Railway and road discrete choice model for foreign trade freight between Antioquia and the Port of Cartagena

Most Colombian freight is transported on roads with barely acceptable conditions, and although there is a speculation about the need for a railway for freight transportation, there is not a study in Colombia showing the variables that influence the modal choice by the companies that generate freight transportation. This article presents the calculation of demand for a hypothetical railway through a discrete choice model. It begins with a qualitative research through focus group techniques to identify the variables that influence the choice of persons responsible for the transportation of large commercial companies in Antioquia (Colombia). The influential variables in the election were the cost and service frequency, and these variables were used to apply a Stated Preference (SP) and Revealed Preference (RP) survey, then to calibrate a Multinomial Logit Model (MNL), and to estimate the influence of each of them. We show that the probability of railway choice by the studied companies varies between 67% and 93%, depending on differences in these variables