Securing Truck Data for Texas

Freight transportation is critical to the economic prosperity of any region. Associated intercity and interstate truck flows, however, have an important impact on mobility, system performance, the safety of the road network, and the funding of the state-maintained road infrastructure. With the passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991, increasing interest in freight modeling has emerged within statewide planning efforts, particularly the evaluation of the current and future freight transportation capacities necessary to ensure freight mobility. Although freight demand models are thus starting to emerge as tools to inform transportation policies, a critical challenge in the development of these models remains—namely, insufficient and inferior quality freight data. In August 2003, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) contracted with the Center for Transportation Research at The University of Texas at Austin to recommend a robust methodology to TxDOT planners for collecting and maintaining intercounty and interstate truck travel data in a format that can be used in the Statewide Analysis Model (SAM). This research has culminated in this document.