Are Freight Production Models Transferable between Urban and Suburban Areas? Guiding Model Transfer in Geographically Sprawling Indian Cities

Abstract

Investigating the spatial transferability of freight generation (FG) models is an imperative research need to enable the usage of formerly estimated model parameters in new application contexts with or without the usage of local data. By understanding how to transfer models (and to what extent), planning agencies in large countries like India can save freight survey costs in regions where they lack the institutional capacity and resources. Due to geographically sprawling nature of most of the Indian cities, an important research question regarding transferability is whether the models developed for urban areas can provide accurate estimates of freight activity in the suburban areas or vice versa. This paper aims to provide two solutions to this problem: (i) compare the relative effectiveness of transferability depending up on the direction of transfer and (ii) assess which models can be transferred and which cannot. Data collected from seven cities are used for this study. A set of freight production (FP) models are developed using this data to understand the differential influence of geographical location and industry segment on the model coefficients. The estimated FP models show that suburban establishments exhibit significantly higher FP rates as compared to other establishments. Subsequently, transferability direction and accuracy are determined using standard metrics such as transfer R 2 , relative aggregate transfer error and transfer index. The transferability findings will provide actionable insights into development of FP models in regions with data constraints, which is of great value in an era of declining budgets for travel surveys.

Freight Traffic Impacts and Logistics Inefficiencies in India: Policy Interventions and Solution Concepts for Sustainable City Logistics

“…Out of the 49 papers, 41 were published in Elsevier journals (83.67%), 3 were published in Springer journals (6.12%), 3 were published in Taylor and Francis journals (6.12%), and 2 were published in SAGE journals (4.08%). The 49 papers can be categorized into four areas: (1) development of disaggregate-level freight demand estimations at seaports [ 5 , 6 ] or urban establishments [ 7 – 11 ], (2) development of aggregate-level freight generation [ 12 , 13 ] or distribution models [ 14 ], (3) design of establishment-based freight surveys [ 15 , 16 ] and zoning systems [ 17 – 20 ], (4) analysis of freight transport parking practices [ 21 ], emissions [ 22 , 23 ], expenditure patterns [ 9 , 24 , 25 ], and logistics sprawl [ 26 ]. Since the relevant statistics on freight system performance (e.g.…”

“…To achieve this, Indian Railways is investing heavily on network expansion projects and dedicated freight corridors. The strategic planning of these large-scale projects requires accurate freight demand models [ 24 , 25 , 33 , 34 ].

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Examining the Effects of Local Sample Sizes on Spatial Transferability of Freight Production Models

“…A similar observation was seen in the study by Pani et al (3), where FP models were assessed for transferability. Balla et al (35) also proved that the transferability of FP models is asymmetric. The models were transferable from urban to suburban but not vice versa.…”

“…These models were also assessed for transferability by updating their parameters, and it was found that updating the models improved the extent of transferability. Balla et al ( 35 ) investigated the transferability between urban and suburban regions in India; area-based and employment-based FP models were developed for these regions using OLS. It was found that the models developed for urban regions were transferable to the suburban regions but not vice versa.…”