Costs Of Road Transport Research Articles

Sustainability and Resilience of Indigenous Siberian Communities under the Impact of Transportation Infrastructure Transformation

Transport provision in remote territories is one of the most important factors in maintaining the sustainability of socio-economic and ecological systems. Indigenous peoples of Siberia have always been mobile using diverse traditional ways across the taiga. During the Soviet period, the transition to settled life, along with technological development and the emergence of new modes of transport, such as off-road cars, snowmobiles, and motor boats, significantly affected the level of population mobility, including remote areas where people are engaged in traditional nature management. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were significant changes and reductions in the subsidies of transportation systems for remote terrains that made them isolated. Transport connectivity has been realized through rare plane flights (once a month or less) or by cars on dirt roads (actually off-road) that take several days of travel. Siberian territories rich with natural resources, low population density, and weak infrastructure might be attractive for mining companies. Being difficult to access not only for the local population, but also for industrial companies, the territories imply the allocation of a significant share of road construction and transport costs in the cost items of miners and processors. The problems of sustainability and resilience of the indigenous peoples of Siberia require special attention when restructuring transport communications, but they have practically not been studied before. Methods of in-depth and group interviews with local residents were used. Based on comparative geographic and statistical analysis and generalization of data, network and problem approaches applied for various sources and field materials (including in-depth and group interviews), the factors of sustainability and resilience, which the indigenous communities of three remote Siberian territories pin their hopes on in the context of the transformation of transportation infrastructure, have been identified. If geographic remoteness remains an unchanged fact, the expansion of desired transport accessibility (mainly due to investments by industrial companies) is associated by locals with the possibility of additional income related to provision of services, the emergence of new types of employment of the population that have not been observed before, and the implementation of new transport modes to support traditional activities.

Optimal planning of an urban ferry service operated with zero emission technology

While passenger-only ferries can be an effective instrument in mitigating road congestion in urban areas, they are among the most polluting modes of transportation. This paper studies technical and economic feasibilities of a battery-powered high-speed ferry service in Oslo, Norway. An urban ferry planner problem that minimizes ferry operator and passenger costs and external costs of road transport subject to strategic (fleet selection and infrastructure location), tactical (service frequency) and operational (vessel speed) decisions is proposed. While the results show that zero emission technologies can pass the cost-benefit test for a short-range service, competitiveness hinges on energy costs and capacities and on the performance of the existing service. Counterfactual scenarios show substantial cost reductions from altering the current ferry route. Anticipated increase in external costs of road transport from closing the ferry service is also much smaller than the system costs of maintaining the urban ferry connection.

Marginal Cost in Private and Public Transport

For decades, different economic theories have been trying to find an answer to determining the total costs of road transport and the best way to internalise these costs, with the most widespread answer among experts being pricing concerning marginal cost. This article presents a classification of transport costs with their corresponding mathematical functions to finally obtain the marginal cost of both public and private transport to develop an optimal pricing system. Finally, a system of equations for determining the optimal price based on the short term and under the economic premise of maximising social welfare is presented.

Interrelation of external costs of road transport and financial and logistics indicators of the EU countries

Internal costs refer to the direct monetised costs for a person or organisation undertaking an activity. They are costs that a business bases its price on. External costs are not included in price and consist on the cost of disposing of the product at the end of its useful life, the environmental degradation caused by the emissions, pollutants and wastes from production, the cost of health problems caused by harmful materials and ingredients and social costs associated with increasing unemployment due to increasing automation. In such way, external costs or externalities refer to the economic concept of uncompensated social or environmental effects. The countries of the European Union have long been engaged in converting indirect losses from transport into financial units. The latest existing 2019 Handbook on External Costs of Transport considers not only marginal external costs, but also total and average external transport costs across the EU, Switzerland and Norway. Our goals in this research are: - identification of factors that have a significant impact on the total external costs of transport at the country level; - determining of the degree of such influence; - determination of interdependence (multicollinearity) of factors of influence; - determination of the direction of influence (direct or inverse dependence); - making conclusions regarding the possibility of determining the external costs of the country based on the selected factors. On the basis of correlation-regression analysis, factors were determined that have a clear relationship with the external costs of road transport - the country's GDP, the amount of transport work produced by the country in tkm and the amount invested in road infrastructure. Values of Multiple R and R-square of the regression model (very next to 1) allow us to make a conclusion that these three factors are sufficient to explain the variable (external costs) at a reliability level of 95%. All factors are statistically significant and should be involved in the model. Another important result is the sign with which the coefficients are present in the model: with an increase in % of GDP and transport work, external costs will increase, however, with an increase in investment in road infrastructure, the value of external costs of transport will decrease. Finally, the regression equation of the country's external transport costs as a function of the three aforementioned indicators was obtained. A very good representation of the statistical data with the resulting regression model can be observed. It can be assumed that this model can be used to predict external costs of road transport and transfer the methodology to countries outside the EU, for example, Ukraine..

