Aerotropolis Freight Cluster Plan

Purpose of Project

The ATL Airport Community Improvement Districts (formerly Aerotropolis Atlanta Community Improvement Districts) surrounds Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.  Their mission is to improve the area through transportation, beautification, and public safety.  The purpose of the Aerotropolis Freight Cluster Plan is to identify key freight project improvements to assist in the efficient movement of freight and goods within and through the CID area.  The study included multimodal improvements to also increase the safety of residents, employees, and visitors in the area, especially on high freight corridors.  The recommendations of the study will be integrated into the regional freight plan update and regional priorities will be identified.

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Our Role on the Project

As a subconsultant, Modern Mobility Partners (MMP) assisted in identifying and evaluating freight challenges, needs, and opportunities within the AACIDs area while developing a fiscally constrained freight project list. MMP's scope included:

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• Led the identification of emerging technologies in freight and potential strategies, projects, and policies, including research on freight technologies impacting the curb in urban settings such as parcel delivery drones, motorized electric tricycle delivery vehicles, autonomous delivery vehicles and robots, and curbside occupancy sensors related to parking and loading/unloading space availability.

• Updated the AACIDs Capital Improvement Program (CIP) project prioritization framework, previously developed by MMP, to reflect freight criteria and metrics.

• Calculated return on investment (ROI) for each project and the program of projects as a whole.

• Scored, ranked, and prioritized projects within the freight project list.

• Identified potential funding sources, fiscally constrained the project list, and developed a grant strategy.

• Conducted a robust benefit-cost analysis for the most competitive grant project.

• Led the emerging technologies component of the Best Practices report

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Problem Solvers

One of the primary challenges of this project is it was a part of a series of studies conducted by AACIDs, all with an independent list of project recommendations.  MMP understood that having several sets of project recommendations made it challenging for AACIDs to make funding decisions and prioritize all of the projects comprehensively.  Therefore, MMP built off the Capital Improvement Program that MMP completed prior to the Freight Cluster Plan and integrated the freight project recommendations into the same prioritization framework so that the freight projects could be compared to other studies’ project recommendations.  Further, MMP provided thought leadership to map out a grant strategy for the highest priority projects with knowledge about several funding opportunities at the federal, state, and local levels.