Estimating an Origin-Destination Table for US Exports of Waterborne Containerised Freight
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Estimating an origin-destination table for US exports of waterborne containerised freight Brian Levinea, Linda Nozicka,* and Dean Jonesb a
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Cornell University, Hollister Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. E-mail: [email protected] b Sandia National Laboratories, P.O. Box 5800, MS 1138, Albuquerque, NM 87185–1138, USA. *Corresponding author.
A b s t r a c t US containerised freight traffic through US seaports is growing rapidly. Given this growth rate, it is important to have an accurate understanding of the flow of these goods both within the United States and to and from foreign countries, so that investments in infrastructure can be made consistent with the needs generated by this traffic. This paper develops an optimisation model to estimate an origin-destination table for the number of containers shipped from aggregations of Bureau of Economic Analysis economic areas in the United States to foreign countries. To do this, we synthesise data from various sources with a gravity model for the demand of container traffic. A sensitivity analysis on the estimated origin-destination table shows it is robust to changes in the gravity model parameter. The model also pays explicit attention to empty containers resulting from the significant US trade imbalance, and therefore estimates flows for both full and empty containers. Maritime Economics & Logistics (2009) 11, 137–155. doi:10.1057/mel.2009.1
Keywords: origin-destination table; containerised freight; optimisation; gravity model
Introduction In 2006, almost 9 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of goods were exported from the United States through US container seaports (US Maritime r 2009 Palgrave Macmillan 1479-2931 Maritime Economics & Logistics www.palgrave-journals.com/mel/
Vol. 11, 2, 137–155
Levine et al
10,000,000 9,000,000 8,000,000
Containers (TEUs)
7,000,000
Houston, TX
5,000,000
Charleston, SC Savannah, GA Long Beach, CA New York, NY
4,000,000
Los Angeles, CA Total
6,000,000
3,000,000 2,000,000 1,000,000 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 Year
Figure 1: Containers exported from 1997 to 2006. Source: US Maritime Administration, 2007.
Administration, 2007). Since 2002, on average, US containerised exports have been growing at about 7 per cent per year. Figure 1 gives the total number of full containers (in TEUs) exported, as well as the number that exited through the six largest container ports from 1997 to 2006. Note that all future references to containers, containerised imports, or containerised exports, in figures or in the text, imply measurement in TEUs. These six ports represented about 60 per cent of containerised exports in 2006. In the same year, about 14 per cent of US containerised exports exited through the Port of Los Angeles with another 11 per cent using the Port of Long Beach. The Port of New York was the second largest port with about a 12 per cent share in 2006. Figure 2 gives the number of containers exported from the United States in 1997, 2000, 2003 and 2006
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