Photo Credit: Feiyang Zhang, MPL 2016

METRANS research project 1.1-b entitled, “The Freight Landscape: Using Secondary Data Sources to Describe Metropolitan Freight Flows” was published in December 2015. Genevieve Giuliano, Margaret and John Ferraro Chair in Effective Local Government and Director of METRANS Transportation Center, led and conducted the research along with USC doctoral students Nathan Hutson, Sanggyun Kang, and Quan Yuan. In their research, the team developed the concept of a freight landscape, spatial patterns of freight activity.  They use population and employment density to describe the freight landscape.  They test whether these measures can be used to approximate freight activity using four case studies (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and San Diego).

Guiliano and her students’ research is expected to fill the gap in knowledge about the relationship between spatial structure and freight flows, about which little has been written. Their research uses the concept of “freight landscape” – “a description of freight activity imputed from population, employment and transport network characteristics” to explore the relationship between population distribution, employment distribution, transport system supply and freight flows [page 9].  The group hypothesizes that freight flows depend systematically on the spatial organization of freight suppliers and demanders as well as on the transportation facilities within the metropolitan areas. Carefully scrutinizing the data, Guiliano et al. analyzed population and employment distribution, freight transportation infrastructure, development density and freight flow among the four case study areas, formulated their general approach and model of the freight landscape relating freight flow with development density.

After testing their model with Los Angeles and San Francisco, Guiliano et al. conclude that regardless of the difference between the two cities, their model generated highly consistent results, which indicated the effectiveness of the freight landscape model. Moreover, they found population, employment and transport access have different effects on total vehicle and truck volume densities such that employment variables and transport supply and access measures have significant impact on total vehicle volume while truck activity density associates with population density and household income negatively.

These results are encouraging in that they provide evidence of an existing relationship between freight flow and development density, and result in a useful and innovative freight landscape model which can be used to describe spatial patterns of freight flows with simple measures of population, employment and transport access.

The full report can be found here.

Genevieve Giuliano

Professor, Margaret and John Ferraro Chair in Effective Local Government

Director, METRANS Transportation Center

Genevieve Giuliano conducts research on relationships between land use and transportation, transportation policy analysis, and information technology applications in transportation. Her current research includes examination of relationships between land use and freight flows, and development of applications for transportation system analysis using archived real-time data, and analysis of commercial and residential development around transit stations. She has published over 160 papers, and has presented her research at numerous conferences both within the US and abroad.

Shichun Hu

Student Associate, METRANS Transportation Center

Shichun Hu is a first year student in Master of Industrial and System Engineering Program at USC  Her interests are urban logistics, supply chain and industrial engineering. Her career goal is to make the supply chain more convenient for people’s lives across the globe. She can be reached at [email protected]