Reducing the energy consumption and increasing the efficiency of perishable goods transportation by refrigerated vehicles on urban routes

Inefficient operation of distribution networks in transportation reduces the profits of commercial enterprises and increases the cost of goods for people. Using ineffective methods of ensuring cargo preservation leads to deteriorating consumer properties of goods, increased fuel consumption and an increase in the amount of harmful emissions from car exhaust gases. This enhances the negative impact of transport on the environment, especially in major cities, which makes the problem of ensuring cargo preservation and improving transport efficiency relevant. The objective of this work is to solve the problem of reducing the energy intensity of transportation and improving the efficiency of refrigerated vehicles in summer when delivering perishable goods (PGs) on urban routes. Factors that impact the energy intensity of PGs transportation by refrigerated vehicles are presented. When assessing the efficiency of refrigerated vehicles operation, it is proposed to take into account weather and transport operating conditions. An approach is formed to assessing the efficiency of refrigerated vehicles considering operating costs, cargo preservation costs, transportation energy intensity. © 2017 WIT Press

Investigation of the Impacts of Effective Fuel Cost Increase on the US Air Transportation Network and Fleet

The cost of aviation fuel increased 244% between July 2004 and July 2008, becoming the largest operating cost item for airlines. Given the potential for future increases in crude oil prices, as well as environmental costs (i.e. from cap and trade schemes or taxes), the effective cost of aviation fuel may continue to increase, further impacting airlines’ financial performance and the provision of air service nationwide. We evaluate how fuel price increase and volatility affected continental US air transportation networks and fleets in the short- and medium-term using the increase in the 2007-08 and 2004-08 periods as a natural experiment. It was found that non-hub airports serving small communities lost 12% of connections, compared to an average loss of 2.8%, July 2004-08. It is believed that reduced access to the national air transportation system had social and economic impacts for small communities. Complementary analyses of aircraft fuel efficiency, airline economics, and airfares provided a basis for understanding some airline decisions. Increased effective fuel costs will provide incentives for airlines to improve fleet fuel efficiency, reducing the environmental effects of aviation, but may cause an uneven distribution of social and economic impacts as airline networks adapt. Government action may be required to determine acceptable levels of access to service as the air transportation system transitions to higher fuel costs.The authors would like to thank the MIT Partnership on AiR Transportation Noise & Emissions Reduction (PARTNER) for access to the Piano-X software package and Brian Yutko for his assistance in its use. This work was supported by the MIT/Masdar Institute of Science and Technology under grant number Mubadala Development Co. Agreement 12/1/06

Freight Distribution in Urban Areas: The role of supply chain alliances in addressing the challenge of traffic congestion for city logistics

The distribution of freight is a major contributor to the levels of traffic congestion in cities, yet it is much neglected in the research and planning activities of government, where the focus is disproportionately on passenger vehicle movements. Despite the recent recognition of the contribution of freight transportation to the performance of urban areas under the rubric of city logistics, we see a void in the study of how the stakeholders in the supply chain associated with the distribution of goods (whose destination is an urban location) might cooperate through participation in distribution networks, to reduce the costs associated with traffic congestion. Given that transport costs are typically over 45% of all distribution costs, with congestion contributing a substantial amount of cost in the urban setting, the importance of establishing ways in which supply chain partnerships might aid in reducing the levels of freight vehicle movements in urban areas has much merit. This paper sets out a framework to investigate how agents in the supply chain might interact more effectively to reduce their costs of urban freight distribution. We propose an interactive agency choice method as a way of formalising a framework for studying the preferences of participants in the supply chain to support specific policy initiatives. Such a framework is a powerful way of investigating the behavioural response of each agent to many policies including congestion pricing as a way of improving the efficient flow of traffic in cities

Contract choice, incentives and political capture in public transport services

We consider a framework of contractual interactions between urban transport authorities and transport operators. We estimate simultaneously the choice of contract by the authorities and the effect of regulation on the cost reducing activity of the operators. We test whether regulatory schemes currently implemented in the industry are the observable items of a more general menu of second best contracts. We suggest that the generation process of the data we have in hand is better explained by the political aspects of regulation. Moreover, the cost reducing effort of the operators is greater under fixed-price regimes, compared to the cost-plus case

The economic and environmental performance of distribution networks: A case study from the petrochemical industry

