A multimodal location and routing model for hazardous materials transportation based on multi-commodity flow model

The recent US Commodity Flow Survey data suggest that transporting hazardous materials (HAZMAT) often involves multiple modes, especially for long-distance transportation. However, not much research has been conducted on HAZMAT location and routing on a multimodal transportation network. Most existing HAZMAT location and routing studies focus exclusively on single mode (either highways or railways). Motivated by the less research on multimodal HAZMAT location and routing and the fact that there is an increasing demand for it, this research proposes a multimodal HAZMAT model that simultaneously optimizes the locations of transfer yards and transportation routes. A 0-1decision variable is defined which could make the optimization results reflect HAZMAT flow routing which subjected to railway transport organization principles. The developed model is applied to the simplified local multimodal network in the Northeast China for example. Results show that ideal location and routing plan can be obtained. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.