Extensions of Flow-Capturing Models for Refueling Alternative Fuel Vehicles

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The environmental, economic and political costs of our reliance on oil are becoming increasingly clear to many people. One of the main obstacles to widespread use of alternative fuels in cars and trucks is the limited range of these vehicles and the scarcity of refueling facilities in convenient locations. Traditional approaches to the question of where gas stations should sited define the problem in terms of minimizing some measure of the distance users need to travel to get to the fueling site. Beginning with Hodgson (1990), several researchers have been developing a new approach to the siting of fuel stations that attempts to maximize the flow of traffic past a site. This project extend flow-capturing models to apply to the location of refueling facilities for alternative-fuel vehicles, such as hydrogen fuel cells. The range of alternatively-fueled vehicles is typically much smaller than the range conventional vehicles. Thus, the difficult and expensive task of developing an adequate infrastructure is even more challenging than usual. A model for optimally locating refueling stations to capture as much traffic as possible with a fixed number of stations could help overcome the barriers to alternative fuel. Thus, this project has significance both to the location-modeling field and to national energy policy.