Modeling the criticality of a regional trucking network at the industry level: Evidence from the province of Ontario, Canada

Regional economic productivity and growth require a reliable, robust road transportation network to facilitate the movement of freight by trucks. Previous network robustness measures focus on the physical effects of network disruptions, such as travel time delays resulting from disabled links. However, the economic impacts associated with disruptions of freight flows must also be accounted for. This paper presents a methodology for generating industry-specific origin-destination freight demand matrices for the province of Ontario, Canada using truck GPS tracking data and the provincially mandated Commercial Vehicle Survey. Six mutually exclusive industry groups are defined, whose spatial interactions are expected to vary. A cost per shipment is estimated for each industry group and used to examine the value of goods carried on each network link for the 1 pm peak hour. Criticality is explored through the combined impacts on travel time due to link disruption and the value of goods carried on the respective links. As expected, a subset of links belonging to important trade corridors are highlighted as critical. Such characterization of the network provides an in-depth view of the economic activity and criticalities associated with regional trucking networks and can inform planning and mitigation measures to maximize network-wide benefits.