We assess the structure of grain shipping within the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway system. While U.S. grain exports ship from the port of Duluth, Minnesota, Canadian grain exports ship from several ports located on the Lower St. Lawrence Seaway. While North American grain exports moving from west to east can be transported in several different ways, due to data limitations our focus in this analysis is on the so-called saltie shipping market. While our findings are somewhat unexpected, they give us some unique insight into the nature of this crucial yet understudied transportation market.
This paper analyzes the influence of illicit drug use on highway fatal outcomes by estimating regression models using data for the 48 contiguous U.S. states for the years 2009 and 2010. The models include a representative, but not exhaustive, collection of roadway fatality determinants. The impact of illicit drug usage on the motor vehicle death rate differs across age groups. There are statistically significant life-taking effects from marijuana use by the very youngest drivers. Comparable effects from the usage of cocaine and nonmedical pain relievers occur among older drivers. Negatively associated with the highway death rate and statistically significant are real per capita income and seat belt use. Statistically significant positive relationships with the rate are found for the ratio of rural to urban driving, temperature, speed limit, the percentage of older drivers, and cell phone usage. The paper provides information to policy makers at a time when state-level drug laws are changing rapidly. Evidence reported here on how drug use affects highway fatal outcomes is relevant to that discussion.
U.S. airlines have a vested interested in the intentions and purchase behavior of their domestic airline passengers, especially their willingness to pay for assorted ancillary services. For this research, antecedents to purchase intention and actual purchase behavior of airline ancillary services were evaluated using logistic regression and generalized linear model (GLM) and data collected from Amazon Mechanical Turk. The results show differences in airline passenger preferences when purchasing ancillary services. The number of times a passenger flies per year and the trip purpose are significant, while age and gender are not.
Starting in the 2013-14 crop year, a lack of export capacity resulted in substantial increases in the spread between farm and port FOB prices in western Canada. This created a very difficult situation for the farming community. We calculate that this situation reduced grain farmers’ income over the 2013-14 and 2014-15 crop years by approximately C$6.7 billion. Clearly, the grain handling and transportation system has problems and capacity to move grain is one of them. To evaluate the need for grain export capacity expansion, we forecast future grain production using a rational expectations model to estimate future export spreads and subsequent rents. We find that without capacity improvements, the expected cost of limited grain export capacity could exceed C$5.6 billion over the next decade. Capacity improvements on the order of a 25% increase will likely mitigate this issue in the future.
The main goal of this research was to evaluate how travel time reliability (TTR) might be associated with crashes involving elderly drivers, defined as those age 65 and above. Several TTR metrics were used to estimate their influence on elderly crash frequency and severity of the crash on freeways and arterial highways. The results suggest that TTR is statistically significant in affecting both elderly crash frequency and the severity of a crash involving an elderly driver. In particular, the analysis of risk ratios illustrates that a one-unit increase in the probability of congestion reduces the likelihood of the elderly severe crash by 22%.
With increasing emphasis on sustainable infrastructure as a setting for sustainable development, two broad types of questions arise: when is a particular infrastructure project sustainable and how is its impact assessed? This paper presents a methodology, tested on two exurban town centers, for assessing the impact of sustainable infrastructure, using various assessment indicators found in existing literature and that fall within the triple bottom line approach (economic, environmental, social). Findings suggest that the method does yield useful information for gauging the impacts of sustainable infrastructure investment, and that the impacts are mostly consistent with the expected and desired outcomes of denser exurban development, increasingly diverse land-use mix, and compact circulation.
Classification and Regression Tree (CART) and chi-square automatic interaction detection (CHAID) decision tree models are estimated and compared to examine the effect of driver characteristics and behaviors, temporal factors, weather conditions, and road characteristics on motor vehicle crash severity levels using Missouri crash data from 2002 to 2012. The CHAID model is found to significantly better discriminate among severity outcomes, and results suggest that the presence of alcohol, speeding, and failing to yield lead to many fatalities each year and likely have interactive effects. Decision rules are used to identify changes in driving policies expected to reduce severity outcomes.
The Highway Safety Manual (HSM) provides models and methodologies for safety evaluation and prediction of safety performance of various types of roadways. However, predictive methods in the HSM are of limited use if they are not calibrated for local conditions. In this study, calibration procedures given in the HSM were followed for rural segments and intersections in Kansas. Results indicated that HSM overpredicts fatal and injury crashes and underpredicts total crashes on rural multilane roadway segments in Kansas. Therefore, existing safety performance functions (SPFs) must be adjusted for Kansas conditions, in order to increase accuracy of crash prediction. This study examined a way to adjust HSM calibration procedures by development of new regression coefficients for existing HSM-given SPF. Final calibration factors obtained through modified SPFs indicated significant improvement in crash prediction for rural multilane segments in Kansas. Additionally, obtained calibration factors indicated that the HSM is capable of predicting crashes at intersections at satisfactory level.
