Congestion Reduction through Efficient Container Movement under Stochastic Demand

There is a significant amount of investigation regarding how to efficiently distribute loaded containers from the ports to the consignees. However, to fully maximize the process and become more environmentally friendly, one should also study how to allocate the empty containers created by these consignees. Currently, most container movement at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach follow a simple movement, going from the port to importers and then back to the port as an empty container. Subsequently, some of these empty containers go from the port to exporters and then return as loaded containers to the port, with both empty and full containers shipped from the ports to Asia. In this study, the researchers propose to have some of the empty containers go directly from the importers to the exporters and not return empty back to the port. The most prominent reason this container movement is uncommon in today’s system is because of the substantial amount of coordination required between the different companies to make the exchange in a timely fashion. This research will develop a procedure that will yield better container movement solutions to efficiently satisfy both today’s demand as well as future stochastic demand. Benefits of reduced truck miles include a decrease in pollution and congestion levels from containerized traffic between marine terminals and hinterland. This is achieved by the development of an optimization framework that incorporates both empty and loaded containers and allocates them throughout the day. It then provides a vehicle routing schedule that has the potential to reduce the number of trucks and truck miles needed to meet the demand, therefore reducing congestion at peak hours of the day, and making freight more environmentally friendly.

• Record URL:
  https://ncst.ucdavis.edu/project/congestion-reduction-through-efficient-container-movement-under-stochastic-demand/

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $104998
• Contract Numbers:

  Caltrans 65A0686 Task Order 018

• Sponsor Organizations:

  National Center for Sustainable Transportation

  University of California, Davis
  Davis, CA  United States 

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

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

  California Department of Transportation

  1227 O Street
  Sacramento, CA  United States  95843
• Managing Organizations:

  National Center for Sustainable Transportation

  University of California, Davis
  Davis, CA  United States 

  METRANS Transportation Center

  University of Southern California
  Los Angeles, CA  United States  90089-0626
• Project Managers:

  Iacobucci, Lauren

• Performing Organizations:

  National Center for Sustainable Transportation

  University of California, Davis
  Davis, CA  United States 

  METRANS Transportation Center

  University of Southern California
  Los Angeles, CA  United States  90089-0626
• Principal Investigators:

  Giuliano, Genevieve

  Dessouky, Maged

• Start Date: 20181201
• Expected Completion Date: 20200415
• Actual Completion Date: 20200617
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Container handling; Container traffic; Freight consolidators; Optimization; Port operations; Routes and routing; Traffic congestion; Truck traffic
• Identifier Terms: Port of Long Beach; Port of Los Angeles
• Subject Areas: Freight Transportation; Marine Transportation; Motor Carriers; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01690128
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: National Center for Sustainable Transportation
• Contract Numbers: Caltrans 65A0686 Task Order 018
• Files: UTC, RiP
• Created Date: Dec 27 2018 3:24PM