Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

As the largest country in the western hemisphere, Canada relies on an extensive highway network to move people and goods between cities and regions. Indeed, transportation and warehousing together account for 10% of Canada's GDP directly or indirectly. Trucking is the largest mode of freight transportation (transporting 72% of domestic goods by volume), but information on long-haul truck movements is limited by substantial costs of data collection and difficulties arising from multiple jurisdictions involved as vehicles cross municipal, regional, provincial, and federal boundaries.The proposed research program relies on the applicant's previous experience using GPS data to supply much needed basic data on long-haul truck movements and utilize this information to develop models of inter-regional truck patterns in Canada. The proposed research will analyze truck routes across Canada and develop route choice models to measure the influence of route factors (time, dependability, etc.). The models will help us predict the impact of various economic and policy changes on future transportation needs. The research program will also suggest a set of measures designed to evaluate the performance of long-haul trucks and the routes they use. Classifications of these measures include criticality (how important is each road link?), redundancy (are there suitable alternative routes available?), and dependability (how often and where do delays occur on the road network?). In addition, the research will explore how truck patterns and route choices are influenced by various land uses (warehouses, multi-modal facilities, etc.) and the adoption of connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) technology. The potential impacts of CAVs are not well understood, yet expected to incur dramatic changes to transportation patterns as the technology becomes widely adopted.The work will be valuable to other research areas including (1) the creation of a Canadian version of the U.S. Freight Analysis Framework; (2) integration with economic models; (3) research into truck tours (multi-leg trips) and supply chain models (tracking goods across various travel modes); and (4) the evaluation of environmental emissions from long-haul trucks. Due to the significance of goods movement to the Canadian economy, the results of this research will provide vital insights to inform decision making on future transportation investments. The outputs of this work will be valuable to many varied parties including transportation professionals, public sector policy makers and private sector firms involved in transportation. In addition, the research program will train six highly qualified individuals who will contribute towards Canadian efforts to tackle future challenges in the transportation sector.