01023674

Component

http://onlinepubs.trb.org...nepubs/circulars/ec088.pdf

Commodity Flow Survey (CFS) data has played a significant role to help set the context for regional transportation policy and investment decisions in the Portland–Vancouver region. Data from the CFS has been a primary input into the region’s Commodity Flow Forecast (1997) and the update in 2002. The CFS has also provided data that has helped answer business community questions about freight flows and engaged them in policy discussions regarding the Columbia River crossing as part of the Interstate 5 Trade Corridor project. Both directly and indirectly, the CFS has been very helpful in helping us set the context for freight movement and to put freight issues on the regional transportation agenda. CFS data gives us the ability to frame the issues, convey the order of magnitude of freight’s importance, and to identify areas where further data is needed. Ultimately, we would like to be able to use the data at a project level, but the CFS doesn’t provide enough detail. That is to say, we would like to have the data at detail level sufficient to help make the case for a specific investment or to prioritize among competing investments. However, even at current levels of detail, the CFS has been useful. Due in part to CFS data in our Commodity Flow Forecast, we have secured $500,000 in regional funding for a freight data collection project that will provide us with some of the detail we need to make specific investment decisions, such as origin–destination and time of day data. This presentation showed how and why our region has successfully used CFS data, identified where we have found gaps and problems, and suggested alternatives for making CFS data more accessible and more useful at a regional level.

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01023669

English

1p

2006-1

Transportation Research Circular

Commodity Flow Survey Conference

Web

Data collection; Decision making; Financing; Freight traffic; Freight transportation; Investments; Origin and destination; Periods of the day; Policy; Regional transportation; Traffic flow

Commodity Flow Survey

Columbia River; Portland (Oregon); Vancouver (Canada)

Administration and Management; Freight Transportation; Highways; Marine Transportation; Policy; Railroads; Society; I10: Economics and Administration

TRIS, TRB

Apr 30 2006 12:08PM

• Benchmarking the CFS to Waybill Data
• Commodity Flow Survey: Improving Methods to Enhance Data Quality and Usefulness
• Economic Geography of Food Distribution in the United States
• Enhancing Interdependency Analysis with the CFS
• Estimating Freight Flows for Metropolitan Area Highway Networks Using Secondary Data Sources
• Estimating Regional Trade Models in the Presence of Missing Data
• Filling Gaps in the U.S. Commodity Flow Picture: Using the CFS with Other Data Sources
• Freight Analysis Framework and the Commodity Flow Survey
• How TRANSEARCH Uses the CFS
• Improving Estimation Process for Shipment Distances in the 2007 CFS: A Multimodal Approach and Integrated Interface
• Intermodal Shipments, Warehousing, and Third Parties: A Special Measurement Issue
• Modal Choice in Product Shipments: Analysis of Nonpublic Census Microdata
• Scope and Industry Coverage of the 2007 Commodity Flow Survey
• Shipment Characteristics in the Commodity Flow Survey: Can One Describe an Elephant?
• Some Suggestions for Improving CFS Data Products
• Synthesizing Truck Origin–Destination Table for Local Transportation Analysis Zones: A Nashville Metropolitan Area Case Study
• Using National Freight Information to Study the Interactions Between Heavy Trucks and Passenger Cars Under Traffic Incidents or Emergencies
• Why Regional and State Data Are Not Enough: Potential Solutions