USERS’ EXPECTATION ON EAST COAST RAIL LINK (ECRL)

This paper focuses on the role of the new East Coast Rail Links (ECRL) project in Malaysia and how it will improve logistics efficiency, economic development, and environmental friendliness to meet users' expectations. The ECRL project aims to enhance connectivity between East and West Coast regions to stimulate industrial, commercial, and tourism development. The ECRL is a large-scale and heavily constructed railroad construction project. ECRL has not been a smooth project, with the government proposing the program in 2016 and construction beginning in 2017. However, due to various factors, it was suspended in 2018 and continued with a new rail route in 2019. Users' expectations for ECRL are mainly to reduce traffic congestion problems on the road, reduce high road transport costs, reduce pollution to the environment, drive business development and promote employment in the surrounding areas along the route. Because all these problems are becoming severe in Malaysia now, we will study ECRL and collect data from the respondents to point out the users' expectations of ECRL in terms of improving logistics efficiency, economic development, and environmental friendliness. After analysing the data, our study concludes with the result that all three variables positively influence users' expectations of ECRL, which, as a new railroad in Malaysia, will play a crucial role in the future development of the East Coast of Malaysia and Malaysia as a whole.

Environmental, financial, and accessibility analysis of low-density high-value goods shipment

In recent decades finished and semi-finished commodities are the most common and fastest-growing cargo categories for transportation in Europe. These commodities usually have low density and are of high value. This paper aims to assess the CO2 emissions, cost, and availability of road, rail, and railroad intermodal transportation used to deliver LDHV goods in a case study involving chemical goods transportation throughout the EU27 countries in 2020. The findings indicated that most chemical goods were transported via road, which emits more CO2 than a railway. Furthermore, road transport cost is significantly higher than rail. In order to reduce CO2 emissions and costs, four railroad intermodal scenarios were suggested. According to the analysis, these scenarios for delivering LDHV goods may be feasible to mitigate environmental concerns while also significantly lowering costs. Additionally, the availability and accessibility of intermodal terminals for shipping LDHV goods were analyzed to evaluate these scenarios.

Sustainability and Resilience of Indigenous Siberian Communities under the Impact of Transportation Infrastructure Transformation

Transport provision in remote territories is one of the most important factors in maintaining the sustainability of socio-economic and ecological systems. Indigenous peoples of Siberia have always been mobile using diverse traditional ways across the taiga. During the Soviet period, the transition to settled life, along with technological development and the emergence of new modes of transport, such as off-road cars, snowmobiles, and motor boats, significantly affected the level of population mobility, including remote areas where people are engaged in traditional nature management. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were significant changes and reductions in the subsidies of transportation systems for remote terrains that made them isolated. Transport connectivity has been realized through rare plane flights (once a month or less) or by cars on dirt roads (actually off-road) that take several days of travel. Siberian territories rich with natural resources, low population density, and weak infrastructure might be attractive for mining companies. Being difficult to access not only for the local population, but also for industrial companies, the territories imply the allocation of a significant share of road construction and transport costs in the cost items of miners and processors. The problems of sustainability and resilience of the indigenous peoples of Siberia require special attention when restructuring transport communications, but they have practically not been studied before. Methods of in-depth and group interviews with local residents were used. Based on comparative geographic and statistical analysis and generalization of data, network and problem approaches applied for various sources and field materials (including in-depth and group interviews), the factors of sustainability and resilience, which the indigenous communities of three remote Siberian territories pin their hopes on in the context of the transformation of transportation infrastructure, have been identified. If geographic remoteness remains an unchanged fact, the expansion of desired transport accessibility (mainly due to investments by industrial companies) is associated by locals with the possibility of additional income related to provision of services, the emergence of new types of employment of the population that have not been observed before, and the implementation of new transport modes to support traditional activities.

