Tampa Bay Regional Goods Movement | Preliminary Screening of Highway Corridors for Freight Mobility

By definition, all roads that are part of the state highway system are unrestricted truck routes with the exception of weight and size restrictions placed on specific segments for safety purposes. However, not all of the state highways are heavily used by trucks while some serve significant numbers of truck movements.

The purpose of conducting preliminary freight corridor screenings is to evaluate the use of the state highways and other highways within the Tampa Bay Region as goods movement corridors. Preliminary screenings are designed to be low cost assessments that:

Identify the amount of truck usage on the corridor;

Identify infrastructure issues that impede efficient truck flow for further evaluation;

Identify operational issues that affect truck operations for further evaluation;

Identify potential safety issues for further evaluation;

Identify businesses or industrial areas that generate significant amounts of truck traffic that can be incorporated into and increase the accuracy of the regional traffic model; and,

Recommend minor fixes or issues that need to be further evaluated for scoping in future detailed corridor or PD&E studies.

Goals:

The goals of the Preliminary Freight Corridor Screening Program are to:

Evaluate all state highways within the region and local and county roads that are used to transport goods within the region or between local freight activity centers;

Notify and make FDOT project managers aware that freight related issues exist within a corridor that must be addressed when developing scopes of services for PD&E studies, design, and construction projects within the corridor; and,

Methodology

Initially only state highways and non-state highways designated as regional freight corridors and connectors will be screened as part of this program.

To accomplish the goal, the state highway system was first divided into 163 individual segments. The segments were then mapped and assigned a segment number. The segment maps can be found in the maps section of this website or in the Regional Goods Movement Database. Segments lengths were determined based on:

Keeping costs low;

Minimizing the amount of time required to complete an in-house review and field review; and

Writing a short summary report.

The figure below shows the standardized methodology to be used on all freight corridor screenings. It includes an in-house data review, a field verification and assessment, and summary tech memo report with recommendations for further evaluation as necessary.

Some segments are longer than others. For example rural highway segments are longer because they are generally less complicated to assess compared to urban segments that may have numerous controlled and uncontrolled intersections, median openings, and numerous adjacent truck generators.

FREIGHT CORRIDOR SCREENING SEGMENTS

To standardize the assessments and reporting among evaluation teams, a checklist was developed and included in the Freight Corridor and Sub-Area Study Guidelines manual developed for FDOT District Seven. The checklist ensures that all evaluation teams are following the same procedures. Additionally, using the checklist ensures that nothing is overlooked during the screening process and serves as a basis for the written summary report. The completed checklist is included in the report appendix. A copy of the manual and the checklist are available on this website.

Once completed the reports under go a peer review by FDOT and the primary Goods Movement consultant. Completed reports are then provided to the database manager where they are linked to the interactive segment map in the database. By selecting a map segment, the linked report will open for review and printing.

Completed reports are circulated internally within FDOT District Seven to project managers responsible for scoping PD&E studies and design projects to ensure that issues identified in the screenings are addressed and mitigated during construction. Reports that contain minor issues that can be fixed in the short term and at low cost, are provided to the FDOT Maintenance Department for evaluation and action. Reports on non-state highway segments will be provided to the appropriate county or municipal engineer for action by the traffic engineering or roadway maintenance departments.

Status

The progress of the freight corridor screenings is shown in the table below. The table shows the number of segments and miles completed, the number of segments and miles assigned and in-progress, and the remaining number of segments and miles to complete the network screenings. The goal is to have the complete network screened by the end of 2011.

SCREENING SCORECARD
As of: 12/15/2010

The figure below shows the completed segments in orange and the segments currently being screened in green. Red and blue segments will be scheduled during the second half of 2010 and in 2011. The 40 segments in progress are scheduled to be completed by October 31, 2010.

Click the map to open a Zoomify Version

The following table shows the total, completed, and scheduled segments by county

SCREENING SCORECARD BY COUNTY
As of: 12/15/2010