A Guidebook for Implementing Freight Fluidity in Cities of all Sizes 

Date and Time: 8/30/2022
Location: Aspen

Presenter: Bill Eisele, Senior Research Engineer, Texas A&M Transportation Institute

  

 

 

PRESENTATION DESCRIPTION

Freight fluidity is the collective performance of the trips for goods moving in a specified region. It encompasses understanding the goods that are critical, the trips they make, the systems they use and then how well they are moving. Understanding freight fluidity—the performance of the trips that goods make—helps link transportation and everything a typical department of transportation, Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), or local government transportation office might do with economic development. Freight fluidity information puts transportation together with business to support economic sustainability and growth. It helps identify and reduce bottlenecks so transportation agencies can support the economy by making the most beneficial transportation improvements. It is applicable to all geographic area sizes, including small and medium-sized cities.
With the goal of applied methods in mind, The Texas Department of Transportation sponsored the Texas A&M Transportation Institute to develop a guidebook aimed at transportation planners, decision-makers, and system operators to transform freight fluidity research into applied methods and best practices with a goal of putting fluidity into terms practitioners can easily interpret and incorporate into their daily practice. This helps bridge the gap between a highly-technical analysis and the ability for transportation staff to want to use it, find it easy to apply, and have important information that they can comfortably communicate. The guidebook provides applied guidance on the following freight fluidity analytical methods with Texas examples:
• Understanding what goods move in Texas?
• Where are the economic relationships and opportunities?
• How well does Texas’s network perform? Where are the bottlenecks?
• What can be understood about multimodal impacts?
• Where can information be obtained quickly (for urgent requests)?
While the work is focused on Texas, the approach is applicable to other regions (of all sizes) where decision-makers are trying to better understand the questions identified above.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Bill Eisele is a Senior Research Engineer and Mobility Division Head at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) in College Station, Texas where he leads programmatic areas of Mobility Analysis, Urban Analysis, Transportation Planning and Travel Forecasting. Bringing 27 years of experience, he is a recognized expert in the areas of mobility analysis, congestion monitoring, performance measurement, urban freight transportation, freight mobility and access management. He has led projects for several sponsoring agencies. He is a co-author of TTI's Urban Mobility Report. He currently serves as Principal Investigator on a pooled fund study on the topic of Urban Mobility that is sponsored by 17 state DOTs, DC DOT and FHWA. He also serves a Principal Investigator on a project providing freight planning support to the Texas DOT. He is currently TRB Freight Systems Group Chair. He is a former, two-term Chair of the TRB Urban Freight Transportation Committee. Dr. Eisele has been a thought leader on the topic of Freight Fluidity, which he will present at the conference.