| The purpose of this research is to develop traffic performance measures from GPS data to compare freight tricycle with motor vehicles traditionally used for urban delivery. This research applied data mining using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and spatial analysis methods in ArcGIS to estimate pickup and delivery times, trip travel times, trip delay times and corridor speeds for freight tricycles and trucks performing local delivery in Manhattan, New York City. This project also applied the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) MOVES model to perform sensitivity analysis to evaluate the differences in environment performance based on different vehicle replacement assumptions. The result of this research indicates that GPS data can be used to measure the performance of different urban delivery vehicles, and that in dense urban areas, in spite of some natural limitations, freight tricycles can be a competitive alternative method for last mile freight delivery. |
