Who is Responsible for the Externalities Produced by Freight Carriers? Hint: The Answer is Not as Simple as it Seems…

Abstract

This research sheds light into an important and overlooked aspect of urban freight management and planning: the impacts of the decisions made by shippers, receivers, transportation and land use agencies, the real estate sector and other agents—referred to as non-carrier agents, or NCAs—on the generation of freight externalities. The paper is based on the insight that, since freight carriers must meet the constraints set by these agents, NCAs’ decisions could force the carriers to create externalities above and beyond those that the carriers would generate if they had complete control over their operations. As part of the research, the authors: identify a number of NCAs’ decisions that could negatively affect the operational performance and the externalities produced by freight carriers; and compute the corresponding Shapley Values to allocate the responsibilities for the freight externalities among carriers and NCAs using numerical experiments based on real-life supply chains. The insights gained are used to identify policy implications related to electrification of the trucking sector.