Southern California ports handle two-thirds of all container traffic entering the United States from Pacific Rim countries. The majority of these goods are transported from the San Pedro Bay Port Complex by truck to warehouses and transshipment centers throughout the region and to destinations elsewhere throughout the United States. More than 30,000 daily truck trips originate from the Port Complex and this volume is projected to more than double over the next 25 years. This goods movement activity must coexist with other traffic in the most congested region in the nation as determined for the past 25 years by the Texas Transportation Institutes annual urban congestion index. A consortium of government, economic development, shipping, logistics, and port agencies and companies, known as the Goods Movement Roundtable, requested an analysis of the potential benefits associated with truck toll lanes for the purpose of building a consensus in support of public and private financing for the project. The analysis examined the Return-On-Investment of truck toll lanes comparing associated time savings to the projected toll fees. The unique aspect of this analysis was an assessment of the truck toll lane contribution to improved travel time reliability and how consideration of reliability enhanced the ROI analysis. Using previous research developed by the Federal Highway Administration and the Texas Transportation Institute, the analysis estimated and quantified the impact of travel time variation for ROI consideration of a proposed truck toll lane project in Southern California.
Abstract