module 8 freight transportation

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Module 8 Freight Transportation 1. Introduction

Slide 1.2

Notes: Welcome to Module 8 of the Multimodal Fundamentals course - “Freight Transportation”.

Slide 1.3

Notes: Audio narrations play automatically throughout the course. Take a moment to adjust the sound level on your computer.

The course includes a menu, closed captions and an audio transcript for each page in the Notes section.

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Click the Next button to continue, and the Previous button to revisit the last slide.

Slide 1.4

Notes: After this training, you will be able to understand why to plan for freight, understand freight types and operations, describe what design elements support freight operations, and identify factors, elements and early decisions that contribute to risk, either operational or safety.

2. Why Plan for Freight? Slide 2.1

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Notes: Here we have a snapshot of a simplified supply chain. Each of the links shown here can appear more than once in a given supply chain. It is not uncommon for several warehouses and distribution centers to be used in a single supply chain.

A supply chain is the network of all the individuals, organizations, resources, activities and technology involved in the creation and sale of a product, from the delivery of source materials, from the supplier to the manufacturer, through to its eventual delivery to the end user.

Slide 2.2

Notes: Just like the major task of creating transportation options for personal mobility, the freight carriers seek to have options and redundancy in their supply chain as well.

Freight is transported by a variety of modes, often in a combinations. Freight moved by combinations of modes is referred to as intermodal. The Ports of Seattle and Tacoma handle the majority of Washington’s international container exports and imports, while our rail corridors, highways, and waterways serve to transport those goods to locations in Washington and beyond.

Sea-Tac International Airport ranks 19th by air cargo volume in U.S. and is the third largest airport for international cargo on the West Coast (excluding Alaska). King County International/Boeing Field Airport is ranked the 25th largest air cargo center in the nation.

Regardless of the number of modes involved in a move, the vast majority of freight at one point ends up on a truck, and these trucks, more often than not, end up on Washington roadways.

In 2011, Washington was the fourth largest wheat grower in the nation, producing 167.8 million bushels of wheat grown on 2.3 million acres. Getting this product from the fields in southeastern Washington to consumers across the world involves the following steps:

• Harvested wheat is taken by farmers’ grain trucks to on-farm storage or nearby commercial grain elevators.

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• Once the wheat is sold, it is transferred by truck to regional rail or barge loading facilities.

• Some of the wheat travels by rail to coastal grain terminals, while some travels to Portland by barge from intermodal facilities along the Columbia-Snake River system.

• Nearly 74 percent of the down-river barge traffic on the Columbia-Snake River system is wheat.

• From these seaport terminals, grain is loaded onto ocean freighters and exported around the world.

The Washington Grain Train serves over 2,500 cooperative members and farmers in one of the most productive grain-growing regions in the world. The Washington Grain Train helps carry thousands of tons of grain to deep water ports along the Columbia River and Puget Sound for transport to ships bound for Pacific Rim markets.

Slide 2.3

Notes: As the fifth largest exporting state in the country, a significant amount of Washington jobs are linked to international trade.

Washington’s 2012 exports to Asia are valued at over $37 billion. Manufacturing supply chains accounted for $155 billion in gross business income, 24 percent of the total produced in Washington State in 2012. The most significant manufacturing subsector in Washington is aerospace manufacturing with $51.2 billion in gross business income in 2012.

The other most significant manufacturing subsectors by gross business income are petroleum and coal products manufacturing, food manufacturing, computer and electrical product manufacturing, and wood product manufacturing.

Freight-dependent jobs occur in the most heavily freight-dependent industry sectors such as wholesale and retail, manufacturing, construction, agriculture, and transportation. These sectors are very reliant on the multimodal freight network to conduct day-to-day business.

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Slide 2.4

Notes: The top four agricultural supply chains in Washington are apples, dairy, wheat, and potatoes.

In 2011, apples were one of Washington’s top agricultural commodities by value, worth $1.83 billion. In 2012, approximately 130 million 40-pound boxes were harvested from Washington apple orchards.

After harvest, the fruit travels by truck in bins to processing facilities. Some of the apples from the Wenatchee area are trucked to processing facilities in the Yakima area and vice-versa. Due to labor availability, nearly all the apples grown in the Columbia Basin (south of Moses Lake and east of Ellensburg) are trucked to Wenatchee or Yakima for processing.

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Apples leave the processing facility packed into 40-pound boxes, about 10 to 15 percent of which travel by rail to the Midwest and East Coast. The remaining 85 to 90 percent travel by truck to other locations inside and outside Washington, with approximately 38 million boxes being exported internationally.

