Framework for Characterizing Truck Traffic Related to Petroleum Well Development and Production in Unconventional Shale Plays

Technological developments have stimulated rapid change and growth in North America's petroleum industry. This growth has placed significant demand on local and regional transportation infrastructure. This paper develops and applies an integrated framework for characterizing petroleum-related truck traffic to support the engineering and planning efforts needed to accommodate the growth. The framework draws from standard methodologies used for monitoring truck traffic and modeling freight transport demand and illustrates how these methodologies interrelate through their reliance on common data sources and their mutual goal of characterizing current and future truck traffic. Specific data sources relevant to the petroleum industry are identified within the context of the framework, although the framework is generic and transferable to other jurisdictions and industries with unique truck travel demands. An illustrative application of the framework for the petroleum industry reveals new insights about the industry that enable a better engineering and planning response to its transportation needs. The application examples also demonstrate how data describing exogenous industry factors, activity system variables, and transportation supply variables integrate with data collected by truck traffic monitoring programs to (a) clarify the interpretation of traditional truck traffic monitoring data, (b) provide direction in the design of a monitoring program, and (c) justify adjustments to standard monitoring procedures. However, successful data integration is limited by the difficulty in appropriately fusing quantitative and qualitative data sources, the increased reliance on industry intelligence, and the challenge of representatively observing a dynamic industry.