The Railways And The Zimbabwe Coal Crisis Of The Late 1980s

A GJZ article on development challenges in Zimbabwe in the 1980's.Zimbabwe experienced several shortages in the late 1980s when the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) failed to transport coal from the single colliery (Wankie) then in operation in the country to the consumption centers. This caused problems in a number of 'industries across the country. Some industries, particularly the tobacco, electricity1 generation, and sugar industries, which use a lot of coal in their operations were seriously affected’ The aim of this paper is to discuss the problems experienced by the NRZ as highlighted during this coal crisis which reached a peak in 1988 and 1989

Modelling Planner-Carrier Interactions in Road Freight Transport: Optimization of Road Maintenance Costs Via Overloading Control

A bi-level modelling approach is proposed to represent the interaction between the vehicle loading practices of road freight transport carriers, and the decisions of a road planning authority responsible both for road maintenance and for the enforcement of overloading control. At the lower (reactive) level, the overloading decisions of the carriers impact on road maintenance expenditure, while at the upper (anticipatory) level the planner decides fine and enforcement levels by anticipating the responses of the carriers. A case study using data from Mexico is used to illustrate the method

Logistics Costs Based Estimation of Freight Transportation Demand

Many supply chain and fi nished goods distribution networks involve intercity freight transportation. Shipping customers secure transportation services by matching their requirements to available service in an effort to minimize their total logistics costs subject to service level constraints. Frequently, shippers' modal decisions are constrained by short-term capacity constraints restricting one of the available options, or gaps in shipper knowledge or carrier marketing programs. As a result, the observed traffic flows may not reflect the potential demand for the mode. Because the potential demand for a mode is not directly measurable, when planning road and rail capacity, governments and railroads cannot make accurate capacity planning decisions based on current traffic flows. The model developed here identifi es the potential demand for intercity full truckload and intermodal shipments over the most heavily utilized 75,000 shipment lanes in the western United States by estimating minimum total logistics costs by mode. These flows are compared with actual U.S. freight flows in order to determine the differences between observed flows and the model estimated potential demand. The results indicate potential demand for intermodal transportation is high; considerable freight volumes could be delivered with lower logistics cost by switching from truck to intermodal transportation. This evidence suggests that observed traffic flows and trends may not be a sound basis for planning freight transportation infrastructure in the United States

Logistics Costs Based Estimation of Freight Transportation Demand

Many supply chain and fi nished goods distribution networks involve intercity freight transportation. Shipping customers secure transportation services by matching their requirements to available service in an effort to minimize their total logistics costs subject to service level constraints. Frequently, shippers' modal decisions are constrained by short-term capacity constraints restricting one of the available options, or gaps in shipper knowledge or carrier marketing programs. As a result, the observed traffic flows may not reflect the potential demand for the mode. Because the potential demand for a mode is not directly measurable, when planning road and rail capacity, governments and railroads cannot make accurate capacity planning decisions based on current traffic flows. The model developed here identifi es the potential demand for intercity full truckload and intermodal shipments over the most heavily utilized 75,000 shipment lanes in the western United States by estimating minimum total logistics costs by mode. These flows are compared with actual U.S. freight flows in order to determine the differences between observed flows and the model estimated potential demand. The results indicate potential demand for intermodal transportation is high; considerable freight volumes could be delivered with lower logistics cost by switching from truck to intermodal transportation. This evidence suggests that observed traffic flows and trends may not be a sound basis for planning freight transportation infrastructure in the United States

Transportation Implications of Coal

This report describes the direct economic relationship between the coal and railroad industries in Appalachia. It finds that between 2015 and 2016, changing electric generation strategies—including accelerated coal-powered plant retirements—combined with a downturn in coal demand contributed to losses of nearly 2,000 full-time jobs and $150 million in income across Appalachia’s railroad sector

Rail service design and database management for new automobile distribution

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1994.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-90).by Ching-Ju Juan.M.S

Dynamic routing and service network design for less-than-truckload (LTL) motor carriers

