Talking Freight Seminar (Free Registration)

On Thursday December 19, I will deliver on online presentation for the Talking Freight Seminar hosted by the Federal Highway Administration – Department of Transportation. The theme of the seminar is about the impacts of ecommerce and my presentation will be titled “The Distribution Networks of E-Commerce: Emergence of a

Continue reading

Land Covered by Permafrost (new page)

Added a map covering the permafrost constraints and their general impacts on the construction and maintenance of transport infrastructure. With growing interest in the Arctic and the impacts of climate change, transportation infrastructure will be subject to complex design and operational complications. Paradoxically, the appeal of Arctic development may be

Continue reading

Land Covered by Permafrost

Source: Brown, J., O. Ferrians, J. A. Heginbottom, and E. Melnikov (2002) Circum-Arctic Map of Permafrost and Ground-Ice Conditions, Version 2. Boulder, Colorado, USA. NSIDC: National Snow and Ice Data Center. Due to their geographical attributes, northern areas have unique constraints on developing and operating their transport infrastructures. One of

Cost Minimization and Efficiency Maximization in Route Selection

Route selection can rely on a variety of criteria, with the most common being the minimization of costs and the maximization of economic efficiency. The above figure depicts three route selection scenarios where a path must be selected on a grid by linking its bottom left and top right corners.

Effect of Transport Costs on Route Selection

For routes involving different transportation modes, modal cost differences will influence routing options. The above figure presents a route selection problem between two locations (origin a and destination b) and involving two modes; land and sea. It requires selecting one port out of a choice of four (p1 to p4)

The Traveling Salesperson Problem

The “traveling salesperson” problem is a classic route selection problem where a sequence of locations has to be traveled to, and a return must be made to the starting location. Each location can only be traveled once. In the above example, a salesperson, starting at point 1, must visit six

A.8 – Route Selection and Traffic Assignment

Author: Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue Transportation seeks to minimize the effort of moving passengers and freight between locations. A component of this effort involves route selection. 1. Route Selection Human beings are natural effort minimizers, notably when it involves moving around. When given the opportunity, they will always try to choose