Appointment Systems for Inland Waterway Traffic Control
Researcher(s)
Principal investigator: James CampbellRay Mundy
Project status
Completed
Start date: 07/01/04
End date: 11/30/05
Publications
Reports:
- November 2005, Management Systems for Inland Waterway Traffic Control, Volume I: Identification and Evaluation of Alternatives for Managing Lock Traffic on the Upper Mississippi River 2 mb (*pdf)
- November 2005, Management Systems for Inland Waterway Traffic Control, Volume II: Vessel Tracking for Managing Traffic on the Upper Mississippi River 1.4 mb (*pdf)
*To read pdf files, you may need to download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Sponsor(s)/partner(s)
Sponsor(s):Midwest Transportation Consortium
About the research
Abstract: A system of 37 locks and dams has been constructed along the Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway (UMR-IW) to provide reliable commercial inland navigation. This infrastructure has a limited throughput and delays at locks and dams create congestion, bottlenecks and inefficiencies at certain critical segments of the UMR-IW system. Over one million barge-hours are wasted annually waiting in these queues. These hours both decrease the total quantity of goods that can be moved, and increase the transportation costs of goods that are moved on the UMR-IW. This project will adopt a complementary approach that seeks to reduce congestion by employing an intelligent appointment system at the existing locks.