Exploring Data-Sharing Partnerships to Collect Primary Freight Data

Freight transportation is critical to the economic prosperity of any region. A challenge, however, lies in disaggregating freight transportation demand to flows that can be assigned onto state and regional transportation networks. During the last decade, departments of transportation have had increased interest in freight modeling within statewide planning efforts, particularly the evaluation of current and future freight transportation capacity necessary to ensure freight mobility. Although freight models have started to emerge as tools to inform transportation policies, a critical challenge in the development of these models remains insufficient and inferior quality data. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is currently funding an initiative to start integrating available freight data sources, and potentially develop a freight data architecture and database that would support TxDOT’s freight planning efforts. The latter entails the collection of primary data samples from representatives of the private sector (i.e., shippers, receivers, trucking companies, forwarders, etc.), and the development of long-term relationships with stakeholders that could lead to data-sharing partnerships. This document summarizes the approach and efforts implemented by the study team and the lessons learned, and then compares these efforts with the recently published Freight Data Sharing Guidebook by the Transportation Research Board.