A decade of freight transport modeling with Nodus : Acquired experiences and new challenges

Jourquin, Bart [FUCAM] Beuthe, Michel [FUCAM]

(eng) The "Virtual network" methodology offers an alternative to the classical "four steps" technique to model transport flows over networks, as it combines the "modal-split" and "assignment" phases of the latter in a single step. This methodology, initiated ten years ago in the Nodus software, has already lead to numerous applications on large scale multi-modal freight transport networks. This paper will firstly summarize the acquired experience, presenting some interesting outputs (elasticities, impact of the internalization on external costs, impact of new infrastructure, ...) from several models of the trans-European network. It will then present the most recent developments of the methodology and software tool, which opens the way to new promising research in the field of economic analysis on large freight transport networks.