The freight system is a major pillar of a country’s economy, but it is also one of the major contributors of emissions and energy consumption. A sustainable freight system is therefore essential to tackle global climate change. Due to a lack of available data, there is an urgent need to develop efficient modeling techniques to evaluate freight choices (truck or rail).

In order to deal with this issue, the authors have combined various models with the goal of estimating freight flows, vehicle freight trips by truck and rail using secondary data. The resulting representation is based on a complex nonconvex model.

With its multi-start algorithm and interior point method, Artelys Knitro provides transportation planners and policymakers with an efficient and fast way to analyze the outcomes of potential freight policies. This has a huge potential in assessing the impacts of freight policies and in helping transportation planners to achieve sustainable freight goals.