Identification and Evaluation of Freight Demand Factors (2012)

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1 CONTENTS FIGURES AND TABLES .............................................................................................................. 3 AUTHOR ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................. 4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ............................................................................................................ 5 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 8 Background ................................................................................................................................. 8 Research Objectives .................................................................................................................... 9 Analytical Process ..................................................................................................................... 10 2. Measuring and Estimating Transportation Demand ................................................................ 12 Measures of Transportation Demand ........................................................................................ 12 Rail Tonnage ......................................................................................................................... 13 Rail Ton-Miles ...................................................................................................................... 13 Rail Train-Miles .................................................................................................................... 13 Rail Car-Miles ....................................................................................................................... 14 Rail Revenue Ton-Miles (Quarterly) .................................................................................... 14 Truck Ton-Miles ................................................................................................................... 14 Truck Vehicle-Miles ............................................................................................................. 14 Domestic Waterway Tons ..................................................................................................... 15 Domestic Waterway Ton-Miles ............................................................................................ 15 Independent Factors Affecting Transportation Demand ........................................................... 16 Demographics is a Direct Factor ........................................................................................... 16 Economic Activity is a Direct Factor.................................................................................... 17 Environmental Policy is an Indirect Factor .......................................................................... 18 Technology is an Indirect Factor .......................................................................................... 18 Public Policy is an Indirect Factor ........................................................................................ 18 The Contestability of Freight is an Indirect Factor ............................................................... 19 Operations Strategy (Logistics) is both a Direct and an Indirect Factor ............................... 20 Candidates for Factors that Affect Transportation Demand ..................................................... 21 Determining the Specific Independent Factors ......................................................................... 21 Income................................................................................................................................... 22 Housing ................................................................................................................................. 24 Production ............................................................................................................................. 25 Trade and Foreign Exchange ................................................................................................ 26 Inventory/Sales Ratios .......................................................................................................... 27 Retail Sales............................................................................................................................ 28 Fuel Prices ............................................................................................................................. 29 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 29 3. Modeling Transportation Demand – Analyzing the Results..................................................... 31 Important Sub-Periods of Time ............................................................................................ 33 Collinearity Means Redundancy ........................................................................................... 34 Correlations between the Dependent and Independent Variables ............................................ 35 Sub-Period Correlation Analysis .............................................................................................. 37 Main Results ......................................................................................................................... 38 The Usefulness and Challenge of Predicting Demand ............................................................. 39

2 The Potential of Independent Factors as “Early Warning Indicators” .................................. 39 Regression Analysis Results ..................................................................................................... 40 Regression as a Method to Identify Relative Importance ..................................................... 41 Overall Findings.................................................................................................................... 47 Principal Component Analysis ................................................................................................. 48 Steps in Applying PCA to Freight Demand ......................................................................... 48 Extracted Principal Components and Weights ..................................................................... 49 Results ................................................................................................................................... 49 Overall Findings.................................................................................................................... 51 Reliability and Representative Tests ......................................................................................... 52 4. Conclusions and Recommendations ......................................................................................... 56 Recommendations for Additional Analysis .............................................................................. 58 Appendix A - Peer Exchange Synthesis ......................................................................................A-1 Appendix B – Literature Review .................................................................................................B-1 Appendix C –Correlation Analysis ..............................................................................................C-1 Appendix D – Regression Analysis & Diagnostics .....................................................................D-1 Appendix E – Primary Component Analysis Tables ...................................................................E-1