Development of a Tool to Assess Effectiveness of Intermodal Facility Locations and Designs

This study is focused on the design and operation of a freight network that supports horizontal carrier collaboration where two or more carriers form an alliance and share pick-up and delivery of jobs. In carrier collaboration, it is assumed that carriers are allowed to retain some of the pickup and delivery jobs they receive from clients while releasing the rest of the jobs to a common pool. Two models are developed: one for strategic planning and one for operations. The objective of the multi-period strategic model is to determine the number and location of intermodal terminals (IMTs) that minimize the total relevant transportation and operational costs, given a set of constraints like ensuring all pickup/delivery demands to/from customers are met, budget, and a limited set of candidate IMT locations. The objective of the operational model is to jointly determine the optimal allocation of jobs from the common pool to the carriers and pickup/delivery routes for each truck. Numerical experiments are conducted using hypothetical networks for both models. Findings from the strategic model indicates that allowing the IMT’s to hold some inventory for a few periods of time provides network flexibility that avoids the need to open additional IMT’s and reduces the need to use high-cost direct shipping to meet demand. Findings from the operational model confirm expectation that carrier collaboration/coordination can yield significant reduction in total cost of serving all pickup and delivery jobs. The amount of reduction depends on the number and location of pickup and delivery jobs that are shared between carriers.

Language

  • English

Project

  • Status: Completed
  • Funding: $142,887
  • Contract Numbers:

    69A3551747117

  • Sponsor Organizations:

    Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

    University Transportation Centers Program
    Department of Transportation
    Washington, DC  United States  20590

    Clemson University

    216 Lowry Hall
    Clemson, SC, SC  United States  29634

    University of South Carolina, Columbia

    502 Byrnes Building
    Columbia, SC  United States  29208
  • Managing Organizations:

    University of South Carolina, Columbia

    502 Byrnes Building
    Columbia, SC  United States  29208
  • Project Managers:

    Huynh, Nathan

  • Performing Organizations:

    University of South Carolina, Columbia

    502 Byrnes Building
    Columbia, SC  United States  29208

    Clemson University

    110 Lowry Hall
    Box 340911
    Clemson, SC  United States  29634-0911
  • Principal Investigators:

    Huynh, Nathan

    Ferrell, William

  • Start Date: 20171001
  • Expected Completion Date: 20180930
  • Actual Completion Date: 20190531
  • USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01690756
  • Record Type: Research project
  • Source Agency: Center for Connected Multimodal Mobility
  • Contract Numbers: 69A3551747117
  • Files: UTC, RIP
  • Created Date: Jan 11 2019 3:56PM