Differences between Traveler and Freight Transportation - Essay Example

Traveler Transportation 2007 Outline: A) Introduction B) General Discussion: a. Differences between traveler and freight transportation; b. Presentday issues in traveler transportation planning. C) Conclusion Foreword: The topic of this paper is traveler transportation. Several items are to be discussed including the differences of traveler transportation from the freight one, the peculiarities of traveler transportation planning and the present day issues faced by the professionals in traveler transportation. Besides the peculiar characteristics owned by the industry itself, connected with the human behavior factor, the situation becomes even more complicated with the regards to the issues that have arisen in the field lately. The questions of environmental protection, reduction of traffic congestion, improvement of the neighborhood quality of life and provision of equity in transportation accessibility oppose the practical goals of sufficient organization of multimodal transportation infrastructure within metropolitan areas. Thesis: The complexity of travel behavior and recent issues in the field turn traveler transportation planning and modeling into a really challenging task. Traveler transportation, having its peculiar features, represents a rather complex field of work for the transportation professional. This paper proposes the insight into the main differences of traveler transportation from the freight one, highlights some of the difficulties arising in the process of traveler transportation planning and discusses the present day issues faced by the professionals in traveler transportation. On the one hand, traveler and freight transportation have much in common. On the other, traveler transportation is more complicated for statistical studies, modeling travel-demand impacts and transport system regulation than freight transportation is. It has some specific features not characteristic with freight transportation. The complexity of travel behavior and recent issues in the field turn traveler transportation planning and modeling into a really challenging task. F. Witlox and B. Van Broeckhoven (2002) in their report on quality attributes in passenger and freight transportation state that there is much similar between the two fields. Comparing the characteristics of the traveling people, their families and aims of trips with the characteristics of the shippers, consignees and goods transported, they find that though the specific characteristics and conditions differ, they play a similar role in decision making and the major factors considered are almost the same: cost, time, flexibility and frequency. They add the comfort factor for passengers, noting that some goods also need very careful or quick transportation. They also distinguish a number of other factors of less importance, such as, for example, tracing and tracking for freight transportation. But in both cases they see the decision making as a four-stage process: “trip generation, trip distribution, modal split and route assignment” (Witlox and Broeckhoven1 in Intermediary report 2003, p 14). According to the discrete choice theory of rational individual (McFadden2 1974) the latter usually chooses the alternative which affords maximum utility. However, the authors of the Intermediary report remark, many factors cause the uncertainty of that utility. These are incomplete information and the casual character of the service from the point of view of the passenger, and the personal characteristics of the passenger and its subjectivity – from the point of view of the statistician. So the authors propose to set the conceptual model of decision making can be divided into four stages: “the choice set definition, the attributes’ definition and evaluation, the utility of alternatives, the final choice” (Intermediary report 2003, p.15). As to freight transportation the major quality attributes are “cost, time, frequency, reliability, losses, and flexibility” that may be affected by various weights (Mayer and Pauwels3 2002, in Intermediary report 2003, p.16). Joseph Sussman (2000) in his Introduction to Transportation System also notes that traveler and freight transportation have common fundamental features: that of demand and operations, requirements for network structure, etc. However, he distinguishes several major differences between traveler and freight transportation: the transportation process, safety and security, level-of-service variables, groups, motivation for travel (Sussman, 2000, pp.279-282). Let us look at these differences closer. It is logical to start with motivation for travel. Clearly, the motivation for freight transportation is the transfer of materials and goods, it is enough to collect the statistical data about enterprises, export and import, etc. and then only to monitor the situation to be able to control this kind of transportation. The situation is more complicated with passenger transportation. Trips may be done for household, per