working paper

Combinatorial Auctions for Trucking Service Procurement: An Examination of Carrier Bidding Policies

Publication Date

July 31, 2003

Author(s)

Jiongjiong (John) Song, Amelia Regan

Areas of Expertise

Freight, Logistics, & Supply Chain

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Abstract

Combinatorial auctions are increasingly used by large shippers as a method to establish service contracts with trucking companies. In order to achieve maximal benefits in these auctions, carriers must determine a bidding policy that can accurately evaluate the costs they will incur to fulfill these contracts and which can quickly examine many different possible options. In this paper, we analyze the complexity of this bidding problem for the procurement of truckload trucking service contracts; further, we propose an optimization-based approximation method to aid a carrier in constructing bids. Using a simulation framework, we examine the performance of this method elative to a straightforward bidding policy similar to those used in practice.

working paper

Safety Aspects of Freeway Weaving Sections

Publication Date

July 31, 2003

Author(s)

Thomas Golob, Will Recker

Areas of Expertise

Infrastructure Delivery, Operations, & Resilience Safety, Public Health, & Mobility Justice

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Abstract

One source of vehicle conflict is the freeway weaving section, where a merge and diverge in close proximity require vehicles either entering or exiting the freeway to execute one or more lane changes. Using accident data for a portion of Southern California, we examined accidents that occurred on three types of weaving sections defined in traffic engineering: Type A, where every merging or diverging vehicle must execute one lane change, Type B, where either merging or diverging can be done without changing lanes, and Type C, where one maneuver requires at least two lane changes. We found no difference among these three types in terms of overall accident rates for 55 weaving sections over one year (1998). However, there were significant differences in terms of the types of accidents that occur within these types in terms of severity, and location of the primary collision, the factors causing the accident, and the time period in which the accident is most likely to occur. These differences in aspects of safety lead to implications for traffic engineering improvements.

working paper

Surveying and Modeling Trucking Industry Perceptions, Preferences and Behavior

Publication Date

July 31, 2003

Author(s)

Thomas Golob, Amelia Regan

Areas of Expertise

Freight, Logistics, & Supply Chain

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Abstract

Methods developed to study passenger travel behaviour can be usefully applied in studying perceptions, preferences, and behaviour of important actors in freight transportation. Transportation planners throughout the world can benefit by gaining improved understanding of how trucking companies are coping with changes in transportation system levels of service and how companies are likely to react to opportunities presented by information technologies and intelligent transportation systems. In this paper we present five different structural equations models (SEM) that have been estimated using large-scale survey data from the trucking industry. These models are used to examine carrier perceptions related to problems accounting for operational inefficiencies, impacts of traffic congestion on roads and at terminal facilities, transportation policy priorities, and uses of and opportunities for implementing computer and information technologies.

conference paper

Comparing the Influence of Land Use on Nonwork Trip Generation and Vehicle Distance Traveled: An Analysis using Travel Diary Data

Publication Date

July 31, 2003

Author(s)

Marlon Boarnet, Nesamani Kalandiyur

Areas of Expertise

Travel Behavior, Land Use, & the Built Environment

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Abstract

This study uses two-day travel diary data to examine whether land use matters more for an individual’s trip generation or for an individual’s total vehicle miles traveled (VMT). More specifically, sociodemographic, land use, and street connectivity variables are used to estimate nonwork trip frequency and nonwork vehicle miles traveled via ordered probit and ordinary least-squares regression models. We compare standardized coefficients of the models and conclude that: (1) the influence of land use variables is similar in both the trip generation and VMT regressions; and (2) income is the primary determinant of both trip frequency and VMT, but that land use exerts an influence that is on par with other sociodemographic characteristics after the primary role of income is considered.

working paper

Congestion and Tax Competition in a Parallel Network

Publication Date

June 30, 2003

Author(s)

Kurt van-Dender

Areas of Expertise

Transportation Economics, Funding, & Finance

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Abstract

This paper studies the effects of tolling road use on a parallel network when different governments have tolling authority on the different links of the network. The paper analyses the tax competition between countries that each maximise the surplus of local users plus tax revenues. Three types of tolling systems are considered: (i) toll discrimination between local and transit traffic, (ii) uniform tolls on local and transit traffic, (iii) only local tolls can be imposed. The paper characterises the optimal toll levels chosen in a Nash equilibrium for the three tolling systems. The numerical illustration shows that introducing transit taxes generates large welfare effects and that toll systems that only apply to local users only generate a low welfare gain. Nash equilibrium toll discrimination between local and transit traffic generates slightly higher welfare than the solution where both tolls have to be uniform.

