BACKGROUND 

Transportation planning practitioners and decision-makers struggle with issues and impacts arising from the growth of e-commerce. Research has been conducted on facility locations, freight sprawl, and first/last mile optimization. However, the traffic impacts across the entire system of urbanized areas require attention. The role of state departments of transportation (DOTs) and regional planning agencies in e-commerce is important, considering the span of multiple local communities across an urbanized area. 

Further, the rapidly evolving landscape of e-commerce is reshaping traditional freight dynamics within urbanized areas. State DOTs, regional planning agencies, and local communities observe this fast evolution. They can identify impacts anecdotally, but they lack organized knowledge to address the concerns of the public and elected officials or allow for e-commerce growth in plans or models. Research is needed to develop a state-of-the-industry reference that identifies a common e-commerce vocabulary and typologies to understand and identify traffic impacts from e-commerce facilities. 

OBJECTIVE 

The objective of this research is to develop a guide that provides transportation planners and decision-makers at state, regional, and local levels of government with knowledge of the e-commerce supply chain to assess and estimate traffic impacts and to make informed decisions that affect urbanized areas.