Evaluating the Multimodal Freight Network in the Pacific Northwest

The objective of this research is to develop network models to evaluate the performance of multimodal freight transportation networks. A mathematical programming formulation has been developed that considers the multimodal transportation network as a multi-layer, multi-commodity network in which decisions are made about flows (i.e., selection of transportation modes and routing for shipments in the network) that minimize total operational costs. The model also incorporates the capability of evaluating resilience metrics associated with topological characteristics of the multimodal freight transportation network such as network complexity, as well as service-related metrics like unmet demand. A test case scenario for the Pacific Northwest is used to illustrate the application of the approach.