Freight Volume Research Articles

Estimating waterway freight demand at Three Gorges ship lock on Yangtze River by backpropagation neural network modeling

The waterway freight volume through the Three Gorges ship lock (TGL) has increased significantly since it started operation in 2003 and exceeded the designed capacity of 100 million tons in 2011, 19 years earlier than expected. This made the TGL a bottleneck for the Yangtze River waterway transport development. Based on the historical freight volumes and types through the TGL, a combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses are conducted here to identify the key factors affecting freight demand. A genetic algorithm and backpropagation (GA–BP) forecasting model (optimized backpropagation neural network model using a genetic algorithm) was developed to estimate freight demand at the TGL over the period 2020–2040. We predict that freight demand will continue to increase, reaching 260.2 million tons in the basic scenario by 2040 (or 224.7 million tons in the conservative scenario and 276.7 million tons in the optimistic scenario). However, the growth rate will gradually decline. The freight composition will tend to be more stable and homogeneous, with over 64% of the freight related to investment and construction. From the perspective of freight volume evolution, the necessity of the Three Gorges New Locks Project is justified and necessary.

Multiple Regression Forecast Analysis of Pakistan Railway Freight Volume under the Background of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Construction

Multiple Regression Forecast Analysis of Pakistan Railway Freight Volume under the Background of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Construction

Quantitative Evaluation Method for Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Asphalt Pavement Construction Stage

The paper has studied on how to quantitatively evaluate greenhouse gas emissions during asphalt pavement construction. The calculation method is put forward, and the greenhouse gas emissions during the construction of asphalt pavement are obtained. Through calculating examples, the paper got energy saving and emissions reduction effect of warm mix asphalt, at the same time, and drew conclusions of effects of different mixing equipment and transportation equipment on total greenhouse gas emissions. The paper got some good conclusions through the calculation data: the raw material production process accounts for 13% of the total emissions; while asphalt mixture mixing, paving and rolling accounted for 67% of the total emissions, of which about 60% were in the asphalt mixture mixing stage alone. Transport processes account for 20% of total emissions. Compared with warm mix asphalt, heat mix asphalt reduced emissions by 18.2%. The main influencing factor of greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation process is the ratio between diesel consumption of transport equipment in one hundred kilometers and the maximum freight volume of the transportation equipment.

Determinants of Freight Volume and Efficiency in Transportation and Storage Sector

Determinants of Freight Volume and Efficiency in Transportation and Storage Sector

Dynamic Reliability of Continuous Rigid-Frame Bridges under Stochastic Moving Vehicle Loads

The current volume of freight traffic has increased significantly during the past decades, impacted by the fast development of the national transportation market. As a result, the phenomena of truck overloading and traffic congestion emerge, which have resulted in numerous bridge collapse events or damage due to truck overloading. Thus, it is an urgent task to evaluate bridge safety under actual traffic loads. This study evaluated probabilistic dynamic load effects on rigid-frame bridges under highway traffic monitoring loads. The site-specific traffic monitoring data of a highway in China were utilized to establish stochastic traffic models. The dynamic effect was considered in a vehicle-bridge coupled vibration model, and the probability estimation was conducted based on the first-passage criterion of the girder deflection. The prototype bridge is a continuous rigid-frame bridge with a midspan length of 200 m and a pier height of 182 m. It is demonstrated that the dynamic traffic load effect follows Gaussian distribution, which can be treated as a stationary random process. The mean value and standard deviation of the deflections are 0.071 m and 0.088 m, respectively. The dynamic reliability index for the first passage of girder deflection is 6.45 for the current traffic condition. However, the reliability index decreases to 5.60 in the bridge lifetime, accounting for an average traffic volume growth ratio of 3.6%.