In 2012, 10 million boxes were exported to Mexico and 7 million boxes were exported to Canada by truck. The remaining 21 million boxes were trucked to the container ports in the Puget Sound for export to 42 other countries.

3. Types and Operation Slide 3.1

Notes: Washington State’s air freight market is larger than many realize. Some air freight operations are obvious, for example FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc.

Others are less obvious, including commercial airlines “belly freight”, small airports and specialized air freight.

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Slide 3.2

Notes: There are 360 airports in Washington State, 136 of which are categorized as public use. Three airports handle the overwhelming majority of the annual cargo weight moved by aircraft. A total of 24 facilities conduct some form of cargo operations.

Nearly all of the air cargo activity at small commercial service airports is the State is generated by FedEx and UPS, along with a small amount of belly freight carried by Alaska/Horizon Airlines.

The efficiency of air cargo movement operations is dependent upon the ability of both the on- and off-airport infrastructure to support rapid delivery, which is fundamental to the air cargo industry.

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Slide 3.3

Notes: At the airport level, efficient infrastructure investment translates to the improvement of connectivity, efficiency, cost, and service.

The essential components that are basic to cargo operations include:

• The cargo building for the transfer of cargo from landside to airside • Parking and docking to accommodate landside vehicles, and • The aircraft ramp for parking aircraft and airside handling of cargo.

The cargo building, in addition to acting as a transfer point for cargo passing to and from airside to landside handlers, may also be used for warehousing and storage, container makeup and breakdown, and package sorting operations.

Other facilities include truck marshalling areas, aircraft taxi lanes, landside offices and warehouses.

Airports and airlines are only a part of a larger eco-system of support services and facilities that comprise the air cargo supply-distribution chain. An airport can be thought of as a key intersection between air logistics and real estate.

The figure on this slide represents a schematic of the relationship between on-airport air cargo activity and second line and off-airport services and facilities.

Due to limited on-airport land availability and higher prices, a significant portion of the air cargo logistics chain activity takes place outside the immediate airport boundaries. However, since transportation costs can be significantly larger than real estate costs, and due to congestion-related uncertainty in travel times, many users of air cargo want to be as close as possible to the airport.

This creates challenges for land-use planning, as well as roadway infrastructure design and maintenance:

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• The ability of SEA/TAC to accommodate and expand air cargo activity, particularly international freighter service, may be in jeopardy due to an under estimation of demand and the aggressive expansion of air passenger and maintenance, repair, and overhaul activities.

• However, there are no known constraints to air cargo activity at any of the other Washington system airports.

• The challenges arise from the need to provide adequate off-airport infrastructure that satisfies the efficiency needs of the industry without placing an undue burden on the affected communities, or on the State’s natural and fiscal resources.

• The land-use planning methodology discussed later in this session offers some useful best practices to aid in this.

Slide 3.4

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Notes: The air cargo ecosystem includes services that are on , adjacent to , and off airport facilities.

These bring several planning and design implications. There is no current constraints on expansion, except at SEATAC airport. Onsite capacity is not currently an issue, and we need to apply best practices to support projected growth.

Slide 3.5

Notes: Aside from this being useful for understanding what type of pavement materials are needed, these classifications also help us understand where freight is a modal priority and where critical needs like truck parking and weigh stations might need more considerations.

Aside from these classifications for the freight network, it is also critical to identify Over-Size/Over-Weight (OSOW), HazMat and first/last mile connector routes. First/last mile connector routes have the following criteria:

Statewide:

• To-and-from T1 and T2 truck routes and strategic U.S. defense facilities • Over-dimensional truck freight routes that connect the state’s significant intermodal

facilities to the T1 and T2 highway system

In urban areas:

• To-and-from the Interstate system and the (1) closest major airport with air freight service, (2) marine terminals, ports, barge loaders and other intermodal facilities, and (3) warehouse/industrial lands

• From high-volume urban freight intermodal facilities to other urban intermodal facilities, e.g. from the Port of Seattle to the BNSF rail yard in Seattle

In rural areas:

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• To-and-from state freight hubs located within five miles of T1 and T2 highways; freight hubs are defined as: (1) agricultural processing centers, (2) distribution centers, (3) intermodal facilities, and (4) industrial/commercial zoned land

• Routes that carry one million tons during three months of the year (reflecting seasonality) of agricultural, timber or other resource industry sector goods

Slide 3.6

Notes: This slide shows the WSDOT Freight and Goods Transportation freight corridors.

