Assessment and reduction of the impacts of large freight vehicles on urban traffic corridor performance

Increasing demand for road freight has lead to a widespread adoption of more-productive large freight vehicles (LFVs), such as B-Doubles, by Australia's road freight industry. Individual LFVs have a greater potential to impact traffic efficiency through their greater length and poorer longitudinal performance. However, this is offset to an extent as fewer vehicles are required to perform a given freight task on a tonne-km basis. This research has developed a means of characterising the effects that large freight vehicles have on the performance of an urban arterial corridor managed by signalised intersections. A corridor-level microsimulation model was developed from first principles, which modelled the longitudinal performance of individual vehicles to a greater accuracy than most existing traffic simulation software does. The model was calibrated from traffic counts and GPS-equipped chase car surveys conducted on an urban arterial corridor in Brisbane's southern suburbs. The model was applied to various freight policy and traffic management scenarios, including freight vehicle mode choice, lane utilisation and traffic signal settings; as well as the effectiveness of green time extension for approaching heavy vehicles. Benefits were able to be quantified in terms of reduced travel times and stop rates for both heavy and light vehicles in urban arterial corridors

Optimisation of simultaneous train formation and car sorting at marshalling yards

Efficient and correct freight train marshalling is vital for high quality carload freight transportations. During marshalling, it is desirable that cars are sorted according to their individual drop-off locations in the outbound freight trains. Furthermore, practical limitations such as non-uniform and limited track lengths and the arrival and departure times of trains need to be considered. This paper presents a novel optimisation method for freight marshalling scheduling under these circumstances. The method is based on an integer programming formulation that is solved using column generation and branch and price. The approach minimises the number of extra shunting operations that have to be performed, and is evaluated on real-world data from the Hallsberg marshalling yard in Sweden

Comparative Analysis of European Examples of Freight Electric Vehicles Schemes—A Systematic Case Study Approach with Examples from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK.

E-Mobility is a hot topic, in the public policy area as well as in business and scientific communities. Literature on electric freight transport is still relatively scarce. Urban freight transport is considered as one of the most promising fields of application of vehicle electrification, and there are on-going demonstration projects. This paper will discuss case study examples of electric freight vehicle initiatives in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK and identify enablers and barriers for common trends

Decoupling economic development and freight for reducing its negative impacts

This paper takes a look at the development of freight transport and its further perspectives in thelight of environmental sustainability. It clearly challenges the traditional view that furthergrowth in freight transport is indispensable whatever stage of economic development an indi-vidual economy has achieved. Moreover it suggests measures to be taken into consideration insectors other than the transport sector which may help to break the trend of continuing freighttransport growth. Current developments of freight transport volume and modal split are rathercounterproductive as regards curbing the unwanted environmental impacts. As growth in vol-ume is a major contributing factor for most adverse effects caused, a substantial decoupling ofeconomic growth and freight transport would be extremely helpful. While freight transportactivity is almost entirely derived demand there can be no sufficient solution for the resultingenvironmental problems within the sector itself. Therefore, it is necessary to examine potentialsfor reducing demand for freight transport in all sectors of the economy. Contrasting to thewidely held view that freight transport is in general an inevitable prerequisite of economicdevelopment, there are potentials for reducing the freight intensity of the economy which couldbe far more exploited. Such potentials are increasing the share of regional production, slowingdown the metabolism of materials in the economy, and substituting transfer of information fortransport of physical products. While each of these potentials on its own may appear to offerlimited effects, a proper combination might yield substantial results. The presented preliminaryideas suggest that the notion of everlasting freight transport growth is misleading and hint at thenecessity for further research. --