Freight Performance Measures

Unit 4: Performance Measures

Performance MeasurePerformance measurement is the use of statistical evidence to determine progress toward specific defined organizational objectives.” (FHWA)

Performance measurement is a way to promote accountability

Every state, and the federal government, has performance measure standards

Performance Measures are in Demand

• Desire to increase the accountability of public expenditures (limited resources)

• Need to communicate results to customers (accountability)

• Responsiveness to federal and state requirements

• Efficiency • “You can not manage without measures”

General Freight Performance Measures

• Reliability (maybe the most important) • Responsiveness • Flexibility • Costs • Asset Management • Safety • Security • Ratio of peak period travel time to off-peak travel

time at freight-significant nodes

Performance Measure (Cont.)

• Ratio of variance to average minutes per trip in peak periods at freight-significant nodes

• Hours of incident-based delay on freight-significant highways

• Annual miles per truck • Crossing time at international border crossings • Conditions on connectors between National

Highway Systems and terminals • Customer Satisfaction

Freight Performance Measures

• Lags the rest of the transportation world • Lack of freight data a major reason • Lack of consistent, compatible data • No organization to support and develop a

FPM system

Problems with Measures

• Private sector data – privacy concern, oriented toward markets

• Public sector oriented towards political boundaries

• Data collection can be burden to agencies • Data poor and hard to find (trucks for

example) • Interaction effects

National Freight Data Program

• Proposed national freight database

• Coordinated and compatible data sets

• Federal government takes lead role

“The effectiveness and efficiency of the freight transportation system are heavily dependent on reliable data to inform a range of decisions at all levels of government and in the private sector about economic and infrastructure investments and policy issues.”

NCFRP(National Cooperative Freight Research Program) Report 10

• “recognizing the lack of resources to create a new national freight data reporting structure, the project recommends creation of a Freight system Report Card that relies upon existing sources”

Federal Performance Measures

Federal Performance Measures

Federal Performance Measures: USDOT

• Performance plan • High level freight goal (market-oriented) • A work in progress

Federal Measures 1. Travel time measures (average travel time in peak period,

annual hours of delay, average time at border crossings) 2. Reliability measures (variability of travel time; hours of

incident-based/non-recurrent delay) 3. Cost measures (average cost per ton-mile) 4. Safety or damage measures (accident rate) 5. Highway condition measures (percent of roads with surface

condition classified as good, number of weight restricted bridges)

6. Economic impact measures (contribution of investment to GDP growth, employment impacts)

7. Industry productivity measures (ton-miles per employee, percent of truckloads empty)

Example: American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI)

• Trucking organization’s research arm support by US DOT

• Using GPS data to look at freight significant corridors – including all of I-5

Example: WSDOT

Example: Minnesota DOT

• Minnesota has a performance based planning approach

• Long list of freight measures by mode – truck – rail – waterways – air cargo – intermodal facilities

• Targeted values for measures

Minnesota Freight Measures Study

• Market share • Modal share • Freight productivity • Shipment Rates • And many others • Several studies to look at feasibility and

availability of measures http://www.lrrb.org/pdf/200812.pdf

Example: Minnesota DOT

Example: Minnesota FPM data study

Example: Ontario

• Long term program • GPS data • Well integrated into planning and engineering

decisions

Sustainable Performance Measures

• “Green” performance measures starting to appear

• Few that are freight only

Special Need for Truck Data

• Trucks carry 70% of our freight but: – Minimal performance data on trucks available – Existing travel time information is for cars and in

urban corridors – Length of delays for trucks at borders uncertain

Freight Performance Measures

• Cost of highway freight per ton-mile • Cargo insurance rates • Fuel consumption of heavy trucks per ton-mile • On-time performance for highway-freight

deliveries • Point-to-point travel times for selected freight-

significant highways • Hours of delay per 1000 vehicle-miles on freight-

significant highways

Technology to the rescue?

Commercial Fleet Management GPS

• Numerous vendors sell GPS services to trucking companies. Used to track and dispatch trucks, monitor driver performance

• Report using a cellular connection• One estimate is 25% of trucks have these GPS• Data is a “waste” product of the trucking

industry.

In Washington State we buy this Truck GPS Data from Vendors

• GPS vendors realize selling data is a new revenue stream

• One-stop shopping – one GPS vendor includes a large number of trucking businesses

• Good technical support from the vendors for pushing out the data

• Relatively inexpensive (compared to a research-oriented data collection program)– Less than a $0.01 a truck per day.

Commercial GPS Data

• Includes at least: lat/long, time/date stamp, travel direction, spot speed, truck ID

• The data is collected for trucking company business needs and not for public sector use– Due to cellular cost, the truck’s location report are

often infrequent (every 10 to 15 minutes when moving).

• One vendor can provide many probe trucks.

Data Acquisition - One Day of Data

Data Challenges

• Geo-coding –locating the truck on the correct road

Data Issues • Setting up a automated processing mechanism

is necessary since the database includes millions of points

• Due to privacy protection - you do not know the truck’s size, class, or cargo

• The raw data requires considerable processing: – Error checking. – Fixing GPS signal problems. – Geo-locating (snapping) in a GIS to roadway. – Locating trip origins and destinations.

What do we do with this data?

• For WSDOT: – developed methodology to identify and rank statewide truck

highway bottlenecks – looked at freight mobility both before and after construction

projects – provided truck network travel times for truck forecasting

models • Future plans – explore truck travel patterns by time of day and season – look at drivers’ trip linking behavior – support air quality monitoring

Example: Severe truck bottleneck in Central Puget Sound (I-5)

• Location: I-5 southbound between NE 63rd St and NE Pacific Ave E

• Length: 1.3 mile • Daily Truck Volume: 11,000 • Average truck travel speed: 38 mph • Percentage of travel speed below

35mph: 48% • Travel Reliability:

Time Period Reliability

AM Unreliable

Midday Unreliable

PM Unreliable

Night Reliably Fast

Lessons learned in Washington State’s Truck Performance Measure program:

• Simplest way to acquire truck GPS data is to buy it directly from large commercial GPS vendors

• Long-term success of this program depends on retaining access to data owned by trucking companies– they support the Washington State’s program because we protect their proprietary data

and use the information to improve the state’s truck freight system• To independently verify the spot speeds, compared the trucks’ GPS spot speeds to

speeds from traffic loops (they matched)• Currently receive GPS location reads every 10-15 minutes when the truck is

traveling, as well as when the truck parks– as the cost of the technology comes down and market adoption increases, we will have

more frequent reads for improved urban corridor analysis• To use GPS data for before-and-after studies of freight projects, the program

manager must track diversion rates on the network, and have more frequent reads for shorter corridor segments

Benefits and costs of monitoring truck performance on the state network

Advantages of GPS truck data: •No other way to accurately track truck speeds on the state and local road network•The state can monitor the performance that matters to trucking companies and shippers: average speed, reliability and severe congestion on specific routes•Data is available from commercial vendors now, and quality will improve as technology advances and more trucking companies install GPS unitsCosts and limitations of using GPS truck data: •This is a new service, tracking truck performance requires ongoing resources to obtain and analyze GPS data and manage the project•At this time, vendors aren’t capturing enough GPS reads on many local roads across the state to analyze their performance