4. Design Slide 4.1

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Notes: International logistics and trade businesses include shipping agents, customs brokers, and freight forwarders that facilitate transportation between shippers and carriers for importing and exporting goods to and from the U.S. from many foreign locations.

In Washington State these businesses are mainly clustered around the central Puget Sound, with smaller centers in the Vancouver, Washington and the Spokane area.

In 2012 there were 392 of these businesses located in Washington State, up from 340 in 2009, a 15 percent increase.

Slide 4.2

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Notes: Congestion relief or a means to bypass congestion is a critical issue for freight. When surveyed about how freight carriers would handle a 20% increase in congestion, a majority would pass those cost onto the consumers.

Slide 4.3

Notes:

WSDOT recently completed a Truck Parking Study in order to better understand and address truck parking-related issues in Washington state. With 64 percent of freight in Washington transported by truck, trucks are an essential component of freight supply chains and are critical to the economic competitiveness of the state. This study identifies key industry stakeholders, factors influencing parking demand, truck parking supply and capacity, key truck parking issues and concerns, opportunities for improvements, best practices from other states, and next steps to continue truck parking efforts.

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Slide 4.4

Notes: From the Washington State Truck Parking Study - December 2016:

Based on extensive outreach and engagement efforts, WSDOT identified key truck parking issues in Washington. Safety issues related to inadequate truck parking are a major concern; 46 percent of WSDOT survey respondents said they frequently drive fatigued as a result of insufficient parking. In addition, 59 percent of drivers frequently do not feel safe while parked overnight in Washington.

WSDOT’s truck parking survey also found that Washington’s top three corridors with unmet parking demand are Interstate 5, Interstate 405 and Interstate 90. WSDOT found that parking issues are the most prevalent in urban areas, and at border crossings and mountain passes. WSDOT also determined that drivers’ parking preferences do not always match with actual use.

For example, highway exit and entrance ramps are one of drivers’ least preferred parking options but are third most used. The truck parking shortage in Washington is likely getting worse, with demand increasing and supply potentially decreasing. Other key truck parking issues include trucking industry concerns, environmental effects, infrastructure constraints and communication and coordination needs.

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Slide 4.5

Notes: Longer term, there are numerous interesting options developing, including the highly publicized efforts by Amazon to develop and use unmanned aerial vehicles (or drones) to deliver parcels, and also what is sometimes referred to as the “Uberization” of freight, where the familiar ridesharing concept has the potential significantly alter the way many trucking operations conduct business.

The possibilities are vast, and it is anyone’s guess what’s next.

These evolutionary and revolutionary concepts offer exciting opportunities to improve goods movement efficiency, safety and environmental stewardship. However, they also present some significant challenges for state DOTs.

Among the issues that need to be addressed are:

• What role does the DOT play in the development and implementation of technology systems?

• Is the State prepared to invest in the roadside high-speed communications systems that many of these opportunities need to function?

• How will these advancements affect planning and roadway design? • Will infrastructure maintenance requirements change? If so, how, and to what extent

will the State’s financial obligations change? • Are there actions the State can take to accelerate these advancements? • What policy changes are needed to ensure that public safety is preserved and

enhanced?

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Slide 4.6

Notes: Florida DOT has catalogued an extensive collection of best practices as part of its 2015 Freight Roadway Design Considerations handbook.

In addition to more extensive discussion of the application of FALUCA, the fully referenced document contains useful information about:

Context development describes the process and resources used to identify an appropriate project context area. It offers five different approaches to project design strategies that demonstrate how the identification of a project context area helps to define the intent of design strategies in each of the context areas. These include:

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• Design vehicle application, which characterizes the largest vehicle that should be assumed to use the roadway. Here, the guidebook argues that assuming a WB-67 design vehicle for all movements at all intersections results in designs that reduce comfort and convenience for pedestrians. The guidebook goes on to stress that, since WB-67 turning movements are rare, such designs include more pavement, longer pedestrian crossing distances, higher vehicle speeds and increased construction costs.

• Truck turning encroachment should be expected in some cases, and designs should not focus on encroachment types that rarely occur. This is where understanding the operating context as defined in the FALUCA matrix is essential.

• Modal emphasis. While all complete streets should be designed to accommodate all users, not all streets need to provide the same quality of service to all users. The evaluation of trade-offs in quality of service across user groups is an element of nearly all roadway planning and design projects. Often these trade-offs are associated with the allocation of scarce right-of-way to different modes of travel.

