Reliable Routing of Road–Rail Intermodal Freight Under Uncertainty

Transportation infrastructures, particularly those supporting intermodal freight, are vulnerable to various disruption risks, such as natural disasters and man-made disasters. These disruptions can drastically degrade the capacity of a transportation mode and consequently have adverse impacts on the intermodal freight transport. To address these issues, this paper develops a reliable model to route freight in road-rail intermodal networks. Specifically, the model seeks to provide the optimal route via road segments (highway links), rail segments (rail lines), and intermodal terminals for freight when the network is subject to capacity uncertainties. To ensure reliability, the model plans for reduced network node, link, and intermodal terminal capacity. A major contribution of this work is that a framework is provided to determine the amount of capacity reduction necessary to ensure a user-specified reliability level. The proposed methodology is demonstrated using a real-world intermodal network in the Gulf Coast, Southeastern, and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. It is found that the total system cost increases with the level of capacity uncertainty and with increased confidence levels for disruptions at links, nodes, and intermodal terminals.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AT015 Standing Committee on Freight Transportation Planning and Logistics.
• Authors:
  • Uddin, Majbah
  • Huynh, Nathan
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2018-1-7 to 2018-1-11
• Date: 2018

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: 4p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Disaster resilience; Freight transportation; Highways; Intermodal transportation; Mathematical models; Railroads; Routing; Service disruption; Uncertainty
• Geographic Terms: Gulf Coast (United States); Middle Atlantic States; Southeastern United States
• Subject Areas: Freight Transportation; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Railroads;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01661255
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 18-04774
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 26 2018 1:44PM