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The Development of a Method to Estimate Changes in Freight Mode Share

TRB Transportation Planning Applications Conference

Marty MilkovitsDan BeaganElaine McKenzie

May 9, 2013

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ContextObjective: Estimate impacts of changes in commodity volumes, shipment origins/destinations, modal shares, and modal energy use and emission rates on energy and GHG emissions

Data set: Freight Analysis Framework (FAF) 3.3 commodity flow database

Key question for mode share: How much freight could be shifted to use non-trucking modes?

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DataFAF 3.3 Commodity db: 2007 & Forecasts through 2050– 49 commodities– 15K+ FAF Region OD interchanges – 3 trade types (import/export/domestic)– ~1M records with non-zero commodity flow

Modes– Truck– Rail– Water– Mixed– Pipeline

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 -

1,000,000

2,000,000

3,000,000

4,000,000

5,000,000

6,000,000

7,000,000

All Commodities

Non-Truck

Truck

Hundreds of Miles

2007

Ann

ual k

iloto

ns

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0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 480%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

All Commodities

Observed Truck Smoothed Truck Smoothed Non-Truck

Hundreds of Miles

Mod

e Sh

are

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Modal Share Projection Options

Discrete Choice Model– Cannot identify decision maker from aggregate

commodity flows

Modal Elasticity– No cost or pricing information available

Market Segmentation– Identify markets by commodity and distance– Average truck / non-truck shares for each market

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Market Segmentation

Assumption– Non-truck mode shares could improve to average

for each distance bin / commodity market

Approach– Calculate average mode share for 100 mile bins by

commodity – Proportionally increase “underperforming” non-

truck flows up to average– Reduce above average truck flows

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Market Segmentation

Strengths– Able to develop and implement on a national

scale – Commodity specific– Leverages all data available

Limitations– Accessibility assumptions may be

unreasonable for some locations

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Results

Base Reallocate to Average

Reallocate to Average + 5%

Reallocate to Average + 10%

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%

100%

Mode Share

Non-TruckTruck

Base Reallocate to Average

Reallocate to Average + 5%

Reallocate to Average +

10%

-

2,000.00

4,000.00

6,000.00

8,000.00

10,000.00

12,000.00

14,000.00

16,000.00

Fuel Cycle Energy (trillion BTU)

Non-TruckTruck

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For more information...

Project Website

nrel.gov/analysis/transportation_futures/

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