A basic understanding of industrial organization is essential for students and practitioners in the field of transportation. Understanding issues related to transportation regulation, transportation firm behavior, and transportation sector performance will contribute to prudent decisionmaking by transportation...

The United States food processing industry is under increasing economic pressure to remain competitive internationally. Consequently, American firms are evolving from an adversarial to a close procurement relationship, with many adopting preferred supplier or partnership programs to decrease costs. A...

When transportation agencies become involved in the remediation of hazardous waste on their sites, the common practice is to hire consultants and contractors for the clean up process. Because the field of hazardous waste site remediation is changing so rapidly, agency personnel evaluate the consultant's...

Transportation fulfills three major roles in a developed economy. First, it is an enabler that allows an economy to develop. Second, it is a facilitator of competition for producers throughout broad area. And finally, transportation is a component of the Gross National Product. The motor carrier industry...

Since 1980, over 200 new local or regional railroads have been established in the United States, mostly through the sale of light-density lines by Class I carriers. With these new additions, this sector of the railroad industry now numbers over 400 strong. Collectively, these firms operate over 40,000...

The purpose of this report is 1) to provide a basic understanding of GIS and GIS-T; 2) to discuss the possible GIS related applications and activities in transportation; 3) to describe the factors and issues involved in successful planning and implementation of GIS for transportation; and 4) to describe...

No performance evaluation guidebook existed for rural and small urban transit systems. Therefore, this guidebook is designed to provide transit operators with a tool for evaluating their system's performance. Each transit operator can measure their system's performance against other similar systems in...

The objective of this study was to assess the competitiveness of U.S. durum producers in supplying durum by estimating production levels and trade flows under alternative trade scenarios. Mathematical programming was used to compare production levels and distribution patterns for the durum market under...

The GEOTRANS (GEographical Optimizer for TRANSportation) is an implementation of a GDSS for rural transportation. Algorithms and specialized data structures were developed to accomplish accurate and efficient solutions of a suite of network flow optimization models for use in GEOTRANS. The design of...

The overall purpose of this report is to evaluate the perspectives and practice of economic and safety regulation of local and regional short line railroads. Specific objectives are to: (1) review the dynamics of the short line railroad spin-off movement in the United States and the Mountain-Plains Consortium...