Moving freight on public transit: Best practices, challenges, and opportunities

ABSTRACT

Freight on Transit (FOT) refers to an operational strategy where public transit vehicles and/or infrastructure are used to move freight. Examples include moving goods alongside passengers on buses, attaching cargo trailers to transit vehicles, and operating freight vehicles between trains on subway lines. This paper describes the methods and results of a three-round Delphi study engaging 34 transportation experts to explore challenges and opportunities of FOT and to conceptualize and evaluate potential FOT operations in Toronto. Traditional Delphi methods were used for the exploration of FOT challenges and opportunities, and a modified approach was formulated to integrate experts' opinions and develop new FOT concepts for Toronto. The results support previous claims that technical challenges of FOT may be easier to overcome than institutional barriers. Evaluation of potential FOT operating strategies in Toronto suggests that while the current public transit network does not have capacity to support additional movements, there may be realistic opportunities to include freight service in future projects as a means of offsetting operating costs and reducing the impacts of goods movements.

KEYWORDS:

• Delphi method
• freight
• freight on transit
• public transit
• scenario building

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the active participation of Metrolinx planners Anthony Caruso and Becky Upfold and would like to thank all members of the Delphi panel as well as members of the two survey pre-testing groups. The authors thank you to the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on this paper.

Funding

This project was sponsored by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and Metrolinx.