Transportation Costs and Time Impact of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is part of China's Belt and Road plan, is a network of infrastructure, commerce, and investment projects, as well as energy and technology projects, now under construction in Pakistan and China's Western Xinjiang province. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which Pakistani officials have labelled as a "game changer," is the most recent manifestation of the two countries' increasing ties. Because they help to reduce freight prices and transit times, transportation and infrastructure are referred to as major trade levers. This research is primarily concerned with the concept of logistics shipping prices and travel times. China supplies Europe and the Middle East with a reliable, low-cost supply line. The study analyses data in a qualitative and descriptive manner. The study investigates how the CPEC will impact trade in terms of shipping costs and trip time. Transportation and infrastructure are considered critical trade issues since they help to reduce shipping costs and transit times. In order to generate revenues and assure timely product delivery, modern organizations strive to reduce shipping costs and transit times. The goal of this research is to examine the CPEC's significance and its impact on import and export costs as well as transit durations. This study also compares the current path to the suggested itinerary. The study takes a qualitative and descriptive approach to its investigation. The study's starting point was the dry port of Kashgar in western China, with three ports in each European and Middle Eastern countries serving as destinations. The three European ports of Hamburg, Le Havre, and Rotterdam, like the selected Middle Eastern ports of Jeddah, Kuwait, and Oman, which meet China's energy demands, share a considerable trading volume with China. When a 40-foot container is delivered using the current route, the variables time of travel and shipping cost are estimated in the first phase. In the third step, both current and potential CPEC routes are analysed. Because predicting the exact future road transportation cost of CPEC is difficult, the average value of current road transportation costs is used in this analysis. The findings show that shipping costs will be greatly lowered if the proposed CPEC route is implemented. Shipping costs between Kashgar and destination ports can be reduced by 36% for European ports, 50% for Jeddah and Kuwait, and 68 percent for Oman. Furthermore, the transit time from European ports to Jeddah will be reduced by 10-11 days, 15-18 days for Kuwait, and 10 days for Oman.

Exploring the Sustainable Effects of Urban-Port Road System Reconstruction

The aim of the research is to identify and quantify the direct sustainable effects resulting from the improved road infrastructure in the local urban-port transport system. This case study considers the city port of Szczecin (Poland). The effects are identified for the local road transport system by comparing freight road transport performance in two options: with the investment and without the investment. The sustainable effects are quantified in terms of money and physical units. Sustainable economic, social, and environmental effects concern generalized freight road transport cost, i.e., truck operating costs and costs of truck drivers’ working time, as well as freight transit time, energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and environmental savings. To capture effects, the forecast of truck traffic demand, as well as unit vehicle operating costs, values of time, and air pollution and climate change, values are elaborated and revealed in freight road transport. The investigations show that the primary effect of investment is the reduced traffic congestion, which enhance the velocity of trucks in the transport system. The increased trucks′ speed affect freight road traffic performance, time of delivery, and environmental externalities.

A dynamic analysis of rail travel demand in Pakistan

Effectiveness of rail transport policy decisions crucially depends on rail transport demand, among other factors. Therefore, this paper estimates the rail (passenger) travel demand in Pakistan using time series data over 1980–2017. The Johansen’s co-integration and error-correction model is employed to obtain the main influencing factors of two models (rail passengers & rail passenger-kilometers) of rail travel demand. In particular, long-run fare elasticities of passenger and passenger-kilometer demand are −0.474 and −0.278, respectively and offer important implications for passenger earnings by Pakistan railway. Moreover, cross-price elasticity of rail travel demand with respect to the costs of road passenger travel is positive, which also provides a possible mechanism of modal split in favor of rail through higher road transport costs. The effect of various market shocks (terrorist attacks, shortage of fuel and rolling-stock, etc.) have reduced the rail travel demand in terms of passengers by 16% and rail passenger-kilometers by 12% during 2010 to 2014.

PROTOCOL: Evidence and gap map: studies of the effectiveness of transport sector interventions in low- and middle-income countries.

PROTOCOL: Evidence and gap map: studies of the effectiveness of transport sector interventions in low- and middle-income countries.

Economics of pineapple production in Awgu Local Government Area of Enugu State, Nigeria

The study analyzed the economics of pineapple production in Awgu Local Government Area (LGA) of Enugu State, Nigeria. Data for the study were collected from 50 respondents from Amoli and Ihe communities of the LGA through a simple random sampling technique. The communities were purposively selected because they contain higher concentration of pineapple farmers. Primary data were collected using interview schedule administered to the respondents. Data were realized with descriptive statistics, enterprise budgeting techniques and multiple regression analysis. The study revealed that (36%) of the farmers had farming experience of 1 to 10 years’ experience in pineapple production, indicating that new farmers entered the crop’s production sector within the last decade. The enterprise proved profitable with farmers’ net return on investment value of 1.7. Farm size, cost of input, level of education and household size significantly determined net farm income. It was further revealed that poor access road and high transportation cost were the main constraints of the pineapple producers. The study concluded that profitable production opportunities exist on the crop. The study recommends that extension agencies should encourage more new farmers to exploit pineapple production potentials while encouraging its existing farmers to scale up production through farm size increment, reinvestment of their gains and production knowledge increase.

