New Ways of Thinking about Freight Data

ITE JOURNAL / DECEMBER 2004 INTRODUCTION The incorporation of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) into goods transport promises to increase productivity, security and efficiency. This feature reviews emerging examples of “passive” data collection efforts in several states. Work remains to transform these opportunities into needs identified by freight planners and researchers. Freight movements have always been part of the global economy. Early shipments of goods across oceans, raw materials moving over land by rail, suburbanization spawned by new manufacturing plants, goods hauled by truck—all have contributed to the growth of our communities and have been national achievements and heartbeats of regional economies. However, recent changes in patterns of economic activity may have moved us beyond a service economy and into a “facilitation” economy, where goods move during the production process and through distribution and redistribution centers. Freight movements through our cities and across our communities now can serve not only local production and consumption needs but, perhaps, solely these needs for others who live somewhere else. Encouraging freight movements for local activities has always caught the eye of decision-makers. However, it now is less clear why, how and what facilities should be built or maintained when freight serves strictly to facilitate the needs of non-local parties. For this reason, decision-makers need to better understand what their role in planning for freight movements should be—by understanding freight itself. Good data or representations of activities occurring on our transportation infrastructure system are perhaps the best way of knowing.1 This information also is vital for determining what constitutes “protection of our critical infrastructure”—what transportation facilities carry key components of our economic system with respect to the movement of freight on our national system of highways and bridges.