The need for fast and reliable transportation of time-sensitive freight has been steadily
increasing the demand for air-road multimodal transportation. The freight forwarding,
as a result, has become a highly competitive industry demanding excellence in operations
management. The key factors determining responsiveness and competitiveness of a freight
forwarder are facility location decisions (e.g., location and capacity of depots)
and airport/flight selection decisions. In earlier work, we have quantified the cost
of choosing an alternative access airport from a forwarder perspective and for a single
day's shipments. Our earlier results indicate that the reliability (e.g. road congestion,
flight delays), number of flights to different destinations and flight schedule intervals
play more important role than airport proximity or fares in the forwarder's airport
selection decision. The airport and flight selection is primarily driven by the demand
characteristics (O-D, value density, etc), carrier availability, and flight schedules.
The Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan (OH-MI) are the two most active regions
in the Midwest US in terms multi-modal transportation. This is mostly attributable
to the large industrial base, proximity to Canada and short-sea transportation. The
availability of alternative access airports as well as highly connected road network
makes the region an ideal location to establish an interstate hub for air cargo freight
forwarding service. Attracting more forwarders to the region will benefit both states
through the direct investment, employment creation, and improved transportation services.
Given the geographic distribution of population and businesses, the allocation of
air cargo shipments to regional airports is unknown. The objective of this study is
to investigate the major factors affecting the preference of freight forwarders in
using regional airports in OH-MI. We will identify and quantify significant parameters
in the forwarders' choice of airport in multimodal air-road transportation. Further
we will develop models for forwarders' preferences to estimate the relative air cargo
demand for different airports. The ultimate goal is to determine the equilibrium setting
of factors affecting the choice of alternative access airports.
The key deliverable of this project is an analytical evaluation process which incorporates
significant factors to predict freight forwarders' decisions for depot location and
airport selection. We will then use this process to quantify the relative selection
of region's alternative airports by geographical catchment areas and by air cargo
characteristics. The two users of the developed process are freight forwarders, carriers,
and airports. The forwarders will use the process developed as a decision support
system to select airports for time-sensitive air cargo shipments and to evaluate the
capacity contract options. Carriers can also use this process to estimate the relative
demand potential in making such decisions as establishing or extending their flight
operations in an airport. In addition, airports and local authorities can also better
analyze the estimated effect of new policies and investment decisions related to local
airports and road network on the regional air-road multimodal transportation.
