Essays on the operations and management of transportation systems

This dissertation addresses three important issues in transportation and logistics, and provides insights for efficiently operating and managing transportation and logistics systems. The first essay (in Chapter 2) investigates the effects of airlines and high-speed rail (HSR) cooperation in a region with multiple airports. This essay is motivated by the rapid development of HSR, which has greatly promoted regional connectivity and air-rail intermodal transport. It shows under what conditions the air-rail cooperation is feasible, and how the air-rail cooperation can help relieve airport congestion. Specifically, when the HSR operator cares more about social welfare, or when the airlines are collusive, the airlines and HSR operator are more likely to cooperate. The air-rail cooperation helps to relieve airport congestion by diverting traffic to uncongested airports in the multiple-airport region. The second essay (in Chapter 3) investigates how seaports can better adapt to climate change by determining the optimal timing and scale of investments in protective measures and throughput capacity. This study is motivated by the alarming rate of global warming and the threats imposed to vulnerable transportation infrastructure. This essay takes into account the uncertainty about the probability and magnitude of climate-change-related disasters, the irreversibility of infrastructure investments, and information accumulation. This essay highlights the importance of considering the two types of investment (protection and capacity) together, because the seaport can adapt in different ways as future climate gets worse, such as investing more in protection, holding off capacity investment, or adjusting its fee. The third essay (in Chapter 4) proposes a new structural estimation approach which does not require individual choice data to estimate passengers’ mode choice of airport ground transportation. This approach is applied to Incheon International Airport. The estimation results suggest that passengers who fly Korean airlines or have experienced longer waiting times are less likely to take public transport. I formulate a nonlinear program that incorporates passengers’ choice behavior with the objective of maximizing train ridership. I show that the current train schedule is not efficiently matched with the intraday demand, and could be substantially improved to achieve higher ridership without adding trains.Business, Sauder School ofOperations and Logistics (OPLOG), Division ofGraduat