Logistics centres in the region: the Russian Far East

The area of the Russian Far East is 6.9 million square kilometers. This is the largest region in the country. All types of transport are operating in the Far East. Some sections of the state border between Russia and Asian countries pass through the region. In particular, the length of the border with China exceeds 4000 km. The transport complex of the region is involved in servicing transportation in the following directions: across the Far East, between the east and west of Russia, as well as transit, export, and import traffic. The creation of a system of logistics centers in the Far East will make it possible to more effectively organize the entire process of transporting various goods. This article contains proposals on the organization of a system of logistics centers in the Far East. The following indicators (official statistics) for 2013-2018 were used for calculations: volume of freight traffic by mode of transport, the density of the transport network, volume of production, population, gross regional product. The estimates using econometric methods made it possible to single out twelve locations for organizing the logistics centers in the Far East. The logistic system will include logistics centers of three levels: federal, regional and territorial. The levels are divided depending on the scale and significance of the transport and logistics work.

An underwater vehicle for cleaning dirty bottom of ships

With the rapid development of Global trade, the freight volume of marine transportation is increasing. In the process of shipping, the part of the hull below the waterline is immersed in the water for a long time, marine organisms will adhere to the bottom of the ship and constantly breed, forming a dirty bottom of the ship, resulting in increased navigation resistance, fuel consumption and other hazards. The work “underwater vehicle for cleaning dirty bottom of ship” can effectively monitor the attachment condition of the bottom of the ship, clean the bottom of the ship quickly and efficiently, and detect the damage of the bottom surface. Compared with the existing cleaning devices, this work realizes remote automatic cleaning operation, and has real-time monitoring function, with high cleaning efficiency and strong adaptability.

Study on the Relatedness between Arterial Highway Freight Volume and GDP

There is a deviation from the actual condition of freight transport and ‘volume of freight transport by vehicles’ counted by the current highway and waterway industry statistical statement system of China at the provincial or municipal level. This paper puts forward the concept of ‘volume of freight transport in regions’, uses survey data and administrative data to calculate the Grey relational degree between arterial highway freight volume and the GDP of the three industries. The quantitative analysis of the calculation results shows that the results are consistent with the actual situation, which is of certain practical significance. The variation trend of the arterial highway freight volume can reflect the economic development of the region.

A Study on the Industrial Relationship and Economic Ripple Effects of China's Railway Transport Industry

Purpose: As an important part of the Chinese comprehensive transportation system, railway transportation has a pillar role in the national economy. On the one hand, it transports raw materials, fuels and other intermediate products for all industrial sectors of the national economy. On the other hand, it has played a positive role in the exchange of talents and technologies between various industries. It has a considerable driving and pulling effect on various industries of the national economy. Research design, data, and methodology: Through literature research, empirical research and other research methods, the relationship between the railway transportation industry and other industries across the country is expounded. Results: First of all, a series of indicators of industrial correlation are calculated, and it is concluded that the railway transport industry belongs to the intermediate input basic industry; then, through the investigation of the value composition of the railway transport industry, it is concluded that the railway transport industry has high labor costs and belongs to capital-intensive industries; then, the economic ripple effect of the railway transport industry is analyzed. It is concluded that the differential operation of the separation of passengers and goods should be carried out according to the characteristics of railway passenger and freight transportation. Finally, based on the regression analysis of the relationship between China''s railway passenger and freight volume and GDP from 2001 to 2017, it is concluded that the railway transport industry plays a promoting role in the national economy. Conclusions: Through the calculation results, it can be seen that China''s railway transportation industry plays an important role in promoting national economic growth and inter-industry integration, and in order to ensure sustained economic stability, China should continue to consolidate the basic industrial position of railway transportation industry and better promote economic development.