• Target speed is the speed at which vehicles should operate in a specific context, consistent with the level of multimodal activity generated by adjacent land uses, to provide mobility for all motor vehicles and a safe environment for pedestrians and bicyclists. The target speed is influenced by both elements of roadway design that are governed by design speed, as well as the form and function of the adjacent uses beyond the right-of-way.

• Fine tuning access and mobility refers to striking the proper balance between the function of each roadway in providing an access function (delivering people and goods to adjacent properties) and providing a mobility function (conveying people and goods past adjacent properties).

The guidebook goes on to offer context-sensitive design strategies for designing section configurations, turn treatments, access management and truck parking, and traffic control, including signaling.

Each strategy is examined within the FALUCA construct, and includes an examination of user perspectives of truck drivers, auto drivers, bus transit drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists and adjacent property owners. For example:

• Truck drivers generally seek predictable travel paths that respect their relatively limited maneuverability and value of preserving momentum.

• Auto drivers generally seek convenience of flexibility to support a greater number of discretionary movements.

• Bus transit drivers generally share common interests with truck drivers, favoring maneuverability that supports customer service.

• Pedestrians seek direct, comfortable travel paths that minimize vulnerability. • Bicyclists generally seek a continual rebalancing between being integrated with

vehicular flow and simultaneously protected from it. • Adjacent property owners experience the benefits and adverse effects of the traveler

stream.

A key tenet is to design for all users, recognizing the implicit trade-offs that often need to be made in addressing the quality of service provided to different constituents. Each of the design strategy prototypes tends to provide a higher quality of service or comfort for one or more of

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these constituent user groups, while having either mixed or negative effects on quality of service or comfort for other user groups.

The guidance document concludes with a summary of observations about common design elements as they appear in multiple contexts. This information includes:

• A summary of goods-movement related considerations for some of the more common design elements that serve multiple Design Strategies and can be differentiators across the four different context areas, and

• Information to address considerations for other design elements not necessarily featured as differentiators in multiple design strategies, such as climbing lanes, noise and vibration and landscaping and public art.

Slide 4.7

Notes: In the diagram shown here:

• LOW ACTIVITY AREAS are characterized by land uses that would generally be compatible with freight mobility, but actual freight activity (truck traffic) in these areas is low. Therefore, these areas would not be targeted for freight improvement strategies.

• COMMUNITY ORIENTED AREAS have low freight traffic and are characterized by medium- to high-density residential, office, and mixed uses that engender pedestrian, bicycle, and automotive traffic. Designing transportation facilities for these user groups generally impedes freight mobility, incorporating elements like fewer and narrower travel lanes, tight turn radii at intersections, and low travel speeds. Freight mobility strategies in these areas should be focused to a limited number of corridors that provide good freight accessibility to the area and limit impacts to other travel modes and the community character.

• FREIGHT ORIENTED AREAS have high levels of truck traffic and land uses that are supported by goods movement, such as industrial, commercial, and agricultural designations. These are areas where roads should generally be designed to facilitate truck movements, including design elements like wide travel lanes and wide turn radii at

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intersections. Implementing freight mobility improvements in these areas would likely have few, if any, negative sociocultural impacts. Indeed, such improvements would generally bolster the productivity of the industrial and commercial uses along the corridor.

• DIVERSE ACTIVITY AREAS have elements of both community oriented and freight oriented areas. Freight activity is high in these areas, either in terms of truck traffic or industrial and commercial land uses (or both), but there are also fairly dense residential and/or office uses. In such areas, freight mobility improvements would warrant special consideration to accommodate trucks, emphasizing the primary role of the freight facility and catering to the needs of other users of the facility, including motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians.

Slide 4.8

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Notes: Florida DOT developed the process depicted here for the evaluation and selection of projects in its District 7 “Freight Moves Florida” Plan.

It outlines the basic steps in the application of the FALUCA approach, which are:

• The identification and analysis of the project context, which includes: o The definition of FALUCA quadrant (community oriented, low activity, freight

oriented, or diverse) beginning with the guidance in the Freight Plan o Consultation with local jurisdictions to determine whether changes have been

made to land uses or zoning since the Freight Plan was developed o Consideration of local environmental variables to refine the FALUCA

designation, considering nuances that are below the radar of the Freight Plan guidance, and

o The possible segmentation of the project into different context areas depending upon its size and the magnitude of contextual changes within the study area

Once this is complete, the project needs are defined and various design strategies are evaluated to determine which is/are most appropriate to meet the needs. The designer evaluates the various design strategies against the compatibility designation to ensure the solution fits within the parameters associated with the compatibility area.

