Passenger and Freight Transport: Transport Planning Models Essay

Transport Planning Models: Passenger and Freight Transport

Transportation is a fundamental component of society today, capable of yielding massive economic and social benefits but also equally capable of producing extremely costly negative externalities. Proper policies need to be put in place to minimize the externalities while taking full advantage of the benefits. Proper policies can only be devised through the use of appropriate and well-thought out transportation models.

Freight and passenger transport systems usually move in separate nodes, which implies that their structures are quite different from each other, and so are the designs of their models (Hofstra University, 2014). The differences are, however, more pronounced at the respective terminals, which often concern different locations and different facilities (Hofstra University, 2014). The rationale behind the operational differences between freight and passenger transportation systems is that whereas "each passenger is an independent decision-making unit, each load of freight must be managed from its origin to its destination" (Hofstra University, 2014).

Other significant differences between freight and passenger transportation systems that ought to be taken into account when developing transportation models include; i) freight is 100% passive in nature, and would usually call for specific loading and unloading infrastructure, ii) most freight vehicles are designed specifically for the shipment of a particular goods type, iii) freight transport range from the shipment of single parcels to that of bulk items weighing thousands of tones, iv) unlike passenger transport, where decision-making is largely independent, freight transport travel itinerary is influenced by several actors including the driver, freight-forwarder and carrier, and consignor and consignee, v) in the freight transport market, transport shipment and service frequency costs often remain undefined until a prospective "sender makes an inquiry" (Friedrich, Haupt & Nokel, 2003, p. 2), and vi) whereas a passenger transportation network consists of nodes and links only, freight supply network would often consist of terminal nodes (warehouses, shunting yards, logistic centers, freight hubs), "with specific characteristics concerning capacity and transfer delay time" (Friedrich et al., 2003, p.2).

As has been mentioned elsewhere in this text, transportation models are used to….....