include empty trucks as well that are backhauled or repositioned as discussed in chapter 13. Overall, the proposed methods when applied to the RIC&P FAF sketch planning tool work as well as the current methods as shown in figure 81.