Collaborative logistics and eco-efficiency indicators: an analysis of soy and fertilizer transportation in the ports of Santos and Paranaguá

The present study aims to investigate the use of collaborative logistics between soybean export and fertilizer import operations in the main logistical corridors in the state of Mato Grosso to the ports of Santos and Paranaguá, aiming to identify, analyze and propose an indicator of eco-efficiency that seeks to reduce the financial and environmental impacts of this practice. For that, two scenarios were analyzed, namely: base and ideal. In the ideal scenario, the entire imported fertilizer load participates in collaborative logistics. The base scenario was defined by applying a questionnaire to 96 drivers working in the ports of Santos and Paranaguá, thus identifying the incidence of trucks that return loaded from the port areas with fertilizers. Comparing the base scenario with the ideal scenario, the potential impact regarding the costs of road transport of fertilizers is around R$ 14,696,509.89 in the port of Santos and R$ 11,806,055.10 in Paranaguá, totaling R$ 26,502,564.99. In the ideal scenario, there was a reduction in CO2 emission during 2018 in the order of 29.48 kg CO2 per ton transported in the port of Santos, with the reduction obtained in Paranaguá was 14.38 kg CO2 per ton.

Multimodal choice possibilities for different cargo types: Application to Belgium

Freight is transported by the use of different cargo types to increase efficiency. However, multimodal freight transport research does not include different commonly used cargo types in its analyses. The literature has illustrated that the cargo types used affects transport, storage and transshipment costs, and consequently cost-based decision making in the supply chain. Moreover, from a practical point of view, it can be seen that local market players have begun to successfully shift new cargo types to rail and inland waterways. This research presents the incorporation of five different commonly used cargo types into an agent-based freight transport model for Belgium. The MATSim freight extension is extended by considering the cargo type used and by adding mode choice to the optimization process. The results demonstrate that the potential for a modal shift varies greatly between the considered cargo types. Solid bulk, liquid bulk and containers show the highest shares for rail and inland waterway transport (35,8%, 48,9% and 29,6% respectively). Moreover, the sensitivity of the modal split towards changes in the transport costs of road transport (+10%) differs according to the cargo type used. Containers are not very sensitive (+1,2%), while pallets (+2,4%), solid bulk (+3,9%) and liquid bulk (+5,9%) show higher increases. Consequently, some cargo types are more favorable for a modal shift than other cargo types. Tthe idea of considering the cargo type as a variable that affects the modal choice is new.

Mathematical model for optimizing the repair plan for the international roughness index IRI

The authors analyzed the existing regulatory documents and studies on the road surface evenness impact on the traffic flow speed, the transportation and traffic safety costs. Currently available methods of forming a plan of repair work are focused on the use of the roads diagnostics results according to the evenness level of the carriageway obtained with the help of thrusters. The transition to the international evenness index (IRI) requires a review of the previously obtained mathematical dependencies and existing approaches to optimizing the road network repair program. In this work, the authors established a correlation of the traffic flow average speed, losses from the road traffic accidents (traffic accidents) and the road transport costs from flatness of coverage. Based on the identified statistical patterns of changes in the IRI index, a method for calculating the road section length that requires the restoration of transport and operational indicators (TOI) is proposed. The developed mathematical model for optimizing the repair plan will make it possible to create a list of road objects taking into account their priority within the budget funding of the annual program. The proposed model is based on diagnostics and assessment of the territorial road network technical condition in the Volgograd region.

How «Belt» and «Road» are Related Economically: Modelling and Policy Implications

We propose an analytical model to capture the relationship between the «Belt» and the «Road» in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). We show that the short-term minimum subsidies received by the terminal operator companies (TOCs) of the new railways depend on the market conditions in the existing port sector. Specifically, the subsidies are affected by the external shipping demand, the shipping freight rate, and the number of TOCs at the existing port. The level of subsidy and the shippers’ sensitivity to time and price play a significant role when determining the social benefit from the BRI. Furthermore, the region can further benefit from the construction or improvement of the railways when the rail TOC could compete with the existing port TOCs. The welfare gain arises from the improvement in service quality (decrease in delay costs), reduction in road transport costs, and decrease in shipping price resulting from competition. The policy and economic implications of separate and joint management of the port and rail are discussed.