working paper

TRACER: In-vehicle, GPS-based, Wireless Technology for Traffic Surveillance and Management

Publication Date

June 30, 2003

Author(s)

Michael McNally, James Marca, Craig Rindt

Areas of Expertise

Intelligent Transportation Systems, Emerging Technologies, & Big Data Travel Behavior, Land Use, & the Built Environment

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Abstract

The fundamental principle of intelligent transportation systems is to match the complexity of travel demands with advanced supply-side analysis, evaluation, management, and control strategies. A fundamental limitation is the lack of basic knowledge of travel demands at the network level. Modeling and sensor technology is primarily limited to aggregate parameters or micro-simulations based on aggregate distributions of behavior. Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are one of several available technologies which allow individual vehicle trajectories to be recorded and analyzed. Potential applications of GPS which are relevant to the ATMS Testbed are implementation in probe vehicles to deliver real-time performance data to complement loop and other sensor data and implementation in vehicles from sampled households to record route choice behavior. An Extensible GPS-based in-vehicle Data Collection Unit (EDCU) has been designed, tested, and applied in selected field tests. Each unit incorporates GPS, data logging capabilities, two-way wireless communications, and a user interface in an extensible system which eliminates driver interaction. Together with supporting software, this system is referred to as TRACER. The design and initial implementation tests Testbed are presented herein. This research is a contination in PATH MOU 3006; se;lected portions of the interim report for that MOU are repeated here to provide a complete overview of the research effort.

Related Publications

research report | January 24, 2025

GPS/GIS Technologies for Traffic Surveillance and Management: A Testbed Implementation Study

Phd Dissertation

Walking and urban form: Modeling and testing parental decisions about children's travel

Publication Date

June 29, 2003

Author(s)

Tracey McMillan

Areas of Expertise

Public Transit, Shared Mobility, & Active Transportation Travel Behavior, Land Use, & the Built Environment

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Abstract

Over the past several years, the private vehicle has become the predominant mode of travel to school while walking and bicycling rates have decreased. Some suggest that this change in travel behavior contributes to negative health outcomes in children, including increased rates of (1) overweight/obesity through inactivity and (2) pedestrian and bicyclist fatality and injury. A series of recent policies and programs directly attribute the change in travel behavior to school to the urban form of communities. Limited research exists to support this hypothesis, however. The fundamental questions of whether and how urban form impacts a child’s trip to school must to be answered in order to develop effective interventions aimed at increasing rates of walking and bicycling activity and safety. This research proposes a conceptual framework to examine the nature and shape of the relationships between urban form; interpersonal, demographic and social/cultural factors; parental decision-making and a child’s travel to school. Using parent survey data on children’s travel to school and urban design assessments from twelve elementary school neighborhoods, the relative influence of urban form on the mode choice to school was first determined. Results indicate that urban form elements such as street lights and street widths do affect the probability of a child walking or bicycling to school; however, the affect of these elements is modest compared to other influential variables such as the perceived convenience of driving, country of birth, family support of walking behavior, reported traffic conditions in the neighborhood and perceived distances between home and school. A second analysis examined how urban form and children’s travel behavior relate by testing the hypothesis of an indirect relationship. The findings show that parent’s feelings of neighborhood safety, traffic safety and/or household transportation options do not intervene in the relationship between urban form and children’s travel behavior. Socio-demographic characteristics and parent’s attitudes toward travel, however, may modify the strength of the relationship between urban form and children’s travel behavior. The results of this study advance the discussion on relationships between urban form, transportation and health and inform policy and practice of the best targets for future planning interventions.

Phd Dissertation

Two essays on economics with applications in hypercongestion and bus transit

Publication Date

June 29, 2003

Author(s)

He (Helen) Wei

Areas of Expertise

Public Transit, Shared Mobility, & Active Transportation Transportation Economics, Funding, & Finance

