Abstract
How a California metropolitan planning organization (MPO) overcame data limitations and developed innovative solutions to regional agricultural freight transportation problems is described. Data from government agencies and trade groups on annual fruit and vegetable production, fish landings, and wine production were combined with survey data on truck volumes and loading practices to develop novel approaches for estimating truck and rail trips. Similar methods were used to project future freight volumes by using key population, income, and agricultural productivity indexes to project agricultural production volumes and employment forecasts in the processed food industries and thereby forecast freight volumes in their industries. To identify problems and deficiencies in the system, new performance indicators such as number of internal truck trips per outbound line-haul trip, wait time per pickup, comparisons of hourly inbound and outbound line-haul truck trip distributions, and truck trips as a percent of total traffic volume on roadways with poor level of service were used. It was concluded that poor logistics planning, lack of coordinated information and communications about load availability, poor load consolidation practices, and inadequate truck parking and driver waiting facilities were among the biggest problems facing the region. A proposed freight logistics center, which may be developed as a public-private partnership, is now under consideration. The methods and programs developed in this study may have applications in other small to medium-sized MPOs.
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