Estimation of transport industry’s economic sustainability as an element of strategic management: case of Poland and Ukraine

The transport sector’s economic sustainability is an important factor in economic development, trade, quality, and safe transportation of goods and passengers, and regional and international integration. The tools of the transport sector’s strategic management should be based on assessing its current economic stability. Applying statistical and regression analysis of Ukraine and Poland’s transport sector, an approach to assessing the level of economic stability is formulated based on a system of integrated indicators of elementary, general, and specific stability. The integrated indicator of elementary economic stability considers the dynamics of the number of economic entities in the industry and their profitability. In Ukraine in 2018, this figure is –0.042, in Poland – 3.37. The integrated indicator of overall economic stability considers the number of employees in the industry, the gross domestic product created by enterprises in the industry, and the number of enterprises. In Ukraine, it is equal to –0.049, in Poland – 3.71. The integrated indicator of the transport sector’s specific economic stability takes into account the volume of passengers, freight, and cargo handling, and in Ukraine, it is –0.040, in Poland – 3.38.

Surveillance for exotic fruit fly of the subfamily Dacinae (Insecta, Diptera, Tephrididae) and a review of the Dacinae established in Sydney, Australia, between 2010 and 2019

ABSTRACT Sydney has a high plant biosecurity risk due to the volume of international freight and postal items. Additionally, a high number of tourists enter Australia through Sydney. In 1995, an array of fruit fly surveillance traps was established to monitor for exotic fruit fly incursions. Here, the number of detections of the fruit fly subfamily Dacinae (Insecta, Diptera, Tephrididae) was reviewed for the period between 2010 and 2019. The results revealed that no exotic fruit flies were detected during this period. However, many established species were detected and species present were placed into international standards. Bactrocera tryoni, B. cacuminatra, Dacus absonifacies, and D. aequalis were classified as established due to a large number of specimens trapped. Sydney was likely to be an area of low pest prevalence for B. neohumeralis in some years and pest free in other years. Low numbers of B. bancrofti, B. brunnea, B. jarvisi, and B. mayi were trapped, and Sydney was likely to be classified free from these species based on international standards. Also, trapping records indicated that Sydney was free from D. newmani however this species was known to occur in inland NSW. Bactrocera bryoniae and B. endiandrae were likely to be incursions that did not establish in most years.

Analysis of the current state of the Northern Sea Route and the potential development of the icebreaker fleet

The article provides a general description of the current state of the Northern Sea Route (NSR), highlights existing problems and prospects of the Northern Sea Route development. There is a tendency to increase the volume of sea freight traffic on the Northern Sea Route, which is facilitated by the development of new oil and gas fields in the Arctic and increased safety of navigation in the NSR. It is noted that despite the revival of transport infrastructure in the western part of the NSR, its eastern part is characterized by a depressed state. The main drawback of the Northern Sea Route is the severe natural conditions that limit the navigation time. Special attention is paid to the Russian nuclear icebreaker fleet. Both its current state and promising nuclear icebreakers, which are currently under construction or in the design stage, are considered. The main requirements for the characteristics of nuclear icebreakers are identified, which are necessary for their effective use on the routes of the Northern Sea Route in the context of increasing volumes of cargo transportation. Thus, an important requirement for maintaining the growth in cargo traffic is to ensure year-round icebreaker assistance to cargo ships along the Northern Sea Route. There is a need for the construction of new nuclear-powered icebreakers due to the expiration of the lifetime of nuclear icebreakers of the Arctic and the Taimyr classes. In the future, in the next decade, the main core of the Arctic nuclear icebreaker fleet should be universal icebreakers capable to provide icebreaking assistance for ships both in coastal areas and estuaries and in the western part of the Arctic.