Designing a company's distribution network is a challenging task that requires the consideration of different aspects. In this respect, especially trade-offs between, for example, operational costs and customer service are the focus of the companies' attention. However, growing concerns of governments and customers about environmental protection have raised awareness towards the environmental impact of operations. Activities associated with the distribution of products, i.e. transportation and warehousing, are not yet subject to strict environmental regulations, but this situation is expected to change soon. Companies must, therefore, start to concentrate not only on economic but also on environmental aspects in the design of their supply chain. Based on a case study from the petrochemical industry, this paper presents a way to combine both, economic as well as environmental criteria, when evaluating (strategic) distribution network design decisions. The results show a trade-off between total (distribution) costs and transport carbon emissions. (author's abstract

The Cost of contract renegotiation: evidence from the local public sector

We construct and estimate a structural principal/agent model of contract renegotiation in the French urban transport sector in a context where operators are privately informed on their innate costs (adverse selection) and can exert cost-reducing managerial effort (moral hazard). This model captures two important features of the industry. First, only two types of contracts are used in practice by local public authorities to regulate the service: cost-plus and fixedprice contracts with positive subsidies. Second, these subsidies increase over time. Such increasing subsidies are consistent with the theoretical hypothesis that principals cannot commit not to renegotiate and contracts are renegotiationproof. We compare this situation to the hypothetical case with full commitment. The distribution of innate costs of operators is shifted upwards under this hypothetical scenario. The welfare gains of commitment are significant and accrue mostly to operators. Estimates of the weights that local governments give to the operator´s profit in their objective functions and of the social value of the cost-reducing managerial effort are obtained as by-products

Incentive Regulatory policies: The Case of Public Transit Systems in France

We assess the empirical relevance of the new theory of regulation, using a principal-agent framework to study the regulatory schemes used in the French urban transport industry. Taking the current regulatory schemes as given, the model of supply and demand provides estimates for the firms’ inefficiency, the effort of managers, and the cost of public funds. It allows us to derive the first-best and second-best regulatory policies for each network and compare them with the actual situation in terms of welfare loss or gain. Fixed-price policies lie between fully informed and uninformed second-best schemes. Cost-plus contracts are dominated by any type of second-best contract. From these results, we may conjecture that fixed-price contracts call for better-informed regulators.Publicad

Economic Impacts of GO TO 2040

The economy of the Chicago metropolitan region has reached a critical juncture. On the one hand, Chicagoland is currently a highly successful global region with extraordinary assets and outputs. The region successfully made the transition in the 1980s and 1990s from a primarily industrial to a knowledge and service-based economy. It has high levels of human capital, with strong concentrations in information-sector industries and knowledge-based functional clusters -- a headquarters region with thriving finance, business services, law, IT and emerging bioscience, advanced manufacturing and similar high-growth sectors. It combines multiple deep areas of specialization, providing the resilience that comes from economic diversity. It is home to the abundant quality-of-life amenities that flow from business and household prosperity.On the other hand, beneath this static portrait of our strengths lie disturbing signs of a potential loss of momentum. Trends in the last decade reveal slowing rates, compared to other regions, of growth in productivity and gross metropolitan product. Trends in innovation, new firm creation and employment are comparably lagging. The region also faces emerging challenges with respect to both spatial efficiency and governance.In this context, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) has just released GO TO 2040, its comprehensive, long-term plan for the Chicago metropolitan area. The plan contains recommendations aimed at shaping a wide range of regional characteristics over the next 30 years, during which time more than 2 million new residents are anticipated. Among the chief goals of GO TO 2040 are increasing the region's long-term economic prosperity, sustaining a high quality of life for the region's current and future residents and making the most effective use of public investments. To this end, the plan addresses a broad scope of interrelated issues which, in aggregate, will shape the long-term physical, economic, institutional and social character of the region.This report by RW Ventures, LLC is an independent assessment of the plan from a purely economic perspective, addressing the impacts that GO TO 2040's recommendations can be expected to have on the future of the regional economy. The assessment begins by describing how implementation of GO TO 2040's recommendations would affect the economic landscape of the region; reviews economic research and practice about the factors that influence regional economic growth; and, given both of these, articulates and illustrates the likely economic impacts that will flow from implementation of the plan. In the course of reviewing the economic implications of the plan, the assessment also provides recommendations of further steps, as the plan is implemented, for increasing its positive impact on economic growth

Optimal Resource Allocation in Random Networks with Transportation Bandwidths

We apply statistical physics to study the task of resource allocation in random sparse networks with limited bandwidths for the transportation of resources along the links. Useful algorithms are obtained from recursive relations. Bottlenecks emerge when the bandwidths are small, causing an increase in the fraction of idle links. For a given total bandwidth per node, the efficiency of allocation increases with the network connectivity. In the high connectivity limit, we find a phase transition at a critical bandwidth, above which clusters of balanced nodes appear, characterised by a profile of homogenized resource allocation similar to the Maxwell's construction.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figure