01033631

Component

After many years of neglect, freight, freight operations, and commodity flow models are now attracting substantial attention, and there is a wide perception among transportation analysts that they all need a careful overhaul. This paper considers the range of applications and issues associated with different forms of freight model. Confusion about what one can do with a given model is often founded on a lack of transparency as to the domain of application for which the model was originally designed and set up. The authors offer a framework in this paper for placing existing freight models in the context of both the temporal targets and the valid domains of application for which they were originally developed. A conclusion of this exercise is that, while existing freight models are simply not up tot the task of forecasting future freight activity, there are a number of uses for which these models are well suited. This includes the ability to “predict the present”, an objective and also a technical challenge that has been much under-rated to date.

01020180

06-1757

English

19p

2006

Transportation Research Board 85th Annual Meeting

CD-ROM

Figures (1) ; References (43)

Applications; Commodity density; Commodity flow; Forecasting; Freight cars; Freight handling; Freight traffic; Freight transportation; Trucks

Freight Transportation; Highways; Motor Carriers; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Railroads; Research; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2006 Paper #06-1757

TRIS, TRB

Mar 3 2006 10:47AM