A recently completed METRANS research report — from USC Professor Maged Dessouky — has found that the use of dynamic freight routing techniques can reduce congestion in areas where they operate.

The objective of the report — Efficiencies in Freight and Passenger Routing and Scheduling —is to develop routing techniques that react better to uncertainties in demand to improve the operations of the trucking industry in terms of reducing vehicle miles, thus minimizing the impact of freight on passenger travel since they primarily share the same road network, especially in major urban centers like Los Angeles.

The Problem 

The growth in freight of containers continues to cause congestion in and around the ports, and in the adjacent metropolitan traffic network. More and more container terminals require Just-In-Time (JIT) cargo delivery and pickup due to advances in information technologies and limited space for storing inbound and outbound containers.  At the same time the highly competitive trucking industry is driven by the need to satisfy consumer demands and to operate at the lowest possible cost In addition, logistic service providers (LSP) face uncertainties throughout various stages of operation. There is an urgent need for finding better ways of performing truck operations in metropolitan areas adjacent to the ports.

In this research, Dessouky and his team work to model and solve a truck routing problem that is representative of the daily operation of many logistic service providers.

The Results

Dessouky and team conclude that the look-ahead dynamic routing strategy shows merits for problems with high level of uncertainty. Overall the proposed approach could generate routing solutions to reduce freight vehicle miles traveled, thus minimizing the impact of freight on passenger travel since they primarily share the same road network, especially in major urban centers.

For more information, download the two page brief here, and the full report here. 

To contact the PI, write him at:

Maged Dessouky
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0193

Or contact him by Email at:  [email protected]