This paper develops procedures to identify and quantify the role played by large urban freight traffic generators as contributors of truck traffic in metropolitan areas. Although ports, container terminals, and other industrial sites are usually associated with large generations of truck trips, they only represent a small proportion of the total trips produced and attracted in large metropolitan areas. This paper analyzes the importance of other facilities such as ordinary businesses or buildings that individually or collectively (clusters) generate a large proportion of truck traffic. The paper discusses the opportunities of these large traffic generators for city logistics initiatives. In addition, the paper introduces two effective and complementary procedures to identify these generators using freight trip generation models estimated by the authors.

Land-use planning and policymaking is central to how communities manage their economic activity and the social and environmental impacts these activities produce. Because of this central role, enhancing land-use practices to better incorporate the needs and impacts of freight activity has strong potential to improve the efficiency of their associated supply chains. This paper summarizes the key findings of the NCFRP 08-111 project on “Freight-Efficient Land Uses (FELUs)”, probably the most comprehensive research project to date aimed at designing policy procedures to foster land-uses that minimize the private and external costs associated with the production, transportation, and consumption of goods. As part of the paper, the authors define freight efficient land-uses, identify the principles that should guide the process towards FELUs, outline the process to develop FELU plans and programs, propose to analyze the freight efficiency of current and future land uses in their jurisdictions, and identify complementary initiatives (both land-use and transportation related) that could help mitigate the negative impacts on local communities. The authors discuss three illustrative cases that provide evidence on how land-use decisions produce unintended effects on local communities. The paper explains how decision makers can carefully consider the FELU principles in their planning and avoid or mitigate such negative results.

With the increasing awareness of greenhouse gas emissions, transportation with alternative fuel, especially vehicle electrification has attracted attention from more and more researchers, planners and practitioners. However, the feasibility of using electric vehicles for public transit is hard to assess as electric buses vary significantly in terms of costs and performance. Implementation of electric buses in small and medium communities is even more complex, as such communities are often more sensitive to transportation service due to factors such as tighter budget constraints, higher standards for noise and air quality control, and stronger needs for the sense of community. A comprehensive assessment framework is needed to evaluate feasibility of electric bus implementation in small and medium communities. The study establishes such an evaluation framework and selects assessment criteria based on comprehensive literature review and data from multiple sources including research reports, manufacture consultation, and surveys. An exhaustive list of bus performance measurements are quantified to reflect the latest transportation technological advancements and emerging concerns on emissions, noise and energy consumption. In addition to vehicle factors, external factors indicating special features of small and medium size communities are also considered. The study finds that most small and medium communities seem to be ideal for electric bus operation, but electric buses’ indirect impact on environment (through power generation) and their high costs should also be considered.

Parking in big cities is never easy. Policy-makers and transportation planners have developed many strategies to accommodate increasing parking demand. However, most of them focus on passenger vehicles, and analysis of delivery vehicle parking is still limited. This study uses recent disaggregate data of freight delivery patterns collected in the Manhattan area, which is rarely available in freight studies, to explore the factors influencing delivery vehicle on-street parking characteristics and drivers’ behavior. A duration model is used to analyze delivery vehicle on-street parking duration, and a count data model is used to analyze the parking frequency of delivery tours. With the outputs of these models, the effectiveness of different traffic-management and parking-management strategies are assessed. The results show that policies encouraging smaller delivery vehicle, higher loading efficiency, and shorter parking duration will reduce congestion and economic losses. The results also demonstrat...