Optimized Border System for Land-Based Transport

Abstract

Land-based transport corridors serving landlocked developing countries experience cargo delays that are much longer than global benchmarks, reducing the competitiveness of the affected countries within an increasingly globalized economy. Improving the efficiency of such corridors is complicated by the inefficient management of border crossings. Factors contributing to long border delays include the variability of vehicle processing times and lack of sufficient capacity at service desks during peak traffic periods. We use a simulation approach to investigate improvements to current border management systems by modeling each important aspect of the cross-border process. The simulator was calibrated against data collected during cross-border surveys. This article is the first to quantify the potential for reduction in border delays through the reduced variability of process times. A dynamic adjustment model was developed to enable an optimal compromise between the number of service desks for each process; utilization levels of the available capacity; and average delay time. The novelty of our approach lies in the fact that service capacity adjustments are based on data that are collected inside the border area, rather than data that are collected from traffic in transit to the border, which is much easier to implement in practice.