An agent-based simulation to analyze trucking sector regulation policies

Abstract

This paper introduces an agent-based micro-simulation model to acquire the responses of road freight transportation systems like the productivity of trucks, the capability of road freight transportation companies, and the economic state of actors to different regulatory reforms. The shippers, freight companies, and drivers are the key decision-makers . These agents have different choices, including transport carrier choice, shipping price, truck allocation to shipment, and empty backhauls. Performance measures were used for the calibration phase with less than 3.7% average error. Finally, three viable regulatory reforms were evaluated, and their performance measures were estimated and discussed. We found that the shipping cost will reduce by 6% if a competitive market structure replaces the mandatory freight assignment procedure. Furthermore, we observed a 20% increase in the market share of the top fifty transport companies and a 3% improvement in the overall productivity when the physical freight companies’ branch requirements are relaxed.