IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/transa/v42y2008i1p1-14.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evaluating the public investment mix in US freight transportation infrastructure

Author

Listed:
  • Gorman, Michael F.

Abstract

This research empirically evaluates the public sector investment in the US freight transportation infrastructure. In particular, the infrastructures to support the two most comparable modes of freight transportation - highway and intermodal rail - are examined as alternatives for public fund allocation. Indicators for public sector transportation infrastructure investment mix are established based on financial analysis of both private and social costs and benefits, as well as the propensity of freight shippers to utilize such infrastructures. The research results in recommendations for the aggregate allocation of public funds in the US based on these indicators. We find that approximately a quarter of truck freight could be handled at a 25% lower cost if rail infrastructure to support it existed. Because an additional 80% reduction in social costs could be achieved through this modal conversion, the public sector is a critical participant in creating a more efficient transportation infrastructure.

Suggested Citation

  • Gorman, Michael F., 2008. "Evaluating the public investment mix in US freight transportation infrastructure," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 1-14, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:42:y:2008:i:1:p:1-14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965-8564(07)00046-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Preston & Gerard Whelan & Chris Nash & Mark Wardman, 2000. "The Franchising of Passenger Rail Services in Britain," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(1), pages 99-112.
    2. Gorman, Michael F. & Conway, Daniel G., 2005. "Logistics Costs Based Estimation of Freight Transportation Demand," Journal of the Transportation Research Forum, Transportation Research Forum, vol. 44(1).
    3. Forkenbrock, David J., 1999. "External costs of intercity truck freight transportation," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 33(7-8), pages 505-526.
    4. Kremers, Hans & Nijkamp, Peter & Rietveld, Piet, 2002. "A meta-analysis of price elasticities of transport demand in a general equilibrium framework," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 463-485, May.
    5. Teodor Gabriel Crainic & Michael Florian & José-Eugenio Léal, 1990. "A Model for the Strategic Planning of National Freight Transportation by Rail," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(1), pages 1-24, February.
    6. Clifford Winston, 1991. "Efficient Transportation Infrastructure Policy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 113-127, Winter.
    7. Forkenbrock, David J., 2001. "Comparison of external costs of rail and truck freight transportation," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 321-337, May.
    8. Klaus Conrad, 1997. "Traffic, transportation, infrastructure and externalities A theoretical framework for a CGE analysis," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 31(4), pages 369-389.
    9. Olivier Debande, 2002. "Private Financing of Transport Infrastructure: An Assessment of the UK Experience," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, University of Bath, vol. 36(3), pages 355-387, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael F. Gorman & Dharma Acharya & David Sellers, 2010. "CSX Railway Uses OR to Cash In on Optimized Equipment Distribution," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 40(1), pages 5-16, February.
    2. Berechman, Joseph, 2009. "Estimation of the full marginal costs of port related truck traffic," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 390-396, November.
    3. Juan Du & Wenxin Wang & Xinghua Gao & Min Hu & Haili Jiang, 2023. "Sustainable Operations: A Systematic Operational Performance Evaluation Framework for Public–Private Partnership Transportation Infrastructure Projects," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-26, May.
    4. Heatley, David, 2009. "The History and Future of Rail in New Zealand," Working Paper Series 4031, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    5. Rowangould, Gregory, 2013. "Public financing of private freight rail infrastructure to reduce highway congestion: A case study of public policy and decision making in the United States," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 25-36.
    6. Kishimoto, Paul N. & Zhang, Da & Zhang, Xiliang & Karplus, Valerie J., 2013. "Modeling regional transportation demand in China and the impacts of a national carbon constraint," Conference papers 332390, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    7. McIntosh, C.R. & Wilmot, N.A. & Skalberg, R.K., 2015. "Paying for harbor maintenance in the US: Options for moving past the Harbor Maintenance Tax," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 210-221.
