Investigation of National and Regional Freight Data Needs and Urban Freight Delivery Patterns

Due to business confidentiality concerns, one of the major challenges facing regional goods movement study is data scarcity. In this study, a simultaneous equation modeling framework was applied to estimating county-level inbound-outbound commodity flows. By estimating the model coefficients, a quantified relationship between inbound and outbound flows was identified. A pilot study suggested that proportional weighting gave the best output when compared with TRANSEARCH database. Once the outbound flows were estimated, the inbound values were then determined as discussed above. Finally, validation with the Minnesota TRANSEARCH Database showed that the proposed framework generated reliable results. As a major contribution, this research has presented promising solutions to generate freight data for the national perspectives.;Utilizing the generated county in/outbound data by commodity type, the spatial autocorrelation analyses at both the FAF region and county level reveal that commodity shipments are generally spatially concentrated, coinciding with the known clusters of economic activities. This study has provided a visualized assessment tool as well as deeper understanding of the spatial patterns (generation, attraction and clusters) of various commodities across the entire country.;Another important source for regional freight data is regional freight surveys. This thesis provides extensive reviews on existing regional goods movement surveys collected from the literature and data solicitation requests to state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) and Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPOs). Documentation of the state-of-the-practice freight surveys in terms of survey design and data collection and suggestions for improvements were given as a valuable reference for future practice.;The complex nature of urban commercial vehicle movements has made modeling their activities a challenge. This thesis presented a tour chaining, as opposed to individual tour-based as commonly seen in the literature, approach to modeling urban commercial vehicle daily tour chaining pattern choice, which associates commercial vehicle activities in urban areas with land use, shipment demand, and shipment type, etc. It is further demonstrated the superiority of tour chaining based modeling to current tour-based practice.