Integrating Data and Models for Analysis of Freight Movements on Multimodal Transportation Systems for Florida

Freight transportation is both multimodal and intermodal in nature, involving highways, railways waterways, air transportation, terminals and intermodal transfers. Multimodal and intermodal orientation holds major promise in significantly improving freight transportation efficiency. This project developed the Florida Multimodal Network (FMN), and integrated multimodal network for Florida that combines airway linkages, highways, railways, waterways, and intermodal facilities. The project also developed an impedance function based on both time and cost to characterize mode preferences and a multimodal and intermodal routing procedure. This was done to establish multimodal freight flow patterns on the FMN utilizing the commodity flow O-D data from the 2003 TRANSSEARCH database. The results are compared to the observed highway truck VMT data. Recommendations for future research include the development of better cost functions, considerations of congestion effects, refinement of O-D flow data, improvement in freight cost and delay data, and incorporation of the capacity of intermodal facilities.