IDENTIFICATION AND EVALUATION OF CRITICAL FREIGHT CORRIDORS

Efficient freight mobility plays a major role in the economy, and its performance is closely related to the quality of the transportation system. Requirements for funding transportation infrastructure projects often do not specify the analytical tools planners should use to request funding. Critical Urban and Rural Freight Corridors are sections of the National Highway Freight Network providing critical connectivity of goods and must have improved system performance. This research study offers a method for identifying these corridors considering temporal and spatial inputs. For this end, a multi-criteria spatial decision support system (MC-SDSS) was developed. This framework attributes a score to highway corridors (links) based on policy eligibility and prioritization. We apply the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to structure the problem and consider different stakeholder preferences and available data. The product of this study is a tool for decisionmakers to optimize the selection of critical freight corridors and analyze alternatives. It also offers flexibility to manipulate the framework to meet various agency goals, using the State of Florida as a case study.