Future Substitutes for Diesel Fuel in U.S. Truck and Railroad Freight Transportation

External costs of intercity truck freight transportation

From a societal perspective, it is desirable for all transportation users to pay their full social (private and external) costs. We estimate four general types of external costs for intercity freight trucking and compare them with the private costs incurred by carriers. Estimated external costs include: accidents (fatalities, injuries, and property damage); emissions (air pollution and greenhou...

External Costs of Truck and Rail Freight Transportation

A Fuel-Based Inventory for Heavy-Duty Diesel Truck Emissions

A fuel-based method for estimating heavy-duty diesel truck emissions is described. In this method, emission factors are normalized to fuel consumption; vehicle activity is measured by the amount of diesel fuel consumed. For the San Francisco Bay Area during summer 1996, on-road heavy-duty diesel trucks were estimated at the upper bound to emit 110 × 103 kg/day of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and 3.7 ×...

Marine vessels as substitutes for heavy-duty trucks in Great Lakes freight transportation.

This paper applies a geospatial network optimization model to explore environmental, economic, and time-of-delivery tradeoffs associated with the application of marine vessels as substitutes for heavy-duty trucks operating in the Great Lakes region. The geospatial model integrates U.S. and Canadian highway, rail, and waterway networks to create an intermodal network and characterizes this netwo...

Railroad Transportation