Each day, CSX Railway allocates hundreds of empty railcars among hundreds of customer car orders. In 1997, it implemented the US rail industry’s first real-time, fully integrated equipment-distribution optimization system, the dynamic car-planning system (DCP). DCP seamlessly integrates operations research modeling into CSX’s process that assigns empty cars to customer car orders. CSX estimates...

Understanding policy impacts on freight is essential for planners who have overlooked this transport group in the past and must evaluate new congestion alleviation policies with respect to regional economic and social goals. Since urban areas are limited in infrastructure expansion and travel demand continues to rise, congestion pricing is a potentially compelling policy alternative. This thesi...

A study was conducted to reduce defects in especially critical cast large-sized parts of freight car bogies. The side frame used as the part under study. main factors influencing formation hot cracks large steel castings are presented. To avoid rejection castings, use heat-insulating mixtures has been investigated. temperature distribution melt along height ladle is modeled. An analysis influen...

The trouble of freight car detection system (TFDS) is a popular application in Chinese railway today. In this paper, the discrete-point sampling model is further developed to locate potential fault regions in the photos taken by the TFDS. The discrete-point sampling model not only contains the image’s region boundary information and region information, but also reflects the transition from regi...

These twenty lectures cover advanced topics in mechanism design. They assume familiarity with some of the material covered in the instructor’s CS364A course — specifically, lectures 2–4 and 7–9. Recall that mechanism design is the “science of rule-making.” The goal is to understand how to design systems with strategic participants — autonomous decision-makers whose objectives are generally diff...

rail operations from infrastructure ownership and management, the government-owned national railways still maintain a symbiotic relationship with infrastructure providers. New entrants to rail business face considerable hurdles in terms of access to infrastructure and operations at border crossings. Moreover, passenger traffic has precedence over freight traffic. Thus, train timetables are crea...

Recent empirical studies in maritime economics define market contractions and expansions (market dynamic movements) as shipping agent controlled, distinguishing between cargo-owner and ship-owner markets. It is argued that freight dynamics are triggered by the activities of shipping agents, in the sense that both a higher earning market-state with high volatility and a lower earning market-stat...

This paper presents the issues surrounding the integration and visualization of freight data using internet-based mapping applications. In relation to Internet-based mapping technology in freight data collection and planning we: (a) address implementation issues associated with data integration, (b) present a system architecture to leverage existing publicly available interfaces and web applica...