Transportation Network Planning: Public and Private Common Ground
I spent the day in Washington DC listening to a variety of really intelligent people talk about transportation planning models. This may not sound like everybody’s idea of fun, but I found the discussion compelling and fascinating. The most interesting thing was observing the types of problems that people in Metropolitan Planning Organizations, as well as State planning organizations are addressing, and the types of data being employed in these very elegant planning models.
A very interesting presentation was made by the Jennifer Murray on freight planning in Wisconsin. One of the major game changers in this state is the development of “fracking sands”, that are being used in oil exploration for directional drilling in North Dakota, Western Canada, and the Canadian Maritimes. As a result of the sudden explosion in the need for this sand, which has a very specific quality characteristic that is required, the entire transportation landscape is changing, wiht increased pressure on railroads and highways never seen before.
Similarly, other presentations on commodity transportation flow maps in the state of Iowa, transportation models in the city of Chicago, and synchro-modalithy systems in the Netherlands provided fascinating new innovations in transportation modeling that will be important in helping to shape the environment for improvement. The application of GPS data in modeling truck vehicle routing and forecasting was also demonstrated in a presentation by Arun Kuppam of Cambridge Systems. Such systems are already being deployed in real-time by 3PL’s in India, and will continue to be adopted more in the US.
The private sector was also represented, with discussions by Andy Street of NACCO and William Lucas & Matt Drown from Caterpillar. These individuals shared some of the challenges they face on a day to day basis, with increased pressure to reduce transportation costs, demanding customers who want specialized delivery services, and no room for error in execution of perfect on-time delivery. Private industry is challenged by the issues posed by poor government infrastructure, increased regulatory issues, and talent shortages, particularly for truck drivers and other transportation professionals.
One of the big takeaways for me is the importance of integrating freight data and procedures to respond quickly to issues, and how public pokicy makers often have little insight into the issues facing private sector planners. Conversely, private sector people are often unaware of the decisions being made on infrastructure, and need to be more engaged in the dialogue on long-term infrastructure investments. Having a strong pool of data for decision-making will mean having collaboration between these two parties, to enable quality local commodity and shipment flows, shifts in business locations and technologies, strategic planning issues, and intermodal models developing options for driving solutions to the complex transportation infrastructure issues that are on the near-term horizon. More infomraiton is needed on how freight is used, as well as developing better and more robust traffic counts, more commodity-specific information and more modal shipment types beyond simple tonnage data. Freight and intramodal supply chains to help reduce empties, damaged goods, and traffic delays due to construction are other areas for collaboration between the private and public sector.
The Transportation Research Board funded this conference based on their Strategic Highway Research Plan 2, which is due to sunset in 2015 (by design). However, there are many more opportunities that exist between all of these parties to drive innovative solutions. Fruitful ground for future research!
