Performance Measure Evaluation of Port Truck Trip Reduction Strategies

The Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles are the largest container port complex in North America and fifth largest in the world. Growth in U.S. Pacific Rim trade has put pressure on the landside transportation systems serving these two ports. In order to address this growth and mitigate environmental impacts, the ports are implementing new operational strategies and infrastructure improvements. Recently, the ports evaluated the prospective performance improvements that an aggressive program of truck trip reduction strategies can achieve. Strategies that have been evaluated include extended gate hours, virtual container yards, expanded on-dock rail facilities, a new near-dock rail intermodal terminal, and an inland rail shuttle service. This paper describes the approach taken to forecast several of the performance measures that were used to evaluate the strategies. These performance measures are change in truck trips generated at the ports, changes in port truck vehicle miles traveled (VMT), changes in weekday port truck traffic by time period on Interstate 710 (the principal access road to the port), and changes in port-related air pollutant emissions. The evaluations relied heavily on the use of the QuickTrip truck trip generation model developed as part of the port’s travel demand model. QuickTrip is a spreadsheet model that estimates truck trips by truck type on an hourly basis. The trips generated are a function of inputs such as monthly container cargo volumes, mix of import vs. export cargo volumes, mix of local vs. intermodal cargo, distribution of pickup and delivery activity by labor shift, the