nymtc regional freight plan - New York Metropolitan Transportation ...

A Freight Plan for the NYMTC Region
The Highway System package produces no change in regional VMT. This is not
surprising since this alternative is not designed to divert truck trips to rail (as both of the
other packages do), but rather to better accommodate forecasted freight truck trips. It
does produce a small increase in VMT (0.4 percent) in the NYMTC region and a small
decrease (0.3 percent) in New Jersey. Since all of the improvement projects are in the
NYMTC region, this alternative results in some marginal diversion of freight truck routing
from New Jersey to the NYMTC region. The test of whether this route diversion has overall
positive or negative impacts can be determined by comparing the increase in demand
to the improvements in capacity and operations as described in the Roadway Impact section.
However, it is interesting to note that this alternative does result in a small reduction
in regional VHT of 0.3 percent in the region as a whole, in New Jersey, and in the NYMTC
region. Thus, even though there is a 0.4 percent increase in NYMTC freight truck VMT,
there is still a reduction in VHT of 0.3 percent, implying a net improvement in highway
operations related to freight truck movement. On a regional basis this level of reduction
in VHT is small and comparable to what is achieved by the Policy package. However,
there may be more significant localized impacts where specific physical improvements are
made to the highway system as described in the Roadway Impact section.
It is interesting to compare these forecasted changes in commodity truck VMT and VHT to
the changes in all truck VMT and VHT. Commodity trucks represent a small portion
(25-30 percent) of total truck VMT and VHT in the region. As shown in the summary
table (Table 6.3), an examination of the changes in total truck VMT and VHT produces a
somewhat different picture. Non-commodity trucks are more difficult to influence
through planning efforts because their behavior is less predictable. Therefore, the analysis
of the impact on all trucks was not the focus of the study. Nevertheless, these findings
provide some additional context for interpreting the impact on commodity trucks discussed
above.
Table 6.3
Change in Total Truck VMT and VHT
Alternative VMT Reduction VHT Reduction
Baseline 0 0
Policy 0 0.14%
Highway -0.02% 0.31%
Rail 0.96% 0.88%
Cambridge Systematics, Inc. 6-5