Estimating road transport costs between and within European Union regions

Transport costs are a crucial element of applied spatial models such as spatial macro-economic models or interaction models for e.g. trade, migration or commuting. However, good estimates of these costs are not available at lower levels of spatial aggregation. In applied work, the distance between two regions is often approximated by the distance between the largest city in each region. For costs within regions, researchers often resort to crude ad-hoc approximations relating internal distance to the area of the region assuming a uniform internal distribution. This paper improves on this by considering averages of transport costs calculated between extremely large random samples of centroids which are drawn from a population grid. This allows calculating distances, travel times and transport costs both between and within regions, while taking into account the unequal distribution of population within the regions. The use of a detailed road network and many auxiliary datasets allows performing policy analysis. We assess the impact on transport cost of an increase in fuel prices, and find that it has a relatively high effect on transport costs in Eastern Europe. We evaluate transport infrastructure investment of the European Cohesion Policy program 2014–2020. The largest decreases in transport costs are found in targeted regions in Eastern Europe while the effect is much smaller in targeted regions in Southern Europe, suggesting decreasing returns to further transport infrastructure in these regions. We find significant inter-regional spillovers to regions directly bordering the regions targeted by the policy in Eastern Europe, such as in Germany and Austria, but also Finland and Northern Italy. The positive spillovers to EU regions in Western Europe are quite small.

Os Portos do Arco Norte e a cadeia de exportação de carne bovina congelada: gargalos e ganhos econômicos

Consumer demand for consistently high quality meats has exposed a series of problems in the Brazilian frozen beef agro-industrial logistics chain arising from a lack of adequate infrastructure to cope with export flows. Based on interviews with the sector’s agents and on a comparative analysis of transportation costs, this paper aims to identify and evaluate infrastructure bottlenecks that affect the Brazilian frozen beef logistics chain and the economic gains that could be achieved by directing more frozen beef exports through the country’s Northern Arc ports. Among the results obtained from analyzes of frozen beef export flows from the state of Mato Grosso, the Brazilian state with the greatest number of plants that process beef for export, the use of Northern Arc ports can bring road transportation cost savings of up to 43% for some localities. It was also found that the lack of maritime shipping capacity, whether from restricted port capacity or infrequent ship departures, is one of the main logistical problems impeding the flow of frozen beef from ports inBrazil’s north.

Analysis of modal shift potential towards intermodal transportation in short-distance inland container transport

This study investigated modal shift potential in short-distance inland container transport by considering behavioral aspects of inland container transportation mode choice using the stated choice experiment technique. This was applied to one short-distance inland container transportation corridor in Turkey between Denizli region and the seaports of Izmir. The stated choice experiment in this study included two alternatives, intermodal-rail and road transport, as they are the two inland transportation modes available in this transport corridor. These transportation modes were described by five attributes: transportation cost, transit time, delay percentage, frequency and free time. Estimation results show that all five attributes are statistically significant, however, transit time is only statistically significant in the estimations of mixed logit models with random transit time coefficient indicating the preference heterogeneity of the respondents towards the transit time. The elasticities indicate that the transportation cost attribute has the biggest impact on mode choice and the modal shift is more sensitive to the road transport costs than the transportation cost of intermodal rail. The simulations showed that the most effective policy for modal shift towards intermodal rail in the investigated corridor is doubling the train frequency and reducing transit time 50% depending on the increased frequency. The outcomes and methodological approach of the study can provide a framework for developing effective modal shift policies to reduce the high road dependency of inland container transportation in Turkey and other countries. The case-specific approach can also help to identify modal shift policies and practices tailored to the characteristics of applied transportation corridors.

Review on Effects of Logistics Practices and Information Sharing on Supply Chain Performance

Today companies no longer compete merely as an independent business but rather as supply chains. Individual businesses no longer operate in isolation and neither should their strategic orientation be wholly individualistic. This attracted supply chain management concept to be used. Supply chain management primarily designed by firms to get competitive advantage over the rival firms and to overcome the intense global competition coming from globalization, innovation, free trade and economic cooperation formed in different region. The concept led to cooperation and integration among firms and with their suppliers, distributors, consumers, and transport agency. It is totally systematic coordination and management from upstream to downstream paths of an organization. The importance and research interest in supply chain management are growing from time to time; however, the number of professional materials and well-organized review literature is limited relative to the growing trend of the area. Therefore, this paper reviewed different supply chain management articles, reports, and books by concentrating on logistics practices and information sharing on supply chain performance to develop a well-organized research article that advances supply chain management understanding. Under the logistics practices, the major variables discussed were the effect of the road network, transportation cost, facility location, waiting time, inventory management and mode of transportation, whereas the effect information sharing discussed from the viewpoints of the level of information sharing and quality of information on supply chain performance.