The impact of COVID-19 on transport volume and freight capacity dynamics: An empirical analysis in German food retail logistics

Governmental restrictions aspiring to slow down the spread of epidemic and pandemic outbreaks lead to impairments for economic operations, which impact transportation networks comprising the maritime, rail, air, and trucking industries. Witnessing a substantial increase in the number of infections in Germany, the authorities have imposed drastic restrictions on everyday life. Resulting panic buying and increasing home consumption had versatile impacts on transport volume and freight capacity dynamics in German food retail logistics. Due to the lack of prior research on the effects of COVID-19 on transport volume in retail logistics, as well as resulting implications, this article aspires to shed light on the phenomenon of changing volume and capacity dynamics in road haulage. After analyzing the transport volume of n = 15,715 routes in the timeframe of 23.03.2020 to 30.04.2020, a transport volume growth rate expressing the difference of real and expected transport volume was calculated. This ratio was then examined concerning the number of COVID-19 infections per day. The results of this study prove that the increasing freight volume for dry products in retail logistics does not depend on the duration of the COVID-19 epidemy but on the strength quantified through the total number of new infections per day. This causes a conflict of interest between transportation companies and food retail logistics for non-cooled transport capacity. The contributions of this paper are highly relevant to assess the impact of a possibly occurring second COVID-19 virus infection wave.

Assessing the potential of delivery consolidation to campus center

The purpose of this research is to investigate the characteristics of students who partake in online shopping and the potential of the consolidation method for delivering packages in Universitas, Indonesia (UI). The consolidation method for delivering packages is considered a solution for reducing freight volume and its negative impact on the environment. The study was based on the interview of 1824 UI students regarding their preferences on two package delivery services used in online shopping, namely direct (home) delivery and consolidation. The data was analyzed using the Analytical Hierarchical Process method and Expert Choice 11. The result shows that 56% of the students experienced problems in online shopping, with 46% experiencing a delayed delivery. Compared to the direct delivery, 51.3% of the students chose the consolidation method. In general, the most important aspect of choosing a delivery method when shopping online is time (24.7%), convenience (23.3%), accessibility (22.5%), cost (16.4%), and distance (13.2%). For those who choose direct delivery, time is the most important aspect; for those who choose consolidation, convenience in using the system and accessibility to the consolidation point are the most important. These should be taken into account in implementing the system in the UI campus so the campus can share benefits by reducing the negative impact of freight transport on the environment.

Railway freight volume forecasting based on combined DWT-Bi-LSTM model

Railway freight volume forecasting can provide information for National Railway Department to establish effective operation lines, and its research plays an important role in increasing the effective proportion of railway transport. In order to improve the prediction accuracy, this paper proposes a combined model based on wavelet transform (WT) and bidirectional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM) for high-precision railway freight volume forecasting. In this method, experimental data are first denoised by wavelet transform to extract important signal features that can accurately express the data information, and then Bi-LSTM is utilized to learn from the historical denoised data and iteratively improve upon predictions. To verify the improved prediction performance of DWT-Bi-LSTM, results are compared with those of the single LSTM, GRU, Bi-LSTM model along with the LSTM, GRU model combined with wavelet transform. The experimental results show that the combined DWT-Bi-LSTM model proposed in this paper has higher accuracy in the prediction of railway freight volume than the other forecasting methods.

An Empirical Study on the Change of Consumption Level of Chinese Residents

With the rapid development of Chinese economy since the reform and opening up, people's living standards have been improved, and people's consumption level has been gradually improved. Consumption plays an important role in stimulating economic growth. At present, China needs to adjust its economic structure and optimize its industrial structure. Therefore, it is very important to analyze the factors that affect the consumption level of Chinese residents and study the main factors for promoting the healthy and sustainable development of Chinese economy. Therefore, based on the statistical data from 1995 to 2018, this paper collects the variable data that affects the consumption level of residents, such as the freight volume of infrastructure railway and highway, the per capita disposable income of national residents, ordinary college students, the consumer price index of residents, the average real wage index and the gross domestic product. And through the establishment of multiple linear regression model and the stepwise regression, the paper also finds out the main factors influencing the consumption level of residents. Using R language and analyzing the results of the research, we can draw the conclusion that the national per capita disposable income, ordinary college students and consumer price index and GDP are the main factors that affect the consumption level of Chine.