vacation, to and from work. The motivation influences the transportation process which is studied in terms of origins and destinations, congestion or mode choice. Traveler transportation process depends on the area (urban or metropolitan), distances and part of the day. It is known that most of intrazonal trips are made by private vehicles. Peak hours may influence the mode choice as well: private or public transport. Different variables like, for instance, housing and work in the neighborhood, land use mix, amount of sidewalks, bicycle infrastructure, building setbacks, and transit stop conditions make people walk or bike (Cervero 2006, pp. 285-288). Mode choice process depends also on groups (demographic, socioeconomic and other variables: age, family status, disabilities, etc.) level-of-service variables (time, frequency of service, nonstop versus having to make connections, hotels and restaurant, etc.) and of course safety and security (BTS, 2005). Level-of-service variables in traveler transportation tend to be “more subtle and psychological in nature,” the decisions are made basing on “some psychological factors that have no equivalent in freight transportation” (Sussman, 2000, p. 280-281). For example, it is not logical or economically advantageous to buy a personal car for each member of the family. However, people do it for the reason of comfort. Besides, Sussman introduces the term “hugs” to refer to those variables that are real but difficult to quantify. Different groups make different decisions as to the mode of traveling, quantity of cars to be used, etc. (p.281). Equity issue is another factor distinguishing traveler transportation from the freight one (p.284). Everything is much more predictable in freight transportation. The mode choice is done in accordance with costs, safety and security and level-of-service variables only. The latter may include: costs and losses resulting from transport; door-to-door transport time including loading and unloading; reliability of delivery according to scheduled time; tracking and tracing service; frequency of service proposed by the carrier or forwarder; flexibility of supplied service; the accessibility to the networks of waterways, railways, superhighways and harbors (Intermediary Report 2003, p.14). It turns out that traveler transportation is characterized by more variables than set data, which makes the process of traveler transportation planning somewhat complicated. But there are also some issues that add hardships to the work today. These issues are: suburbanization and growth of the global megapolises with their particular needs on the one hand and environmental protection on the other. Megapolises have the leading role in the present day global economy, but people in the United States prefer to live in the suburbs, enjoying fresh air and peace. This conditioned even higher rate of private vehicle usage, with cars being the major mode of passenger transportation. This, in its turn, has led to the problem of peaking and congestion and caused social and environmental problems of neighborhood stability and air pollution4. Dennis A. Rondinelli (2003) notes, “only those metropolitan areas that adapt to global economic trends and provide the infrastructure and services that support knowledge-based and technology-driven industries will remain geographic nodes of worldwide business transactions” in the twenty-first century (p.3). In the age of global communication and economy, when the need in face-to-face communication is still of high importance but the communication is realized between people living in different parts of the world, modern transportation system becomes one of the major indicators of the attractiveness of metropolitan area as location for economic activities and the ability of the megapolis to remain competitive5 (Rondinelli 2003, p.4-13). But this practical goal of providing the modern transportation infrastructure has shared its primary position with another one, obtaining ever larger significance. Social and environmental costs of traveling have become in focus of the present day transportation planning. Public concerns about air pollution, traffic congestion, neighborhood stability and equity has led to the introduction of the new approach towards traveler transportation planning and become the context of the new urban designs, aimed at the improvements in the named directions. One of the solutions proposed by the representatives of this approach is the reduction of the amount of private cars through changing the passengers’ behavior (Boarnet and Crane 2001, Chapter 2). Another suggests proper land use. “The basic idea is to "get the land use right" by designing an urban form with relatively high density, mixed use, and pedestrian friendliness so that alternatives to driving are promoted and demand for automobility can be reduced.” The initiatives include: transit-oriented development, densification through infill development, neotraditional neighborhood design and smart growth.6 The approach has been opposed by