Regional Freight Modeling System: Methodology and Applications: Develop Freight Transportation Models for Large Metropolitan Areas

Freight movement is a vital and growing part of regional economy and urban transportation system. Though freight transportation has been surely of growing interest to transportation planners, it is costly and difficult to obtain freight data and develop freight models. Based on the literature and our previous research on freight transportation, this book describes a regional freight modeling system with a non-survey approach that offers an affordable and efficient way to estimate detailed freight flows from secondary data sources with reasonable accuracy. The freight data derived in the modeling system are available at low cost and easily updatable in comparison to expensive freight origin- destination survey. The estimated freight flow is loaded along with conventionally obtained passenger flow to simulate regional highway network performance. The approach has been implemented to estimate regional truck freight traffic flows in the five-county Los Angeles metropolitan area.