FDOT’s FALUCA process is nearly identical to WSDOT’s Practical Design Procedures, and if used can work with WSDOT’s documentation protocols using the Basis of Design.

Slide 4.9

Notes: There isn’t a lot of guidance or research related specifically to truck only lanes and when best to consider them. NCHRP Report 835 discusses truck only lanes as a type of managed lane but doesn’t offer any significant contribution. FHWA has a briefing on different ways to finance truck-only lanes using tolling and PPP, with some high level analysis describing the benefits and drawbacks of each approach.

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The Southern California Association of Governments conducted a study of the conditions under which truck-only lanes would be most feasible.

Specific conditions that would signal a possible need for truck-only lanes include:

• Truck volumes exceeding 30 percent of the vehicle mix • One-way traffic volumes greater than 1,800 vehicles per lane-hour during peak hours • Off-peak volumes in each direction exceeding 1,200 vehicles per lane-hour

In Corridors for Toll Truckways: Suggested Locations for Pilot Projects, Robert W. Poole, Jr., and Peter Samuel used similar parameters: average daily traffic of 40,000 in each direction, with 20 percent accounted for by heavy trucks. Most rural interstates are unlikely to meet those conditions, suggesting that truck-only lanes are likely to be a cost-effective solution only when traffic volumes are comparatively high, with a sizable presence of heavy trucks.

The debate over whether to construct additional lanes along certain interstate highways has been receiving attention recently. In part, this interest is due to the steady increase in heavy truck traffic as the U.S. economy grows and trucking commands an increasing share of freight shipments. In The Freight Story: A National Perspective on Enhancing Freight Transportation (FHWA-OP-03-004), the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) estimated that freight truck vehicle miles traveled will increase by more than 70 percent by 2020. The Transportation Research Board (TRB) in its 2003 report, Freight Capacity for the 21st Century, called on the U.S. Congress to study the cost and market potential of exclusive truck lanes.

In addition, R.W. Stokes and S. Albert in Preliminary Assessment of the Feasibility of an Exclusive Truck Facility for Beaumont-Houston Corridor and F.L. Mannering in Truck Restriction Evaluation: The Puget Sound Experience argued that the benefits of truck-only lanes go beyond operational gains for trucking firms and include traffic safety improvements, reduced conflicts, and lower maintenance costs on general-traffic lanes. Moving heavy trucks to separate lanes could also improve the comfort and convenience of those traveling in passenger vehicles.

Slide 4.10

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Notes: The FALUCA guide also highlights the need for understanding the context and geometric cross section layout when considering lane widths and other multimodal considerations.

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5. Risk Factors Slide 5.1

Notes: There has been a policy debate regarding the need to accommodate off-tracking as described in Design Manual Chapter 1240: Turning Roadways. The research on this topic can be found in NCHRP Report 505. In general off-tracking is an issue, but a study of off-tracking found that it is more of an issue on low and high speed locations, versus intermediate routes.

That said, depending on the location off-tracking considerations do not necessarily need to be contained within the lane width itself.

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Slide 5.2

Notes: An issue we have in urban and rural town center contexts is balancing the need for parking and loading zones. NCFRP Report 24 - Smart Growth and Urban Goods Movement highlights some of the issues related to loading zones. There have been some successes with two approaches, locating the loading zone on an adjacent side street, however, to complete the accessibility performance needs, wider sidewalks and curb ramps may be needed.

Slide 5.3

Notes: In multimodal environments and within diverse context areas, encroachment of a turning truck may be a reasonable tradeoff. Designers should consider the intersection design vehicle identified for each leg of the intersection, frequency of use, and geometric countermeasures such as moving the stop bar.

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Slide 5.4

Notes: NCHRP Report 774 evaluated the compounding effects of grade and superelevation. Some of the research recommendations are as follows.

Research found that our superelevation rates are overly conservative, which is why elements of concern on this chart are outside the normal supers that we would typically provide.

Another issue discussed in NCHRP 774 where specific vehicle loads and multi-trailers. Authors didn’t have sufficient data to draw conclusions, but indicated that further research is likely needed to look into multi trailer affects and tankers where liquid moving around creates additional dynamic effects.

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6. Recap Slide 6.1

Notes: While freight uses a variety of modes, most freight ends up on trucks.

The freight classification system has five different levels based on the tonnage of cargo hauled on the highway system.

Congestion relief or a means to bypass congestion is a critical issue for freight.

FDOT has catalogued an extensive collection of best practices as part of its 2015 Freight Roadway Design Considerations handbook.

Truck parking and loading zones are a concern for drivers and WSDOT.

module 8 freight transportation

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