System Dynamic Model for Simulating Demand-Supply Interaction of Railway Express Freight System

Abstract EN

Express freight transportation is a rich seam of profit for China railway, and railway express freight system is a complex system with multiple variables and nonlinear feedback loops.

This paper presents a System Dynamic Model for simulating the interaction between demand and supply of railway express freight system in China.

The model consists of three submodels including economic environment, demand, supply, and investment, and its validity is verified by running in Vensim DDS software using historical data.

In the simulation of period 2000–2025, the three variables are taken as control variables including growth rate of the national economy, railway express freight rate, and investment in fixed railway assets.

Three scenarios for each control variable are simulated, and their effects are analyzed to provide beneficial reference for regulating the demand-supply gap of railway express freight.

The simulation demonstrated that raising freight rate, adding investment in fixed railway assets, and decelerating economic growth rate are all effective ways to shrink the demand-supply gap of railway express freight.

The model can be used to forecast the transport demand of railway express freight and test the outcomes of demand-supply regulating measures.