A Multiclass Tour Flow Model and Its Role in Multiclass Freight Tour Synthesis

This paper summarizes the research conducted by the authors concerning the development of an analytical freight demand model that explicitly considers freight pickup and delivery flows by industry sector, the multiclass tour flow model (MC-TFM). The mathematical properties of the resultant model are investigated, including the convexity of the optimization model, the interconnection between the MC-TFM and the family of gravity models, and the MC-TFM’s elasticities. The MC-TFM is then integrated into a multiclass freight tour synthesis model (MC-FTS) that is capable of inferring freight tour demand on the basis of secondary data such as traffic counts and estimates of freight trip generation by industry sector. The ability of the resulting MC-FTS is tested by means of numerical experiments involving test cases.