Planners concerned with deep-water port operations are interested in strategies that improve regional truck flows associated with the container trade while also mitigating related problems of highway congestion and air pollution. An inland port or integrated distribution hub is typically located some distance from traditional seaport gateways and is designed to facilitate international trade processing by providing multi-modal transportation assets and value-added services at a single site. Strategically located inland ports could contribute to increasing container flow and solving port-related congestion and pollution problems. This research identified and analyzed site location methods for inland ports in five counties, including Los Angeles County, and indicated their potential for integration into a more efficient regional intermodal goods movement system served by the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. GIS was used to map the sites where international cargo is processed in the five counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura. One-hundred transportation zones were determined (from a truck-destination survey), representing density points for distribution/processing centers. First, a single facility location model was used to define the location of a theoretical inland port to minimize the total truck-miles traveled. Interestingly, this location seems to coincide with the current location of BNSFs trans-modal facilities in the city of Commerce. Then, we extended this model to a series of location-allocation models with up to six inland port locations included. With no inland port (current system), the total daily VMT was estimated to be 220,100 miles, and the average truck trip length was 11.6 miles. As more inland ports are added to the location-allocation model, the total truck miles traveled is reduced significantly. The new system follows the notion of satellite inland port, which is based on a hub-and-spoke configuration. In this system, we assume that containers will be delivered to the inland ports via rail and then distributed via trucks. Also, with significant reductions in VMT, congestion relief and air pollution reductions are expected proportionally. The results show that the proposed mathematical approach is a useful platform for initial investigations into inland port site selection.


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    Title :

    Integrating Inland Ports into the Intermodal Good Movement System for Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach


    Contributors:
    M. Rahimi (author) / A. Asef-Varizi (author) / R. Harrison (author)

    Publication date :

    2011


    Size :

    68 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




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