Search

The U.S. Congress mandated the development of six transportation management systems with the passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991. Each of these management systems provides transportation planners with an inventory of transportation facilities and associated performance data that can be used to relate the performance of the facility. Toward the end of achieving better transportation planning, the management systems can be further integrated to yield a powerful transportation planning tool that can be used to analyze and quantify the pavement needs of intermodal facilities. Pavement designers can use this tool for traffic forecasting to allow more representative pavement designs. Transportation planners can also use this tool to predict the results of changes in shipping practices before they occur. The described procedure greatly enhances the transportation planning process by allowing the process to be more proactive rather than reactive. Modal shifts in freight traffic can result in significantly increased highway maintenance costs. These shifts can be induced by changes in the regulatory or fiscal policies governing transportation or by physical changes in the transportation infrastructure. As an example, the abandonment of a set of branch lines is analyzed to determine the increased highway maintenance costs that would result if all shipments currently carried by rail along the branch lines were diverted to truck transportation. A background of the transportation management systems and their application to transportation planning is provided.