A novel strategy to managing hazmat risk for rail shipments

Hazardous materials (hazmat) transportation is critical to the growth of modern societies, and railroad is one of its important modes, particularly in North America. Although railroads handled one-third of all U.S. exports and roughly 40% of its long-distance freight volume in 2022, academics have yet to devote significant effort to propose risk mitigation policies for them. Thus, an incentive-based strategy, adding subsidy to railroad links, will be addressed in this study to control the risks of hazmat transportation networks. For doing so, a bi-level multi-commodity optimization model is developed and solved by a heuristic solution approach. The methodology is tested on the realistic infrastructure of a railroad operator in Midwest United States and the results are reported.