Comparative modelling of interregional transport flows : applications to multimodal European freight transport

This paper aims to compare the descriptive and predictive power of two classes of statistical estimation models for multimodal network flows, viz. the logit model and the neural network model. The application concerns a large data set on inter-regional European freight flows for two commodity categories (food and chemicals). After an exposition of policy issues, methodological and modelling questions and the database, a variety of experiments is carried out. The results show that in general the predictive potential of neural network models is higher than that of logit analysis. The statistical results are also used to investigate the implications of various road tax systems (e.g., e&axes) on various segments of the European road network