Traffic Congestion Effects on Supply Chains: Accounting for Behavioral Elements in Planning and Economic Impact Models

As traffic volumes and congestion grows on highways and urban roadways, freight and delivery service operators become increasingly challenged to maintain dependable and reliable schedules. This affects supply chains and truck-dependent businesses both of which are of increasing importance for both public policy and private sector operators. From the public perspective, there is a need to make investment, financing and policy decisions based on an understanding of public infrastructure needs, costs and broader economic stakes involved. From the perspective of shippers and carriers, there are the day-to-day cost implications of delay and reliability as it affects supply chain management, and well as a longer-range need to assess opportunities, risks and returns associated with location, production and distribution decisions. Both perspectives need to be recognized when considering the full range of impacts that traffic congestion can have on the economy. A barrier to considering these two perspectives together is the gap that exists between theoretical simulation modeling and real world observations of business responses to congestion. A review of research literature reveals a number of theoretical models which posit that the generalized growth of traffic congestion adds to total transport costs for delivered products, causing firms to shift location and shipment size configurations to reoptimize net revenues. However, industry publications and business interviews reveal a wider variety of behavioral responses that depend on the type and timing of congestion delays (bottlenecks at specific ports, intermodal facilities, highways or urban road networks) and their frequency, leading to a range of operational responses as a hedge against both expected and unexpected delay. The nature of the affected parties, and the form of operational responses, can vary widely by industry. The impacts can span different supply chain configurations â including not only the movement of material and parts to producers and then to distributors, but also local distribution and delivery of finished goods to retail markets, and even local delivery of parts and repair services to businesses and households. For service-oriented economies, more sophisticated changes in operations â especially those that depend on efficiency of over-the-road operations â can be limited or entirely foreclosed by congestion. In a broad sense, all of these forms of movement have supply chain elements. And they share a common factor, which is that they are very much affected by the degree of of unpredictability and variation in delays associated with growing congestion

Long-Term Economic Development Impacts of Highway Projects: Findings from a National Database of Pre/Post Case Studies

ABSTRACT Highway projects can have a wide range of different economic development effects, depending on the type of project, objective, location, surrounding conditions and local business context. Yet most empirical analysis of highway economic impacts to date has been based on highly aggregate statistical studies, anecdotal observations or theoretical predictions. A national database of pre/post case studies offers the potential to more systematically observe and document the nature of local and regional economic impacts, and provide insight into factors affecting them. Real world observations can also serve as a useful complement to model predictions, and also provide a basis for refining them. Accordingly, the Strategic Highway Research Program funded 100 pre/post case studies of the economic impacts of highway and highway/intermodal projects, and assembled them to provide the start for a national database of observed impacts. This paper summarizes findings from the initial analysis of that database, presenting findings on the range of observed job impacts and land development impacts, and factors affecting the nature of those results. Landau, Weisbrod and Winston page 1 INTRODUCTION There are many reasons why pre/post case studies of transportation projects and their economic impacts can be useful --either individually or as a pooled source of data. (1) For policy accountability, they can provide a form of audit assessment of the consequences of past investments. (2) For public information, they can be useful for communications to government officials and the general public regarding the nature of impacts that can actually result from transportation projects. (3) For impact prediction, they can aid initial sketch planning processes by defining the range of likely impacts (for early stage considerations, before further modeling is undertaken). (4) For research, they can provide a rich base of data for further statistical analysis, and those results can also be used to further improve the accuracy of predictive models. (5) For planning, they can be used to identify the types of local factors that need attention to maximize economic impact opportunities and minimize barriers to them. (6) And for public hearings, information on real world experience can be helpful to establish a range of reasonable expectations regarding local impacts, which typically are far less than either the fears of project opponents or the hopes of project proponents. Unfortunately, relatively few pre/post case studies have been conducted on a systematic basis. Reasons likely include the cost of designing, collecting and analyzing such information, as well as fear of embarrassment if outcomes are found to fall short of expectations for project investment that have already been made. To overcome these limitations and enable the advantages noted above, the US Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP) funded development of 100 pre/post case studies of the economic development and land development impacts of highway and highway/intermodal projects, along with development of a database and web tool for viewing and using their findings. The project sought to include all major project types, spanning all regions of the continental US and both urban and rural settings. It also included a small number of available English language studies from Canada and abroad, in a format that would enable continuing expansion over time. The full results of that effort are provided in a final report and the TPICS (transportation project impact case studies) web too

Improving Transportation Project Evaluation by Recognizing the Role of Spatial Scale and Context in Measuring Non-User Economic Benefits

The usefulness of transportation project evaluation depends on the completeness of its benefit measures. Since transportation networks are intrinsically spatial, transportation improvement projects have spatial access and location characteristics that can lead to a variety of non-user economic benefits. Recent research has enabled us to better understand how spatial context and spatial heterogeneity play further roles in generating efficiency gains for non-users, in the form of productivity, income, and cost savings for both private and public sectors of the economy. This paper draws upon that body of research to expand our understanding of the means by which transportation projects can generate economic efficiency gains, and approaches needed to measure them. It covers topics beyond those captured by current definitions of “wider economic benefits,” including additional sources of scale economies associated with freight distribution and connectivity, and further public and private sector economic gains enabled by environmental and social inclusion improvement. It points to ways that non-user economic benefits can be more comprehensively defined and better measured by recognizing their spatial scale, context, and threshold effects. It also identifies ways that current benefit measurement methods introduce unintended bias into transportation investment decision-making through omission and mismeasurement. The result is a case for a refresh of thinking about how we classify and recognize non-user economic benefits in transportation evaluation, and how we apply transportation planning and economic models to support their measurement

How well does BRT perform in contrast to LRT? An Australian case study using MetroScan_TI

BRT is typically a relatively more popular transport investment in developing countries in contrast to the bias observed increasingly in developed economies towards LRT. While there have been a number of comparative assessments of BRT and LRT (in all of its possible manifestations), with a focus on one or more elements of patronage demand, and costs of construction and operation, there has, with few exceptions, been a preference for LRT which some might describe as linked to emotional ideology rather than anything to do with factual evidence on the costs, benefits and economic impact of each modal investment. In this chapter, we present a new planning tool, MetroScan as a quick-scan tool that can be used to assess the merits of BRT and LRT. MetroScan is different to other planning systems in that it accounts for the demand implications on both passenger and freight-related activity (all in the one model system), endogenous residential and employment decisions, and associated benefit-cost outcomes, as well as the wider economic impacts of transport initiatives. We use a case study setting in the Northern Beaches of Sydney to illustrate the way in which MetroScan can assess a wider suite of benefits and costs of BRT and LRT, which encompasses not only accessibility and mobility opportunities but the contribution that can be made to the productivity and value added outcomes for the local economy. This broader set of considerations is important in suggesting other ways in which a comparison of BRT and LRT might be more informative than is typically presented

Determinants of residential location demand : implications for transportation policy

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil Engineering; and, (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1978.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING.Includes bibliographical references (p. 153-159).by Glen E. Weisbrod.M.S.M.C.P

Models to predict the economic development impact of transportation projects: historical experience and new applications

O10, O18, R15, R40,