A Transportation Corridor Analysis Toolkit
Dan P. K. Seedah, Rydell D. Walthall, Garrett Fullerton, Travis D. Owens, Robert Harrison, October 2013
The Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act includes a number of provisions advocating improving the condition and performance of the national freight network through targeted investments and policies by the Department of Transportation and state agencies. Critical to this network are freight corridors which serve as major trade gateways connecting multiple cities and regions. However, transportation planners and policy makers are limited by the number of tools available to assess the performance and condition of these corridors. Most current tools and models require data which is either unavailable, outdated or insufficient for analysis. To address this need, a truck-rail intermodal toolkit was developed for multimodal corridor analysis and enables planners and other stakeholders examine freight movement along corridors based on mode and route characteristics. The toolkit includes techniques to acquire data for simulating line-haul movements, and models to evaluate multiple freight movement scenarios along corridors. Example analyses examining truck and rail movements along 5 mode-competitive corridors are presented in addition to a case study of the Gulf Coast Megaregion. The methodology described herein can be used in other multistate corridors and serve as an initial assessment of the condition and performance of the national freight network.
Keywords: Freight Corridors, Megaregions, Rail, Truck, Fuel Efficiency, Freight Operating Costs
ENTIRE REPORT (Adobe Acrobat File – 1.7 MB)