    8. Delucchi, Mark A. & McCubbin, Donald R., 2010. "External Costs of Transport in the U.S," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt13n8v8gq, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    9. Mark Delucchi & Don McCubbin, 2011. "External Costs of Transport in the United States," Chapters, in: André de Palma & Robin Lindsey & Emile Quinet & Roger Vickerman (ed.), A Handbook of Transport Economics, chapter 15, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. repec:vuw:vuwscr:19133 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Tapiador, Francisco J. & Burckhart, Kerstin & Martí-Henneberg, Jordi, 2009. "Characterizing European high speed train stations using intermodal time and entropy metrics," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 197-208, February.
    12. Heatley, David, 2009. "The History and Future of Rail in New Zealand," Working Paper Series 19133, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pérez-Martínez, P.J. & Vassallo-Magro, J.M., 2013. "Changes in the external costs of freight surface transport In Spain," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 61-76.
    2. Mark Delucchi & Don McCubbin, 2011. "External Costs of Transport in the United States," Chapters, in: André de Palma & Robin Lindsey & Emile Quinet & Roger Vickerman (ed.), A Handbook of Transport Economics, chapter 15, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Delucchi, Mark A. & McCubbin, Donald R., 2010. "External Costs of Transport in the U.S," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt13n8v8gq, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    4. Iannone, Fedele, 2012. "The private and social cost efficiency of port hinterland container distribution through a regional logistics system," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 46(9), pages 1424-1448.
    5. Demir, Emrah & Bektaş, Tolga & Laporte, Gilbert, 2014. "A review of recent research on green road freight transportation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 237(3), pages 775-793.
    6. Sahin, Bahri & Yilmaz, Huseyin & Ust, Yasin & Guneri, Ali Fuat & Gulsun, BahadIr, 2009. "An approach for analysing transportation costs and a case study," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 193(1), pages 1-11, February.
    7. Franceschetti, Anna & Demir, Emrah & Honhon, Dorothée & Van Woensel, Tom & Laporte, Gilbert & Stobbe, Mark, 2017. "A metaheuristic for the time-dependent pollution-routing problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 259(3), pages 972-991.
    8. Jong Hae Choi & Yong Hwa Park, 2020. "Investigating Paradigm Shift from Price to Value in the Air Cargo Market," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(23), pages 1-15, December.
    9. Commander,Simon John & Nikoloski,Zlatko Slobodan & Vagliasindi,Maria, 2015. "Estimating the size of external effects of energy subsidies in transport and agriculture," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7227, The World Bank.
    10. Commander, Simon & Nikoloski, Zlatko & Vagliasindi, Maria, 2015. "Estimating the Size of External Effects of Energy Subsidies," IZA Discussion Papers 8865, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Demir, Emrah & Huang, Yuan & Scholts, Sebastiaan & Van Woensel, Tom, 2015. "A selected review on the negative externalities of the freight transportation: Modeling and pricing," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 95-114.
    12. Sathaye, Nakul & Horvath, Arpad & Madanat, Samer, 2010. "Unintended impacts of increased truck loads on pavement supply-chain emissions," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 1-15, January.
    13. Pérez-Martínez, P.J. & Miranda, R.M. & Andrade, M.F., 2020. "Freight road transport analysis in the metro São Paulo: Logistical activities and CO2 emissions," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 16-33.
    14. Bektaş, Tolga & Ehmke, Jan Fabian & Psaraftis, Harilaos N. & Puchinger, Jakob, 2019. "The role of operational research in green freight transportation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 274(3), pages 807-823.
    15. Demir, Emrah & Bektaş, Tolga & Laporte, Gilbert, 2014. "The bi-objective Pollution-Routing Problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 232(3), pages 464-478.
    16. Sathaye, Nakul & Li, Yuwei & Horvath, Arpad & Madanat, Samer, 2006. "The Environmental Impacts of Logistics Systems and Options for Mitigation," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt7m21d806, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    17. Kenneth Button & Junyang Yuan, 2013. "Airfreight Transport and Economic Development: An Examination of Causality," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(2), pages 329-340, February.
    18. Özceylan, Eren & Paksoy, Turan & Bektaş, Tolga, 2014. "Modeling and optimizing the integrated problem of closed-loop supply chain network design and disassembly line balancing," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 142-164.
    19. Petersen, E. R. & Taylor, A. J., 2001. "An investment planning model for a new North-Central railway in Brazil," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 35(9), pages 847-862, November.
    20. Torstein Bye & Alexandra Katz, 1995. "Returns to Publicly Owned Transport Infrastructure Investment . A Cost Function/Cost Share Approach for Norway, 1971-1991," Discussion Papers 154, Statistics Norway, Research Department.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:42:y:2008:i:1:p:1-14. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/547/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.