A truck-based urban planning model: Typology, model development and validation

Historically, transportation planning efforts in urban areas have focused primarily on the passenger mode. This research developed a long haul urban planning model for the Fargo-Moorhead (North Dakota and Minnesota) region using a three-stage model trip generation, trip distribution and trip assignment. The model was developed for three industrial groups: retail, manufacturing and transportation and warehousing. The freight model developed was then combined with a passenger planning model with it were evaluated.Truck trip generation and OD data were collected for the Fargo-Moorhead (ND-MN) metropolitan area using surveys. OLS models were used to develop truck production and attraction equations with the number of employees as the independent variable for three industrial groups: retail, transportation and warehousing and manufacturing. The results indicated that the number of employees was statistically significant in predicting truck trip productions and attractions with the rates different from each other.The gravity model was used to distribute trips that had at least one end in the study area. For external-external (EE) trip surveys using license plate recognition technology were used to develop EE origin-destination tables. The trips were then assigned to the network using the equilibrium assignment technique.The model developed was validated against observed EE OD table and truck traffic counts. Deviation from the observed EE OD to the models output table was found to be less than 1%. The modeled truck volumes replicated 84.44% of the truck counts. The validated model was then incorporated into the passenger model by applying heavy adjustment factors into the capacity of the passenger models link. Combining the passenger and truck models had significant impact as it resulted in a 10% redistribution of passenger trips. The combination also improved the passenger models replication of observed traffic counts from 68% to 72%.