A Dynamic Model for Evaluating the Utility of Railway Transit Corridors; a Case study of Bandar Abbas- Sarakhs Corridor

Currently, road transportation is the main mode of freight transit in Iran and about 90% of freight transit is done through this mode of transportation which is not in line with the transportation policies that based on them 70% of the freight transit should be done through road transportation and 30% of the freight transit should be done through rail transportation. However, Iran's railway network is very wide and we can increase the share of railway in freight transit. Therefore it is important to recognize the effective factors which increase the share of rail transit. The purpose of this research is to recognize the factors increasing the utility of railway transit corridors and to improve the competitive position of railway in freight transit. So the concepts of utility and transit are described in the first place, then the factors affecting the utility of railway transit corridors from the perspective of the owner of goods are determined by making a literature review and investigating the opinions of experts. These factors include transportation cost, commercial speed, reliability, safety, the system of tracing wagons and service frequency. Then a utility function for Bandar Abbas- Sarakhs corridor is developed based on the mentioned factors. At last, a dynamic model to evaluate the utility of the mentioned corridor is developed and after verifying the validation of it, the model is simulated by vensim PLE software for 20 years. The results of the simulation show that simultaneous improvement in reliability, the system of tracing wagons and commercial speed and also giving discount on the cost of transportation according to the demand of the owner of goods can play a significant role in increasing the utility of the mentioned corridor, and changing only one factor will not result in major changes in the utility of the corridor.