Increasing Regional Truck Freight Planning in Virginia

About the report:

Although the forecast rate of growth for truck vehicle miles traveled is roughly double the forecast rate of growth for passenger vehicle miles traveled, specific planning techniques to address truck freight planning needs are not widely known. Accordingly, to elevate the importance of truck freight within the regional planning process, this study identified seven categories of practices regional planners can initiate, which are coordinating local planning and truck freight planning, using freight advisory committees, monetizing reliability in project prioritization, quantifying truck parking deficiencies, studying truck routing, incorporating truck freight into scenario planning or regional modeling, and obtaining freight data from public sources. 

A survey of Virginia planning district commissions showed that some are interested in specific practices, notably a provision for truck parking during emergencies (of interest to one-half of the respondents), truck parking needs as part of zoning ordinances (one-third of respondents), and a provision for locally funded truck parking areas (one-fourth of respondents). Practices undertaken by a minority of respondents but of high interest to others include identifying critical gaps in the truck freight network based on a lack of resilience, working with a regional freight advisory committee to identify improvements, and identifying load-restricted bridges affecting deliveries for businesses. Resiliency was not explicitly defined in the survey, but Golias et al. (2018) characterized it as “robustness, reliability” such that should one link fail, a resilient network would provide other links for travel.

Piloting one such practice—incorporating truck parking needs into zoning—with one planning district commission showed that tailoring the seven practices this study identified to tightly defined regional interests can encourage truck freight planning. In this particular pilot, the region was interested in ways future land use might stimulate offsite parking demand near delivery points, especially because, in this particular case, parking demand driven by land use was calculated as part of the pilot to increase by 4% during the next 2 decades. The pilot culminated with recommended supporting language included in the county’s comprehensive plan as the county planner suggested. A key lesson adaptable to other locations in Virginia is that the practices mentioned in the survey are starting points for engagement in short-term (less than 1 year) truck freight planning efforts with regions.

Supplemental files can be found at https://library.virginiadot.org/vtrc/supplements.

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