Regional Truck Travel Characteristics Analysis and Freight Volume Estimation: Support for the Sustainable Development of Freight

In the field of freight transport, the goal of sustainable development requires us to improve the efficiency of freight transport while reducing its negative impact on the environment, such as reducing carbon emissions and noise pollution. There is no doubt that changes in freight characteristics and volumes are compatible with the objectives of sustainable development. Thus, mining the travel distribution and freight volume of trucks has an important supporting role in the freight transport industry. In terms of truck travel, most of the traditional approaches are based on the subjective definition of parameters from the trajectory data to obtain trips for certain vehicle types. As for freight volume, it is mostly estimated through manual surveys, which are heavy and inaccurate. In this study, a data-driven approach is adopted to obtain trips from the trajectory data of heavy trucks. Combined with the traffic percentage of different vehicle types collected by highway traffic survey stations, the trips of heavy trucks are extended to all trucks. The inter-city and intra-city freight volumes are estimated based on the average truck loads collected at the motorway entrance. The results show a higher proportion of intra-city trips by trucks in port cities and a higher proportion of inter-city trips by trucks in inland cities. Truck loading and unloading times are focused in the early morning or at night, and freight demand in Shandong Province is more concentrated in the south. These results would provide strong support for optimizing freight structures, improving transportation efficiency, and reducing transportation costs.