Engineering Commons^™

Unobserved Heterogeneity And Spatial Correlation: Statistical And Econometric Analyses Of Heavy-Vehicle Hard Braking And Crash Frequency, Jason Anderson

PSU Transportation Seminars

In heavy-vehicles (a truck with a gross vehicle weight rating of greater than 10,000 pounds), a hard braking event is described as an event that prompts the vehicle’s “black box” to record an abrupt change in speed. More specifically, this occurs when the driver applies excess force to the vehicle’s brake. These hard braking events can then serve as a proxy for several factors, such as economic impacts, environmental impacts, and impacts on safety. In the context of the present study, being that approximately one-third of all heavy-vehicle-caused crashes in 2014 were attributed to faulty brakes, there is a need …

Behavior-Based Freight Modeling At Metro, Chris Johnson, Bud Reiff

PSU Transportation Seminars

Chris Johnson and Bud Reiff will present on a behavior-based freight model being used at Oregon Metro. This model will replace Metro’s current truck model with a hybrid freight model that both represents multi-modal freight flows through elements of national and regional supply chains and simulates the movement of individual trucks and shipments on local networks. Model estimation and calibration will also require collection of behavioral data from shippers and receivers representing a wide range of industries, common and contract freight carriers, business that operate non-freight commercial vehicles, warehouse managers, and logistics agents.

Key project objectives:

• Develop tools to enable …

Tracking Trucks To Improve Performance, Mecit Cetin, Christopher M. Monsere

TREC Project Briefs

Freight transportation is an important part of Oregon’s economy, and the Oregon Department of Transportation, or ODOT, continually observes the highway system to make sure it is running as smoothly as possible. By monitoring the progress of individual trucks, ODOT can obtain performance metrics such as travel time, travel delays, and origin-destination flows. This information can help identify slow passages or bottlenecks in the highway system. Typical ways of obtaining these metrics, however, may involve purchasing expensive equipment, and may also raise privacy concerns if each truck is required to carry a tracking unit. To avoid these difficulties, Portland State …

Exploratory Methods For Truck Re-Identification In A Statewide Network Based On Axle Weight And Axle Spacing Data To Enhance Freight Metrics: Phase Ii, Mecit Cetin, Christopher M. Monsere

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Vehicle re-identification methods can be used to anonymously match vehicles crossing two different locations based on vehicle attribute data. This research builds upon a previous study and investigates different methods for solving the re-identification problem and explores some of the factors that impact the accuracy of the results. To support this work, archived data from weigh-in-motion (WIM) stations in Oregon are used for developing, calibrating, and testing vehicle re-identification algorithms. In addition to the Bayesian approach developed by the researchers in the previous study, a neural network model is developed for solving the re-identification problem. The results from the testing …

The Relationship Between Vmt And Economic Activity, B. Starr Mcmullen, Nathan Eckstein

TREC Final Reports

Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in the U.S. have exhibited an upward trend over time similar to that observed for gross domestic product (GDP) and personal income (PI). While conventional wisdom suggests that economic growth leads to more driving and thus higher VMT, it is theoretically possible that the causation could also be the other way around. If causation is from VMT to GDP, then legislation such as the Federal Surface Transportation Policy and Planning Act of 2009’s directive to annually reduce national per capita VMT could potentially have an adverse impact on overall economic activity.

This study uses times series …

Freight Distribution Problems In Congested Urban Areas: Fast And Effective Solution Procedures To Time-Dependent Vehicle Routing Problems, Miguel A. Figliozzi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Congestion is a common phenomenon in all medium to large cities of the world. Reliability of freight movement in urban areas is an important issue to manufacturing or service companies whose operation is based in just-in-time approaches. These companies tend to provide high value or time sensitive products/services. As congestion increases, carriers face increasing challenges to satisfy their time sensitive customers in an economical way. Route designs or schedules which require long computation times or ignore travel time variations will result in inefficient and suboptimal solutions. Poorly designed routes that lead freight vehicles into congested arteries and streets not only …

Freight Performance Measures: Approach Analysis, B. Starr Mcmullen, Christopher M. Monsere

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This report reviews the existing state of the art and also the state of the practice of freight performance measurement. Most performance measures at the state level have aimed at evaluating highway or transit infrastructure performance with an emphasis on passenger transportation. Freight performance measurement ultimately requires evaluation of performance of the entire freight transportation system, which includes highways, waterways, rail, air, and modal connections. This requires considerable expansion of thinking beyond the traditional focus of state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) on highway performance.

This project builds upon past and current work in the area of freight performance measurement and …

The Impacts Of Congestion On Commercial Vehicle Tours Characteristics And Costs, Miguel A. Figliozzi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Congestion is a common phenomenon in all major cities of the world. Increased travel time and uncertainty brought about by congestion impacts the efficiency of logistics operations. Recent studies indicate that a significant proportion of commercial vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) and vehicle hours traveled (VHT) are generated by trip-chains or multi-stop tours. This paper presents research demonstrating the impact of congestion on multi-stop tours in urban areas. An analytical model, numerical experiments, and real-world tour data are used to understand the impact of congestion on tour characteristics, carriers? costs, VKT, and VHT. This research shows that travel time/distance between customer …