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Evaluating the Performance of the Freight Transportation System of the Great Lakes Region: An Intermodal Approach to Routing and Forecasting

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2014, Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, Geography.
Optimizing the supply chain has been increasingly important for the success of both manufacturers and retailers. This optimization has reduced costs for companies that are involved in the transport process and reduced cost to the end consumers, which brings benefits to both sides of the profit chain. Under difficult economic conditions, such as high fuel prices, mass congestion on major highway corridors, and strict reliability requirements for specific commodity types, the tangible as well as the intangible costs of freight transportation has been increasing rapidly. It swallows profits from the industry, increasing the cost for customers. Intermodal freight transportation has been introduced in recent years and has been more frequently selected by logistics companies, third-party logistics companies, and manufacturers to optimize the whole freight transport process. The trend of using more intermodal freight transportation is discussed in a qualitative perspective in the first part of this dissertation. Then the dissertation introduces a new shortest path algorithm entitled Tree Spanning Method (TSM) for large network processing. The new TSM algorithm is used as the main route planning algorithm throughout the dissertation for software development as well as freight demand forecasting. Due to the lack of specialized intermodal freight planning software in the industry, this dissertation discusses the key techniques in creating a specialized freight planning software, and a beta version of the software entitled "RouteInfo" is developed and introduced. The software works in a fashion similar to the Spatial Decision Support System. It enables users to be fully involved in the decision-making process and is able to determine the least expensive path between origins and designations on an integrated intermodal network. Real data includes USA highways and Canadian highways, and rail and maritime networks are integrated into the graphical user interface. Freight demand forecasting in the Great Lakes region is another focus of this dissertation. By using a four-step freight demand forecasting model at disaggregated (county) level, the travel patterns of freight transportation between 2010 and 2030 are obtained in the research area. The forecasting result is then used to quantitatively analyze the cost benefits of using more intermodal transportation options. Under the current situation of limited budgets, this dissertation proposes an intermodal solution that is able to solve the congestion issue without any highway expansion in the research area. The cost saving of this solution is also analyzed quantitatively. Overall, this dissertation is similar to a comprehensive consulting report. It proposes a new, shortest path algorithm which can be applied to the intermodal route planning. A new intermodal freight planning software is developed under a Python-based framework. The travel pattern of the freight transportation is estimated in the near future, and a solution is proposed to improve the transportation system in the research area in a cost-effective fashion.
Peter Lindquist, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Daniel Hammel, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Eddie Yein Juin Chou, P.E. (Committee Member)
Neil Reid, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Yue Zhang, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
176 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Wang, Q. (2014). Evaluating the Performance of the Freight Transportation System of the Great Lakes Region: An Intermodal Approach to Routing and Forecasting [Doctoral dissertation, University of Toledo]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1408281004

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Wang, Qifeng. Evaluating the Performance of the Freight Transportation System of the Great Lakes Region: An Intermodal Approach to Routing and Forecasting. 2014. University of Toledo, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1408281004.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Wang, Qifeng. "Evaluating the Performance of the Freight Transportation System of the Great Lakes Region: An Intermodal Approach to Routing and Forecasting." Doctoral dissertation, University of Toledo, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1408281004

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)