Commodity OriginDestination Provisional Estimates

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Commodity Origin-Destination Provisional Estimates

• Edward Fekpe, Ph.D., PEng.
• Research Leader
• Transportation Market Sector

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Project Team

• Battelle
• Water
• Pipeline
• MacroSys Research and Technology Inc.
• Highway
• Air
• Univ. of Tennessee Center for Transportation
  Research
• Rail

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Goal

• Develop provisional estimates of commodity O-D
  for 2005, 2006, 2007
• Updates 2002 FAF2 database (benchmark)
• Modes
• Air
• Highway
• Pipeline
• Rail
• Water
• Public domain data sources
• Develop estimation methodology for each mode

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Principal Data Sources Highway

• Surface Transborder Freight database
• County Business Pattern database
• Monthly Trucking Tonnage Report
• Gross State Product
• State Personal Income
• Monthly Manufacturers Shipments, Inventories,
  and Orders (M3) Survey
• Monthly Wholesale Trade Survey
• Producer Price Index

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Principal Data Sources - Rail

• Weekly Railroad Traffic
• Carload Waybill Sample
• Surface Transborder Freight Database
• County Business Pattern Database
• Producer Price Index

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Principal Data Sources - Air

• Form 41T-100 air traffic data
• Census Bureau Foreign Trade Division -
  International Air data

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Principal Data Sources - Water

• Waterborne databank
• Internal U.S. Waterway Monthly Indicators
• Waterborne tonnage by state and ports

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Principal Data Sources - Pipeline

• Petroleum Supply Annual
• Petroleum Supply Monthly

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Challenges

• Inconsistencies in data from different sources
• Non-availability of data e.g.,
• Commodity value data not available for all modes
• T-100 excludes information for some all-cargo
  carriers
• O-D information removed from public use waybill
  sample
• For pipeline, data available by PAD Districts
• Crosswalk between commodity codes
• Expansion of state level data to FAF regions
• Calibration of estimation models

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Estimation Methodologies

• Mode specific
• Estimation approach determined by data
• Different approaches for domestic vs
  international
• Examples of estimate methods
• Growth rates
• State level
• FAF region
• O-D pair
• Simple moving averages
• Weight/value ratio

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Estimation Architecture
Data Sources
Useable data
Data validation
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Estimation methodologies by mode
Provisional estimates by mode
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Quality Control Process
Provisional estimates by mode unvetted

• Data quality assessment
• Origin-destinations
• Tonnage
• Value

Provisional estimates by mode vetted
Benchmark 2002 FAF2 Database
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Provisional O-D Databases

• Domestic movements
• origin and destination within U.S.
• International movements via land border crossings
• import and export between the U.S. and Mexico,
  and between the U.S. and Canada
• International movements via seaports
• import and export between U.S. and other
  countries
• International movements via airports
• international air cargo covering import and export

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Database Development
Landborder database (314,000)
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Highway
Rail
Domestic database (320,000)
Water
Sea Database (93,000)
Pipeline
Air
Air Database (51,000)
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Database Structure
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State and National Summaries
Domestic database
Landborder database
Sea database
Air database
National Summary
State Summaries
AL
AK
WV
AR
WY
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Example of State Summary (tonnage)
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Lessons Learned and Future Estimates

• Familiarity with structure and nuances of
  available data sources
• Methodologies have been tested
• SQL queries developed for compiling databases
• No guarantees of data quality
• Limitations data quality, multi-modal, time
  budget
• No revisions to provisional estimates expected
• Provisional estimates not competing with private
  industry

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Lessons Learned and Future Estimates

• Provisional estimates give big picture
• Improvements in estimates for subsequent years
  expected
• Comments and suggestions welcome
• Send to
• Dr. Tianjia Tang
• Tianjia.Tang_at_dot.gov

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Burning Questions?