Evaluation of operational and environmental sustainability tradeoffs in multimodal freight transportation planning

Transportation planners often need to justify transportation related investments to public officials. Besides efficiency measures, the environment protection and sustainability are gaining more and more importance. In order to improve freight flow efficiency in a sustainable way, it is necessary to have a systematic tool to study the freight flow over all three major surface modes and their connections and, in turn, to help public officials identify the best way to improve freight transportation. We built a system-level intermodal simulation model that includes highways, railways, and waterways because all three modes, working together, play significant roles in freight flows. We evaluated the performance of the Louisiana freight network under different scenarios and measured the benefits of mode changes evaluating the tradeoff between environmental goals and other performance measures.