Design, management and evaluation of inter-cities transportation logistics

城市地区内的货运面临的挑战与城市间运输面临的挑战不同。环境保护、道路拥堵、安全和及时交付是城市内部交通的基本问题。对于城际交通，经济和资源可用性问题在规划过程中占主导地位。另一个重要的区别是，零担（小于卡车装载量）在城市内部运输中占据主导地位，而单一目的地运营在城际运营中更为常见。为了应对城市内部的交通问题，出现了一个新的交通规划领域，称为城市物流。在日本等人口密度高的国家，市内交通可能占交通活动的67%，而在加拿大等国家，城际交通在成本和里程方面更为重要。本研究的目的是：（1）强调与城市物流相比城市间货运物流面临的重要问题，（2）回顾城市间货运规划的文献，（3）开发适用于设计，规划和运营城市间运输物流的概念，知识和技术。这一研究领域将被称为城际物流。本研究项目分析的主要举措是：（1）共享和公共物流终端网络，（2）合作货运政策，（3）货运联盟内的共同信息系统和信息共享。其目的是制定方法来设计公共或共享物流终端网络，以确定如何分担这些终端的成本和收入，以及如何安排终端和终端间的业务。

Challenges facing freight transportation within urban areas are different from those facing inter-city transportation. Environment conservation, roads congestion, security and just in time deliveries are essential issues for intra-city transportation. For inter-city transportation, economical and resource availability issues are dominating in the planning process. Another important difference is that LTL (less than truck loads) dominate in intra-city transportation while single-destination operations are more common in inter-city operations. In response to intra-city transportation issues, a new area of transportation planning, called city logistics, emerged. In countries of high population density, like Japan, intra-city transportation may represent up to 67% of transportation activities while in countries like Canada, inter-city transportation is more important in terms of cost and mileage. The goals of this research project are: (1) to underline important issues facing inter-city freight transportation logistics in comparison to city logistics, (2) to review the literature on inter-city freight transportation planning, and (3) to develop concepts, knowledge and techniques appropriate for designing, planning and operating inter-city transportation logistics. This research area will be called inter-city logistics. The main initiatives to analyse in this research project are: (1) shared and public logistics terminal networks, (2) collaborative freight transportation policies, and (3) common information systems and information sharing within a freight transportation alliance. The aim is to develop methods to design networks of public or shared logistic terminals, to determine how to share costs and revenues of such terminals and how to schedule terminal and inter-terminal operations.