This article helps improve the understanding about the safety performance of longer combination vehicles (LCVs) relative to other articulated trucks operating on rural highways, using evidence from the Canadian portion of the CANAMEX trade corridor. The analysis reveals that from a collision rate perspective, LCVs as a group have better safety performance than other articulated trucks. Turnpike doubles have the lowest collision rate of all articulated truck types (16 collisions per 100 million vehicle-kilometres of travel or VKT), followed by Rocky Mountain doubles (32 collisions per 100 million VKT). The collision rate for triple trailer combinations (62 collisions per 100 million VKT) is higher than the collision rates for tractor semitrailers (42 collisions per 100 million VKT) and legal-length tractor double trailers (44 collisions per 100 million VKT). These results are an important input for civil engineering and transport policy decisions concerning longer combination vehicle operations.
This paper describes a data collection methodology to address insufficient data sources for estimation of urban container truck traffic (drayage) volumes. The methodology is sensitive to the characteristics of drayage and offers a systematic approach for acquiring container truck traffic data for constructing models to estimate drayage volumes. The methodology consists of (a) acquiring urban truck traffic estimates and national and provincial- or state-level container traffic databases, (b) characterizing shippers and carriers through field investigations and surveys, and (c) designing a container truck data collection program. Short-term manual truck classification intersection turning movement counts were conducted to obtain body style and axle configuration data for articulated trucks. Temporal expansion factors were developed and applied to short-term count data to produce average daily container truck traffic volume estimates and reveal temporal, physical, and spatial distribution differences between container trucks and other articulated trucks. The paper provides a rationale for selecting count station locations and their temporal characteristics, choosing the number of counts and their duration, determining the types of data to collect, and identifying container generators. The methodology is generally applicable to North American inland port cities. The data feed a model that is intended to assist transportation engineers in understanding urban drayage operations and quantifying the exposure of these trucks.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.