This paper examines 170 of the non-engineering undergraduate degrees in the fields of supply chain management, logistics, and transportation, including joint majors, present within universities in the United States. The curriculum for each degree was evaluated to determine the extent to which the students were taught transportation and related courses. Each university’s website was also examined to catalog additional best practices in education, such as required internships, used to support teaching transportation outside of formal classroom instruction.
Private vehicle ownership has rapidly grown with China’s economic development and increasing incomes. This paper analyzes China’s provincial demands for private vehicles during the post-opening period 2000 – 2012. Based on estimates from pooled, fi xed effects and Hausman-Taylor models, private vehicle ownership during this period grew at an average annual rate of over 20%, all else constant. The study focuses on the roles of economic, spatial, investment and regulatory factors in shaping private vehicle demands. The study fi nds that increases in GDP per capita and vehicle use cost reinforce and constrain, respectively, the strong trend toward increased ownership. And absent changes in population density, higher percentages of the population in urban areas increase the demand for private vehicles. But increasing population density provides stronger incentives for reducing vehicle demands. Municipal restrictions aimed at reducing the congestion and environmental effects of vehicle ownership and use are effective in reducing provincial demands. A separate analysis of provinces that are at least 60% urbanized identifi es important differences. Vehicle demands are income elastic and infrastructure investments have stronger effects in the most urbanized provinces than in less urbanized provinces.
This paper presents a framework to analyze the feasibility of vehicle miles travelled (VMT) fees as an alternative to fi nance maintenance, rehabilitation, and new construction transportation projects. The VMT feasibility framework addresses major factors related to public acceptance, revenues, technology, type of contract, government policies, enforcement, administration, and invoicing. We argue that our suggested VMT fee policy is an equitable usage-based system since in our analysis, VMT fees are differentiated by vehicle axles and emissions. In turn, VMT charges will also motivate fl eet owners to renew vehicles or switch to alternative transportation modes such as mass transit, walking, and biking. An example based on data from the state of Texas illustrates some of the potential revenues and benefi ts associated with a VMT fee policy.
Vast distances in the Canadian grain handling system means that the supply chain is highly reliant on rail transportation. After years of relative stability, the grain supply chain has recently undergone many signifi cant changes, including deregulation in grain handling. However, the consequences emerging from some of these changes were unexpected. In this paper, we explore the evolving behavior of participants in the increasingly liberalized Canadian grain handling supply chain. The changes seem to be creating new winners and losers in the system. To this end, we fi nd that while current railroad regulations in Canada have led to effi ciencies, deregulation of grain handling seems to have generated gains for grain companies at the expense of farmers.
Skills gap is a signifi cant mismatch between the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) required by employers and those held by workers. This study proposes four innovative indices to measure such KSA-gaps and calculates them using data from a survey of transportation workers and employers. The results suggest that the workers’ competencies do not match the employers’ requirements. Areas of particularly extensive KSA-gaps include knowledge of transportation, distribution, and logistics; knowledge of machines, tools, and equipment; equipment operation, maintenance, repair, and troubleshooting skills; critical thinking and problem-solving skills; work prioritization and resource-management skills; and ability to apply knowledge.
In the 1970s, huge grain exports, deteriorating branch rail lines, poor railroad earnings and increased demand for new railroad locomotives and grain cars led railroads to apply for the abandonment of the deteriorating branch lines. The state of Iowa developed a program to subsidize the upgrading of 1,984 miles of branch lines. This paper analyzes the results of these programs and evaluates the potential economics of future branch rail line subsidy programs.
This study developed an evaluation method to examine the effectiveness of mobility management and coordination programs in a community. A series of surveys were conducted of both transit users and stakeholders in communities across the country. Results from these surveys suggest improvements have occurred in efficiencies, ease of access, and quality of service. Most respondents to the stakeholder survey reported benefits that have been realized. Results from an ordered probit model demonstrate the positive impacts that improved mobility has on life satisfaction.
The United States Road Assessment Program (usRAP) is a systematic tool that determines areas of risk based on roadways characteristics. To determine the effectiveness of the usRAP tool, three rural two-lane corridors, a US highway, a Kansas highway, and a rural secondary road, were selected for this study. Data collection for the usRAP software included manual speed data collection, system-wide centerline miles and crashes, crash costs, countermeasure costs, and manual roadway coding data every 100 m. The usRAP software evaluated and developed a star rating and a Safer Roads Investment Plan for each corridor.
This paper presents a stochastic representation of the last mile problem that quantifies expected maintenance, regular labor, overtime labor, fuel, and carbon emission costs resulting from different delivery fleet options. The last mile delivery fleet planning model presented herein can be used in a decision framework to evaluate alternative delivery strategies involving fleet size and delivery frequency with information regarding cost, carbon emissions, service levels for available delivery hours, and payload capacity, as well as the transportation capacity needed to meet customer demand and lends itself well to performing what-if analyses.
