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NDSU Students Present Research at Transportation Research Forum

Posted: Apr 25, 2018

NDSU transportation and logistics Ph.D. students recently presented research at the 59th Annual Transportation Research Forum April 10-11 in Minneapolis. The event was an opportunity for transportation professionals, academics, students, and graduates to present their work, discuss the latest research, debate contemporary transportation issues and network with other professionals.

Mohammad Alshareef presented "The Value of Missouri River Water in its Navigation Channel and Freight Costs." Reduced flows make the Missouri river unreliable for shipping agricultural commodities. The study evaluated various other modes of moving commodities compared to river navigation. With limited data, the analysis found that rail rates were estimated to be lower than barge rates in four of five years. This cost comparison corresponds to the gradual decrease in the use of the Missouri River shipping channel for agricultural commodities.

Mingwei Guo presented "Administrative Process Insight for Effective Impaired Driver Interventions." Based on data from evaluations, DUI convictions, citations, crashes and treatment program data, researchers explored elements associated with the effectiveness of impaired driver treatment programs and positive public safety outcomes in North Dakota.

Fecri Karanki presented "Nested Catchment Areas and Breaking Monopolistic Power." The research proposes a model showing how airports can gain competitive advantages against one another in multidimensional product space. Analysis indicated that strategies to increase attractiveness of airports will be airfare and service quality and that a smaller airport that nests in a primary airport's natural catchment area has the potential to undermine the monopolistic power of the larger airport. Co-author was Siew Hoon Lim, associate professor in the NDSU Department of Agribusiness & Applied Economics.

Narendra Malalgoda presented "Effect of Subsidies on Urban Public Transit Performance and Ridership in the U.S." This paper assesses the impact of government subsidies and ride-hailing services on transit ridership. The research showed that, although subsidies reduce transit fares, their effect on ridership was insignificant. The research also indicated that Uber had a weakly negative effect on transit ridership.

Yuan Xu presented "Evaluating environmental efficiency of U.S. airline industry with flight delays using a directional distance function data envelopment analysis." Researchers developed a model to evaluate the environmental efficiency of 12 U.S. airlines from 2013 to 2016 with consideration of desirable and undesirable outputs (i.e. flight delays). Input variables considered are employment, operating expense and fuel consumption. Regarding the outputs, revenue passenger-mile are considered as desirable, while flight delays and GHG emissions are taken as undesirable outputs.

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