A framework for an integrative freight market simulation

This paper discusses a framework for a comprehensive modeling of freight movements that presents opportunities for the development of models able to: a) jointly consider the flow of both commodities and commercial vehicles; b) consider commercial vehicles trip chaining, or alternatively Trip Length Distributions (TLDs); c) use logistic information in freight demand modeling; d) estimate freight origin destination matrices, on the basis of secondary information, such as traffic data from Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS); e) enable the study of the impact of real-time traffic control upon commercial vehicle traffic. The concept discussed here entails a bi-level approach in which the top level correspond to the estimation of the provision of service consistent with a Cournot equilibrium, while the bottom level focuses on the construction of tours that satisfy the Cournot solution and the remaining system constraints, in a context of a large scale simulation optimization problem.