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Abstract

Hypercongestion gives the problem of the non-unique relationship between travel time and flow in the fundamental diagram of traffic flow, which depicts the relationship between flow and density. Under the assumption of an exogenous time-pattern of demand and with the hypercongestion model in Small-Chu (1997), chapter one develops the backward iterative method in Vickrey (1991) to derive the marginal cost of additional entries at different times. The results show that the magnitude of the marginal external cost depends on not only the exogenously given entry rate but also the length of the entry period. With exogenous time pattern for demand, the marginal external cost of additional entry in the transportation system will increase to a peak from the beginning. Then it will decrease. During the [special characters omitted] entry period, the marginal cost curve is approximately symmetric. We can use policies, for example, staggering the work starting time, controlling the number of entry to change the entry time pattern to relieve the congestion. It has been noted that there is vicious cycle or virtuous cycle in production of transit services. However, few empirical researches have been done on transit service with consideration of this dynamic simultaneity. In chapter two, I will use dynamic simultaneous equations to model the dynamic simultaneous relationship between transit demand, transit supply and transit cost structure. The results show strong inertia in the bus demand, supply and cost. The response of supply level to the change of demand is consistent to the square root rule (Mohring 1972). This simultaneous model found much stronger scale economy in bus transit, both in short run and long run. The policy simulations show that the higher bus fare will decrease the ridership of bus at the very beginning. However, later on, the higher service brought by the higher revenue will offset the negative effect on ridership from higher bus fare. The operating deficit will decrease when higher bus fare is charged. Even though the favorable city characteristics could increase bus ridership and decrease the operating deficit at the same time, they are out of bus firm’s control.

Phd Dissertation

Combinatorial auctions: Applications in freight transportation contract procurement

Publication Date

June 29, 2003

Author(s)

Jiongjiong (John) Song

Areas of Expertise

Freight, Logistics, & Supply Chain

View Phd Dissertation

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the development of optimization methods and approximation algorithms for combinatorial auctions, particularly with application to the contract procurement problem in freight transportation. Combinatorial auctions are auctions in which a set of heterogeneous items are sold simultaneously and in which bidders can bid for their preferred combinations of items. They involve many difficult optimization problems both for auction hosts and bidders and have received significant attention from computer scientists, operations researchers and economists recently. Large shippers (typically manufacturing companies or retailers) have begun to use this method to procure services from trucking companies and logistics services providers. This dissertation first analyzes the economic impact of combinatorial auction-based procurement methods both on shippers and carriers using a simulation study and reveals that both parties can benefit from this economically efficient price discovery mechanism. While the majority of prior research has been from an auctioneer’s perspective, we demonstrate that bidders have even more complicated optimization problems in combinatoiral auctions. The bid construction problem, that is, how bidders should identify and construct beneficial bids, is very hard and remains an open question. This dissertation investigates this problem and proposes an optimization based approximation method that involves solving an NP-hard problem only once, yielding significant improvements in computational efficiency. Further, the current state of trucking and third party logistics industries are examined. The trucking industry is very competitive and small carriers are operating under thin margins. This dissertation addresses these issues by proposing an auction based collaborative carrier network in which participating carriers can identify inefficient lanes from daily operations quickly and exchange them with partners under an auction protocol. This system is proved to be Pareto efficient. Further, decision problems are discussed regarding how carriers should identify inefficient operations and how to make and select bids. This represents an effort to use advanced auction mechanisms to enhance the carriers’ operational efficiencies.

Phd Dissertation

Local urban development stakeholders in a globalizing context: Civil society, urban governance and urban poverty in Harare, Zimbabwe

Publication Date

June 29, 2003

Author(s)

Doug Feremenga

Areas of Expertise

Travel Behavior, Land Use, & the Built Environment

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Abstract

This study examines the impacts of globalization on domestic policy and the concomitant effects on local development processes in Harare, Zimbabwe. It assesses the various processes and strategies of engaging disparate development stakeholders in urban governance and evaluates the experiences and capacities of civil society in urban development. Macroeconomic instability and other external forces such as globalization constraints, the legacy of colonialism, and post independent structural adjustment programs, on one hand; rapid urban population growth, along with institutional, financial, and administrative incapacities and outdated legal and governance traditions at the urban and national levels, on the other, have resulted in failure of government to provide social services or even to maintain basic infrastructure. Consequently, civil society is increasingly being viewed as a mechanism for satisfying the needs of the urban poor, and is even viewed by some as a universal remedy for development challenges in developing countries like Zimbabwe. This study, therefore, critically examines these organizations within the Zimbabwean context to assess their effectiveness. The main finding of this study is that, in Zimbabwe, the only civil society activities permitted are those that do not threaten to challenge the status quo. While the efficacy of organizations and groups that advocate for change is questionable in the face of a powerful, and in some cases hostile, state that restricts and sometimes prevents them from working, the role of welfare and developmental NGOs remains paramount. Civil society does not exist in a vacuum; it is dependent on the political context comprising the state, political institutions, and political culture that surround it. Contrary to the belief that globalization renders the state obsolete, the Zimbabwean government still plays a central role in development issues. The effectiveness of civil society depends on the nature of its internal organization and operations, as well as its relationships with the state and other urban development stakeholders. This study concludes that since their roles are complementary and mutually reinforcing, civil society and the state need each other, and they must work together in order to achieve human sustainable development of all sectors of society.