the proponents of "get the price right" who see the solution in economic measures, e.g. road pricing or general taxation7 (Zhang 2004, p.344) Some representatives of this anti-automobiles movement went further proposing to reduce the construction of the road in order to maintain smart-growth agenda. As Robert Cervero (2003) puts it: ’” Build it and they will come" has become a rallying cry of environmentalists, New Urbanists, and many others opposed to "sprawl-inducing" freeways” (p.155). Cervero argues that the problem may be solved only with the help of “long-range forecasting models”, that are “robust and sophisticated enough to capture both short-run behavioral shifts and long-run land use shifts triggered by road improvements” (Cervero 2003, p.155). For a long time a traditional four-step or four-vector model of travel demand was used in transportation to describe passenger travel pattern within the metropolitan areas with trip-maker, trip distribution, mode choice and route vectors as the basic ones. Trip-maker vector includes such factors as age, sex, income, family size, auto ownerships, occupation, household head and others; trip vector consists of purpose, time and orientation (origin-destination) as main elements, plus cycling and walkways as additional factors to be considered. Mode vector contains the modes of transport used: private autos, taxis, buses, railway, air, commuter boats and miscellaneous. At last route vector suggests the use of highways and transit route (Dickey et al 1983, p.173). All the four-step models have limitations. But today the models also should be discussed in terms of the influence of the land use and urban design on travel demand. So in recent years the components of the four-step models have been modified.8 Besides, some alternative approaches like post-processing and direct models allow probing the travel impacts of smart growth and its associations with traveling demand, providing an opportunity to pick up “some of the nuanced relationships”, and generating quick and economic demand estimates (Cervero 2006). Conclusion: Traveler transportation planning represents a real challenge for the transportation professionals of the twenty-first century. Besides the peculiar characteristics owned by the industry itself, connected with the human behavior factor, the situation becomes even more complicated with the regards to the issues that have arisen in the field lately. The questions of environmental protection, reduction of traffic congestion, improvement of the neighborhood quality of life and provision of equity in transportation accessibility oppose the practical goals of sufficient organization of multimodal transportation infrastructure within metropolitan areas. The decisions successfully combining these agendas should be found and new models of transportation planning are to be implemented. Yet today the issues are still in the developmental phase and they are to be solved by future traveler transportation professionals. References: 1. Boarnet, Marlon G., Crane, Randall (2001). Travel by Design: The Influence of Urban Form on Travel. Oxford University Press. 2. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Transportation Statistics Annual Report. Chapter 3. State of Transportation Statistics. 2005. Retrieved 25, 2007 from www.bts.gov/publications/transportation_statistics_annual_report/2005/html/chapter_03/index.html - 64k 3. Cervero, Robert (2006). Alternative Approach to Modeling the Travel-Demand Impacts of Smart Growth. Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 72, pp. 285-295. 4. Cervero, Robert (2003). Road Expansion, Urban Growth, and Induced Travel: A Path Analysis. Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol.69, pp. 145-158. 5.Dickey, John W., Diewald, Walter J., Hobeika, Antonie G., Hurst, Charles J., Stephens, N. Thomas, Stuart, Robert C., Walker, Richard D. (1983). Metropolitan Transportation Planning. Hemisphere Publishing. 6. Intermediary report (January 2003). Assessment of Quality Differences between Freight Transportation Modes CP-36. FUCAM – UCL – UFSIA – RUG. Retrieved February 25, 2007 from http://www.belspo.be/belspo/home/publ/pub_ostc/CP/CP36_en.pdf 7. Rondinelli, Dennis A. (2003). Metropolitan Areas as Global Crossroads: Moving People, Goods, and Information in the International Economy. In Moving People, Goods, and Information in the 21st Century: The Cutting-Edge Infrastructures of Networked Cities. Edited by Richard E Hanley. Chapter 1. London & New York. 8. Surface Transportation Environmental Research: A Long-Term Strategy -- Special Report 268 (2002). Executive Summary. The National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved March 12, 2007 from trb.org/publications/sr/sr268.pdf 9. Sussman, Joseph (2000). Introduction to Transportation Systems. Chapter 21. Norwood, MA: Artech House Publishers. 10. Zhang, Ming (2004). The Role of Land Use in Travel Mode Choice: Evidence from Boston and Hong Kong. Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol.70, pp.344-360. Read More