TRB's National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Research Report 38: Guide for Conducting Benefit-Cost Analyses of Multimodal, Multijurisdictional Freight Corridor Investments explores how to conduct benefit-cost analyses (BCAs). A BCA is an analytical framework used to evaluate public investment decisions including transportation investments. BCA is defined as a collection of methods and rules for assessing the social costs and benefits of alternative public policies. It promotes efficiency b...

TRB's National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Research Report 37: Using Commodity Flow Survey Microdata and Other Establishment Data to Estimate the Generation of Freight, Freight Trips, and Service Trips: Guidebook provides policy makers with improved establishment-level models that estimate the Freight Trip Generation (FTG), the number of vehicle trips produced and attracted at a given establishment; the Freight Production (FP), the amount of cargo produced by the establishment; and the S...

TRB's National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 36: Enhancing Sleep Efficiency on Vessels in the Tug/Towboat/Barge Industry provides best practices to improve an operator's sleep and reduce operator fatigue in the United States inland waterway industry, including the use of anchor-sleep/nap-sleep strategies. NCFRP Report 36 identifies and describes the metrics that could be used to evaluate current operational interventions (e.g., educational materials and programs; noise abatement; sl...

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCFRP) Report 35: Implementing the Freight Transportation Data Architecture: Data Element Dictionary provides the findings of the research effort to develop a freight data dictionary for organizing the myriad freight data elements currently in use. A product of this research effort is a web-based freight data element dictionary hosted by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS). The project web page includes a l...

TRB’s National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 33: Improving Freight System Performance in Metropolitan Areas: A Planning Guide outlines potential strategies and practical solutions for public and private stakeholders to improve freight movement system performance in diverse metropolitan areas. The report includes links to an Initiative Selector tool to aid in the selection of possible alternatives for various problems, and Freight Trip Generation (FTG) software that planners can use ...

TRB’s National Freight Cooperative Research Program (NCFRP) Report 32: Integrating MTS Commerce Data with Multimodal Freight Transportation Performance Measures to Support MTS Maintenance Investment Decision Making investigates the feasibility of evaluating potential navigation operation and maintenance projects on the Marine Transportation System (MTS) as they relate to both waterborne commerce and landside freight connections.

TRB’s National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 31: Incorporating Truck Analysis into the Highway Capacity Manual presents capacity and level-of-service techniques to improve transportation agencies’ abilities to plan, design, manage, and operate streets and highways to serve trucks. The techniques also assist agencies’ ability to evaluate the effects of trucks on other modes of transportation. These techniques are being incorporated into the Highway Capacity Manual , but will be usefu...

TRB’s National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 29: Making Trucks Count: Innovative Strategies for Obtaining Comprehensive Truck Activity Data develops and assesses strategies for obtaining comprehensive trucking activity data for making more informed public policy decisions at the national and regional levels.

TRB’s National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 30: Making U.S. Ports Resilient as Part of Extended Intermodal Supply Chains focuses on identifying and elaborating on the steps needed to coordinate freight movements through ports in times of severe stress on existing operating infrastructures and services. This report builds on NCHRP Report 732: Methodologies to Estimate the Economic Impacts of Disruptions to the Goods Movement System to provide a set of high-level guidelines to help s...

TRB’s National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 27: Web-Based Screening Tool for Shared-Use Rail Corridors describes a tool designed to help perform preliminary feasibility screening of proposed shared-use passenger and freight rail corridor projects. The web-based screening tool  described in the report is available on the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration website.