Logistics Chain Modeling for Urban Freight Pairing Truck Trip Ends with Logistics Facilities

In existing freight models, the choice of locations for logistics facilities and the choice of logistics facilities for routing the shipments are often treated without distinction, although these two decisions are separate and affected by different factors. In this paper, models for choosing a logistics facility are developed that match truck trip ends with logistics facilities by using a large urban freight survey data from the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. The models can be used to estimate truck traffic flows associated with transshipments. The urban portion of the logistics chains was categorized into five types of movements, and 30 models were developed to analyze six commodity groups separately. The results indicated that the proposed approach could capture the mechanism of the selection of a logistics facility by movement and commodity type. The tests for the reproducibility of the models warrant the future use of the models for analysis of urban freight demand.