Policy Evaluation of Multimodal Transportation Network, the Case of Inter Island Freight Transportation in Indonesia

This paper outlines the development of an analytical model of multimodal, multicommodity freight transportation in Indonesia. The model is used to evaluate strategic planning of inter-island freight transportation. The demand for inter-island freight transportation is estimated using econometric demand models which account for the socioeconomic characteristics of the regions and commodity types. The supply side is concerned with modeling the inter-island transportation network, including links, such as the land access network, and transfer points which are connected by the links, and a generalized cost function. System optimization is obtained by identifying the combination of links and transfers that minimize the total generalized transport cost. The model is applied to the evaluation of the impacts of several policy scenarios which contribute to the improvement of the inter-island freight transportation network. The model has shown its capability of estimating system costs of transportation network that can be utilized to assess the policy implications.