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Incorporating Freight Regional Land Use Planning Models

Proposal Summary and Objectives

Forecasting of freight demand in land use models has been a challenge over many years in transportation planning. Hence, many regional planning agencies face challenges to systematically plan for future infrastructure needs. One of the critical factors in freight and land use is commodity flows. Other factors include location factors, physical factors, operational factors, pricing, and dynamic factors, such as seasonal variations in demand and changes in customers’ preferences. Modeling commodity flows with land use is one possible first step. However, it has some limitations as land use data lacks detailed information on economic activities. The commodity flow survey conducted by census every five years captures only three to five percent of observations of the total population and cannot provide the amount and accuracy level required by these models. Further, the propriety nature of freight data makes it difficult to obtain information on commodity type, value, geographic information etc. This project aims to explore how freight can explicitly be incorporated into classical and next generation land use models. The project will use a case study region (in TN) to demonstrate how freight can be integrated to land use models.

Funding Amount: $100,000
Status: Active
Duration: Sep 1, 2019 - Jul 30, 2020