Our Region’s Future Road Freight System
Future Challenges
The future freight roadway network includes the current infrastructure and changes that will be made over time, such as capacity enhancements, safety improvements, and projects that bring roadways up to a state of good repair. The OKI region will continue to face challenging road freight conditions as highlighted by the five freight transportation goals.
Safety
Reducing the risk of truck crashes is a priority goal for OKI. Crash reductions will result in lives saved, fewer personal injuries and less property damage, with an increase overall freight movement efficiency. All safety improvements to the roadway system that allow trucks improve the safe movement of freight. The future of freight roadway safety will be impacted by more trucks and passenger vehicles on our roadways in conjunction with aging and deteriorating infrastructure. Although we have witnessed a decrease in the number of truck involved crashes in the past five years, these future conditions will combine to increase the probability for truck-related crashes.
Infrastructure Condition
Diligent preservation and maintenance of the regional freight roadway network ensures its state of good repair, thereby extending infrastructure’s useful life and maintaining freight service levels. Advances in technology and freight efficiency assist in prolonging the roadways that trucks rely upon every day. The future of freight roadway conditions will be impacted by higher truck volumes which are forecasted to occur throughout the region and place greater use upon the life of the region’s roads and bridges.
Mobility and Reliability
Mobility and reliability directly relate to how well freight is expected to move in the future. The efficiency of roadway freight movement relies on the free flow of trucks. This is accomplished through the removal of bottlenecks and additional capacity to meet freight demands and ensure reliable delivery travel times. The future of freight roadway mobility and reliability will be impacted by the expected increase in truck volumes and threat of even greater congestion and delay.
Environmental Sustainability
Road freight transportation is expected to play a role in ensuring the environmental sustainability of the region. This will be done through several advances in technology and increased efficiency that will reduce congestion and maximize capacity. This will include a decrease in mobile source emissions, noise pollution and the use of non-renewable fuels, resulting in improving the environmental footprint of freight movement in the region.
Economic Competitiveness
Road freight transportation IS the economy in motion. The ability of trucks to move efficiently ensures manufacturers reliably receive raw materials for goods production, products are safely shipped to distributers, and customers get goods delivered on-time to their businesses or homes.
The Value of Future Roadway Technologies
As we look to the challenges for the future of roadway freight, there are a growing number of technological advances — under varying degrees of implementation or examination today — that will greatly assist OKI in meeting regional goals. A brief overview of those roadway-oriented technologies showing the greatest potential benefits to road freight safety, infrastructure maintenance, mobility and reliability, environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness is discussed in this freight plan. As shown in the table, each new technology has value in addressing multiple goals simultaneously.