A Multimodal Multi-Product Transportation Network Model for Strategic Planning of Freight Flows

The prediction of multi-commodity freight which flows over a multimodal network has attracted increased interest in recent years. Methods used to model freight transportation demand can be categorized into two general types: spatial price equilibrium and network equilibrium. With a simplistic representation of the transportation network, spatial price equilibrium methods were used to model interregional freight flows. These models determine the flow between production and consumption regions by using demand and supply functions. The most efficient use of the transportation infrastructure is to transport the freight at least total cost. This paper regards the spatial price equilibrium and network equilibrium as a model based on super network and gives the solution algorithm. The objective is to offer a method to forecast the transportation demand and the freight flows on the transportation network at most profit. As an application, the model is used to analyze freight flow on Wenzhou transportation network with STAN.