A simultaneous decision-making approach to model the demand for freight transportation

Abstract

The application of discrete choice models (e.g., logit, probit) to study modal choice in passenger transportation has had a wide acceptance in the literature. However, little success had been reported on the application of these models to study the demand for freight transportation. This is mainly because in freight transportation a model that merely attempts to explain the choice of mode without taking into consideration other related factors, such as shipment size, is only one part of a complete model. Another type of models known as inventory-based models, which takes these factors into consideration, has been developed and applied with a greater success. However, the data requirement of these inventory models has hampered their applicability, especially in situations with limited data on goods movement. This paper presents a new approach to study the demand for intercity freight transportation. The model proposed in this paper utilizes the strength of discrete choice models (e.g., probit) in explaining the process of mode choice as one part of a complete model. The complete model is presented as a joint discrete/continuous choice model for the choices of mode and shipment size. The model is practical in that it requires the same amount and quality of data that would be required to develop a standard disaggregate mode choice model, and it can be estimated using simple two-stage estimation methods which utilizes standard probit maximum likelihood and ordinary least squares estimation techniques. Key words: disaggregate, freight transportation, maximum likelihood, mode, model, probit, shipment.