Transforming the coal and steel nexus for China's eco‐civilization: Interplay between rail and energy infrastructure

AbstractChina's 2050 high renewable energy penetration (HREP) scenario is a roadmap for deep decarbonization. This promising strategy, deploying wind and solar energy, will also reshape other infrastructure sectors. With decarbonization, not only can capital be diverted away from fossil fuel infrastructure toward green power generation, but considerable savings in future transport infrastructure sectors could be achieved because fossil fuels no longer need to be transported. Here, we conduct a material flow analysis with a focus on the central role of transportation to examine the interlinkages of coal and steel flows in China's infrastructure sectors between 1985, 2015, and 2050. We define the coal and steel nexus to be a system perspective that captures the interdependence and the critical linkages between these two resources. Our results show that the coal and steel nexus in China strengthened in the past three decades but could face transitional changes to 2050. The peak time of both coal and steel demand for China is expected to come before 2030. Consequentially, the volume of rail freight for the carriage of three main types of bulk cargo (coal, iron ores, and steel products) declines from ∼2,000 megatons (Mt) in 2015 to ∼700 Mt in 2050 under the HREP scenario with the two‐fold planned growth of railway infrastructure. However, investment in cleaner energy and steelmaking technologies will help China mainly rely on secondary steel resources to maintain domestic demand in 2050, further reducing the demand for coal and iron ores.

Research on Fuzhou Logistics Development Status under the Background of National Logistics Hub City Construction

In the national logistics hub layout and construction plan, Fuzhou city is listed as the carrier city of the national logistics hub layout, which brings new opportunities to promote the comprehensive transportation development of Fuzhou city, improve the national logistics level, realize the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure and open economy. This paper analyzes the current status of logistics development in Fuzhou, the regression model is used to predict the future freight volume of Fuzhou city, combined with the predicted results, the paper puts forward some countermeasures for the better development of logistics industry in Fuzhou.

The effects of a Smart Logistics policy on carbon emissions in China: A difference-in-differences analysis

The rapid development of logistics has increased carbon emissions. Smart Logistics distribution system is a comprehensive logistics system supported by advanced information technology, which aims to improve the operation efficiency of the logistics industry and reduce carbon emissions by optimizing resource allocation. Therefore, it is of great significance to explore the effects of Smart Logistics policy (SLP) on China's carbon emissions. This paper used the binary choice model to investigate the main factors influencing the establishment of Smart Logistics in Chinese cities, and whether carbon emissions are the cause of the establishment of Smart Logistics. Secondly, it analyzed the effect of SLP on carbon emissions using a difference-in-differences (DID) model. The results reveal that freight volume, logistics employment, and total social retail are important factors determining whether a city should establish Smart Logistics or not. Additionally, the decision whether to establish Smart Logistics is an exogenous policy variable to carbon emissions. The implementation of SLP can restrain carbon emissions significantly, with a continuous impact in the second year. Based on the findings of this paper, a series of policy implications with respect to promote the development of Smart Logistics were proposed.

Canonical Correlation Study on the Relationship between Shipping Development and Water Environment of the Yangtze River

The sustainable development of the Yangtze River will affect the lives of the people who live along it as well as the development of cities beside it. This study investigated the relationship between shipping development and the water environment of the Yangtze River. Canonical correlation analysis is a multivariate statistical method used to study the correlation between two groups of variables; this study employed it to analyze data relevant to shipping and the water environment of the Yangtze River from 2006 to 2016. Furthermore, the Yangtze River Shipping Prosperity Index and Yangtze River mainline freight volume were used to characterize the development of Yangtze River shipping. The water environment of the Yangtze River is characterized by wastewater discharge, ammonia nitrogen concentration, biochemical oxygen demand, the potassium permanganate index, and petroleum pollution. The results showed that a significant correlation exists between Yangtze River shipping and the river’s water environment. Furthermore, mainline freight volume has a significant impact on the quantity of wastewater discharged and petroleum pollution in the water environment.