This research tries to address the dynamic priority shipment routing problem and dynamic service network design problem for the less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers. First, described is a decision support tool to assist LTL managers in studying, analyzing and planning LTL operations so that scarce resources are used more effectively and efficiently. The decision support tool helps to understand the complicated interactions between the shipment route, closing rules, cost, and service level. Numerical experiments are done using the decision support tool to analyze the existing rules of LTL carriers and to understand their effect on the total cost of the system and the service level provided;Currently, LTL carriers route both regular and priority shipments through their service networks using some fixed route patterns known as load plans. In this research, an alternative routing strategy for routing priority shipments in LTL networks is proposed. This strategy exploits the stochasticity and dynamism embedded in the routing process and utilizes the real time information about terminals to determine the shipment routes adaptively. The research shows that this strategy can be formulated as the problem of finding a dynamic shortest path problem over a network with random arc costs. An efficient algorithm is developed that can solve this optimization problem in real-time. Numerical testing using real data sets suggests that the proposed strategy can improve the level of service for priority shipments;LTL carriers currently use ad hoc rules in deciding when there is enough capacity to close a trailer. In order to reduce the fixed and penalty costs incurred by the LTL carriers and to increase the service level provided by LTL carriers to customers, the decision should be optimized over time. In other words, the decision to dispatch a trailer should not only depend on the current shipment level, but should also vary dynamically based on time of day, day of the week, and seasonal effects. A dynamic control policy for dispatching a trailer over a single link is proposed in this research. This research provides an approach to estimate the shape of the recourse function. The dynamic control policy exploits the linearity of the recourse function estimated in solving the trailer dispatching problem efficiently. The algorithm is easy to implement and computationally fast and hence can be extended to solve large LTL networks. Experiments with the dynamic control policy show that the solutions obtained are very close to the optimal

Coal by rail: historic trends and transhipment modelling

This paper presents an account of the historic trends of coal transportation by rail in Great Britain over the last 50 years. The Re-shaping Britain’s Railways report by the British Railways Board in 1963 highlighted the need to improve the efficiency of rail freight transportation to compete with road haulage. More recently, coal is imported to the UK to coastal ports from Europe and the rest of the World. The movement of trains on the network has changed since the report in 1963. Research has shown that it is not the amount that has increased, only the distance (Vanek and Smith, 2004). Historic data and research has been collated using national sources and statistics, and a Transhipment Model has been used to determine the optimisation of the coal locations. The data and the model have supported the statement that coal now accounts for more freight train journeys than ever before although the demise of the coal mines in the North East and the increase of power stations and ports in Yorkshire has altered the pattern of movements. The UK still requires coal for its power stations but has sourced it increasingly from abroad

DEMAND MODEL FOR CRUDE OIL RAIL AND PIPELINE SHIPMENTS IN CANADA

Global energy demand is expected to increase significantly over the next 10-20 years, and in the absence of an increase in pipeline capacity, Canadian crude oil shipments are likely to be diverted to rail. The current rail loading capacity originating in western Canada is 754,000 barrels/day. This rail capacity is expected to meet the 1 million b/d deficit between western Canadian production forecasted for 2025 (5 million b/d) and existing pipeline capacity (4 million b/d). Western Canadian production is further forecast to reach 5.4 million b/d by 2030, representing a 39% increase from 2016. The primary objective of this research is to obtain accurate current estimates of crude oil shipments by pipeline and rail in Canada (tonnages and volumes), and to use these data to calibrate and evaluate an empirical model of crude oil shipments by shippers’ mode choice (pipeline and rail) and route selection. Modelling crude oil shipments allows for an assessment of the impacts of future changes in pipeline/rail network connectivity, modal attributes, and shipment protocols, on the expected pattern of crude oil shipments. Origin Destination (OD) demands were based on empirical trade data. In particular, crude oil shipments beginning and ending in Canada are available from CANSIM, Statistics Canada’s key socioeconomic database. These data were supplemented with other data from the National Energy Board (NEB) and the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Due to data limitations and the need for more disaggregated zones to characterize crude oil shipment patterns more precisely, shipments originating from (destined for) British Columbia or Alberta were split based on total production (attraction) data from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Alberta Energy, and the Canadian Fuels Association. Numerous data sources were compiled to estimate cost functions for shipping crude by pipeline and rail in Canada. For pipelines, cost performance functions (shipper tolls) were found to depend significantly on shipping distance, route pipe diameters and shipment destination (domestic vs international). Moreover, medium and heavy crude were found to be more expensive to ship compared to condensate and light crude due to their lower viscosities. For rail, the distance shipped, a terminal fee and an international tariff surcharge were found to be statistically significant in explaining shipper costs along a route. These pipeline and rail cost models yielded R2 values of 0.85 and 0.83, respectively. Conventional Random Utility Models (RUM) fail to capture the complex interactions of pipeline shipments to determine mode and route choice shipper decisions, resulting in the development of a rule-based approach for mode choice and route assignment. This research found that the mode split, and route assignment of crude oil shipments are jointly determined by shipper types, destination types, prioritization rules, and allocation rules. This approach was validated by comparing predicted throughputs with those reported for Canada’s Group 1 and Group 2 export pipelines, and applied to determine the impact of a 39% increase in western Canadian crude oil production, as forecasted by CAPP for 2030. Assuming no new pipeline infrastructure is constructed before 2030, several rail lines would carry increased amounts of crude oil