Publications

Summary:
The rise of ecommerce helped fuel consumer appetite for quick home deliveries. One consequence has been the placing of some logistics facilities in proximity to denser consumer markets. The trend departs from prevailing discussion on “logistics sprawl,” or the proliferation of warehousing into the urban periphery. This study spatially and statistically explores the facility- and region-level dimensions that characterize the centrality of ecommerce logistics platforms.

Summary:
What do equity and social justice mean for urban freight planning and management? New Urban Freight Lab paper reviews transportation and mobility justice theory and finds that urban freight issues are absent from these discussions, which primarily concern passenger and personal mobility. When urban freight is considered, authors usually discuss topics such as emissions, pollution, congestion, noise, and collisions.

Summary:
The distribution of goods and services in North American cities has conventionally relied on diesel-powered internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. Recent developments in electromobility have provided an opportunity to reduce some of the negative externalities generated by urban logistics systems. Cargo e-bikes — electric cycles specially designed for cargo transportation — represent an alternative environmentally friendly and safer mode for delivering goods and services in urban areas.

Summary:
Until recently, urban transport authorities often overlooked freight, concentrating their attention on the movement of people. Even when motivated to tackle urban freight, many city authorities find it difficult to mobilize their own resources, and address the complex set of differing views of a large variety of stakeholders. Historically, the role of city authorities, or local authorities within cities, has been confined largely to one of regulation as opposed to collaborative planning.

Summary:
The last mile of delivery is undergoing major changes, experiencing new demand and new challenges. The rise in urban deliveries amid the societal impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected urban logistics. The level of understanding is increasing as cities and companies pilot strategies that pave the way for efficient urban freight practices.

Summary:
Intra-industry trade (IIT) occurs when trading partners import and export similar products. A high volume of IIT of horizontally differentiated goods implies a deep level of regional integration, stable regional trading patterns, and potentially significant consequences from border delay. In this paper, trade between Washington State and British Columbia, Canada (the Cascade gateway), is compared with trade between Michigan State and Ontario, Canada (the Great Lakes gateway).

Summary:
At the Pacific Highway port of entry between the United States and Canada, typical delays are known to regional carriers and internalized into schedules. Due to their relative infrequency, the largest crossing times are not internalized into schedules and cause significant disruptions to regional supply chains.

Summary:
This paper describes commercial vehicle delay, transportation patterns and the commodity profile at the Western Cascade Gateway, the main border crossing between Southwest British Columbia, Canada, and Northwestern Washington, United States.

Summary:
Variable service times at vehicle processing facilities (borders, weigh stations, landside marine port gates) cause transportation planning challenges for companies that regularly visit them. Companies must either build more time into their schedules than is necessary, and therefore underutilize their equipment, or risk missing delivery windows or exceeding hours of service regulations, actions that can result in fines, lost business opportunities, or other logistical costs.

Summary:
The management of transportation systems for resilience has received significant attention in recent years. Resilience planning concerns the actions of an organization that reduce the consequences of a disruption to the system the organization manages. Little exploration has been made into the connections between resilience planning and the actions of a state department of transportation (DOT) that contribute to resilience of a freight transportation system.

Summary:
This paper summarizes a broad literature review on system resilience. After these interpretations of resilience are considered, a definition of resilience in the context of freight transportation systems is provided.

Summary:
In this paper we examine the Port of Prince Rupert as a case study of the Canadian Gateway strategy. We consider the effect of the Gateway strategy on the development of a container terminal at the Port of Prince Rupert, and Prince Rupert’s effect on discretionary cargo at west coast ports in North America. Canada’s Asia-Pacific Gateway Initiative was developed specifically to increase trade between Canada and the Asia-Pacific region.

Summary:
This paper quantifies the benefits to drayage trucks and container terminals from a data-sharing strategy designed to improve operations at the drayage truck-container terminal interface. This paper proposes a simple rule for using truck information to reduce container rehandling work and suggests a method for evaluating yard crane productivity and truck transaction time.

Summary:
This paper uses simulation to evaluate the use of truck arrival information to reduce container rehandles during the import container retrieval process by improving terminal operations. A variety of scenarios with different levels of truck information and various container bay configurations are modeled to explore how the information quality and bay configuration affect the magnitude of benefit.

Summary:
This paper discusses the transport of containers between the Port of Prince Rupert and the hinterland. The result of several data collection and analysis efforts, we present a set of findings regarding the role Prince Rupert might play in North American transportation, and the particular strengths or weaknesses of this facility. In the short term, there will be no facilities for container rehandling in Prince Rupert.