Concept

This project is intended to design and develop a self-sustaining urban freight traffic management in the New York City (NYC) area that integrates state of the art remote sensing technology based on GPS enabled smart phones, cutting edge freight demand management (FDM), traffic modeling, and policy. The proposed system takes advantage of technological and methodological advances produced by the project partners that makes the proposed work feasible. The system would, ultimately, be comprised of:

• Smart phones provided to participating freight carriers would enable network monitoring, dynamic pricing, provide data for freight transportation modeling and network traffic simulation, and verify user compliance.
• The dynamic data provided by the GPS smart phones will be used to support freight transportation modeling research, as well as network traffic simulation.
• The dynamic data about network conditions will be shared with the participating companies, enabling them to do dynamic fleet management at a fraction of the cost of alternative systems currently available.

The project has the potential to become a showcase example of what could be achieved by integrating cutting edge freight transportation research, technology, traffic simulation, and policy around the objective of improving urban traffic conditions in the largest and most complex urban system in the Nation. The experience to be gained in this challenging project is bound to produce transformative contributions that would open the path for future implementations at other metro areas.