Abstract Manager

The National Research Council of Canada of Canada (NRC) has been working to develop a methodology to characterize Canadian long-haul trucking routes and operations, which could be used to help guide decision making for the staged introduction of zero emission vehicles in this sector. A variety of commercial and publicly-available datasets were examined, and evaluated for their ability to provide 14 key parameters relating to the vehicles, geography, and environment.

While many of the required parameters were found in existing datasets, gaps remain. Options to close these data gaps are being developed, including investigations into a number of different technologies and survey methodologies with discussion of the differing advantages and drawbacks of each. Factors examined include costs, coverage, representativeness, and sensitivity. Selected similar past data-gathering exercises in Canada and the United States were also reviewed, with a view towards incorporating lessons-learned.

The proposed methodology would adopt a staged approached, validating the characterization on a subset of corridors before expanding out to a broader network. This methodology would enable both geographic and temporal characterization, culminating in a qualitative analysis of traffic Origin-Destination (OD) matrices and other route features to estimate the energy requirements for each route segment that could be used to plan infrastructure and technology solutions for decarbonization of long-haul freight.