Problem Statement and Motivation

Key Achievements and Future GoalsTechnical Approach

Freight Mode Choice Modeling: Applications to Freight Transportation and Logistics

Investigators: Kouros Mohammadian and Amir Samimi, CMEPrimary Grant Support: Illinois Department of Transportation

• An efficient freight transportation system could have considerable positive impacts on the economy.

• Freight models and related public policy tools are far behind the logistics and technological advances.

• Freight transport modeling frameworks should be revised in a way that captures the basis of decision making process across the supply chain.

• Developing a behavior-based model is in the design process to improve freight movement analysis.

• The framework relies mostly on the available datasets, however because of the deficiency of the authentic public data, a well-developed survey could boost the model accuracy significantly.

• Firms, as the real decision making units, are making the decisions in the model.

• Data simulation techniques should be improved.• Model results should be validated with the real observations.

• Simulate the commodity flow between each pair of firms using the Freight Analysis Framework and County Business Patterns 2005 data from census.

• Do a survey to model the logistic cost of the shipment. The survey should have data on individual shipments; freight terminals, consolidation and distribution centers, ports and airports; and also transport and logistics costs.

• Determine the shipment size for each firm pair by minimizing the total logistic costs for each commodity group.

• Assign the commodity flow to the whole network.