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Title:

Tool for Railroad Hazmat Routing Under Shipment Bans in Major Cities

Accession Number:

01031325

Record Type:

Component

Availability:

Transportation Research Board Business Office

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Abstract:

A recent hazmat shipment ban in Washington, DC led to debates, legal challenges, and considerations by other major cities to pursue similar actions. This paper presents a framework and a Web/GIS tool based on this framework for routing hazmat shipments in railroad networks under situations such as shipment bans. This tool for hazmat routing evaluation and alternative transportation, or THREAT, is capable of searching for the best routes that optimize prescribed objective functions, calculating an array of performance and operational measures for the routes, comparing different routing alternatives, and generating animated routing maps. A case study for routing hazmat shipments from Jacksonville, FL to Jersey City, NJ was conducted using THREAT to identify and assess potential routing alternatives and their associated effects in terms of extra distance to traverse and reduction in risks. The four routing scenarios studied including a status quo base case, a shortest distance alternative, a least at-risk population alternative, and the most-likely route in the CSX network. The results suggest that significant increase in route distance and time in-transit will result whichever alternative is implemented. While the overall population at risk will not see major decrease as the result of the ban, the average population at risk per track mile will go down significantly, mainly due to the lengthening of the routes. The paper also identifies some ideas for follow-up efforts.

Monograph Accession #:

01020180

Report/Paper Numbers:

06-1790

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Han, Lee David

Pagination:

15p

Publication Date:

2006

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 85th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2006-1-22 to 2006-1-26
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

CD-ROM

Features:

Figures (11) ; References (8) ; Tables (1)

Uncontrolled Terms:

Hazardous material transportation

Subject Areas:

Freight Transportation; Operations and Traffic Management; Railroads; Security and Emergencies; Vehicles and Equipment

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2006 Paper #06-1790

Files:

TRIS, TRB

Created Date:

Mar 3 2006 10:47AM