Supply Chain Policy Center Research Topics
Infrastructure Finance
Meeting future freight transport demands will require significant investment in new capacity, yet the availability of funds from traditional sources such as motor fuel taxes is on the decline. The goal in this project is to investigate alternate finance mechanisms such as direct user fees, general tax revenues, general obligation bonds, and public private partnerships, evaluating their ability to raise sufficient revenues, their financial effects on different stakeholder groups, and their political feasibility.
Rail Capacity Needs
What rail capacity constraints currently exist within the North American intermodal freight transport system, and how will these constraints be exacerbated with future anticipated growth in rail freight? The goal in this project is to develop a framework for assessing the cost and performance of the rail system, including the identification of key bottlenecks, such that decisionmakers have access to the information needed to identify future investment priorities.
Mitigating Highway Congestion
The continued growth in highway congestion leads to significant costs (in time and money) not just for the traveling public, but for the trucking industry as well. The goal in this project is to evaluate alternative strategies for mitigating highway congestion, focusing on factors such as financial and political feasibility as well as the distribution of costs and benefits for the trucking industry as well as other stakeholders. Potential options might include various forms of road pricing such as congestion tolls, the expansion of general purpose highway lanes, or the development of truck-only toll lanes.
Environmental Mitigation at Ports
Community groups surrounding ports, concerned with deteriorating air quality and related health issues, are mounting increasingly effective opposition to planned expansion projects. To overcome such challenges, it will likely be necessary to adopt mitigation strategies as part of any future expansion efforts. The goal in this project is to evaluate alternative policies to achieve necessary air quality improvements, ranging from command-and-control strategies to emissions taxes to cap-and-trade systems. The analysis will include factors such as the relative effectiveness in meeting emissions reduction targets, the cost-efficiency in reducing emissions, and the distribution of costs and benefits among different stakeholders.
Sustainability and the Global Supply Chain
The importance of sustainability, a balancing of economic, social, and environmental objectives, is gaining increased recognition among private citizens, governments, and business groups. In addition to its vast economic benefits, the global supply chain unfortunately spins off many negative side-effects, such as greenhouse gases, local air pollutants, noise, and congestion, and these are shouldered disproportionately by certain demographic groups. The purpose of this project is to assess the relative merits of alternate technologies and policies for achieving a greater degree of sustainability within the global supply chain.
Future Congestion and Air Freight Strategies
Some of America's busiest airports are facing the prospect of capacity constraints in the near future, placing continued growth in passenger and freight aviation on a collision course. At the same time, many smaller airports remain underutilized. The goal in this project will be to evaluate the feasibility of reorganizing existing passenger and freight transport patterns to make more efficient use of the full range of airport resources within the U.S.
Supply Chain Risk Analysis
If a disaster or terrorist strike were to shut down one of North America's major port complexes, freight flow patterns could be severely disrupted, leading to significant economic losses for numerous stakeholders. The purpose in this study will be to investigate the potential magnitude and duration of such disruptions by performing several "what-if?" disaster scenarios at major port facilities or intermodal exchanges. The results will provide decisionmakers with the information needed to evaluate the benefits of providing redundant capacity within the global supply chain to mitigate the risk of such disruptions.
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