Application of a Multimodal, Multicommodity International Freight Simultaneous Transportation Equilibrium Model to Sultanate of Oman

The prediction of multicommodity freight flows over a multimodal network has attracted much interest
in the recent years. An implementation of the International Freight Simultaneous Transportation
Equilibrium Model (IFSTEM) that developed in United Nations Economic and Social Commission for
Western Asia (ESCWA), to the goods trade through the ports and lands of Sultanate of Oman is
presented. The transportation network is usually modeled in a simplistic way (bipartite network) and
these models rely to a large extent on the supply and demand functions of the producers and
consumers respectively. Although some socio-economic variables, which are not available, were
required for IFSTEM model calibration, some reasonable assumptions were made and it was good
enough to draw the following main findings: the proposed alternative enhancement scenarios were
four nested scenarios, i.e., each scenario included the previous one plus an additional enhancement.
These four enhancement scenarios were analyzed against and compared with scenario (0), i.e., the
reference “Do nothing” scenario. The analysis has been achieved in two stages. The first stage
involved the prediction of international trade flows (imports, exports and re-exports), times and costs
that would result from the application of the 4 alternative enhancement scenarios during the analysis
period through the target year of 2040. The prediction results revealed that the estimated international
trade flows (imports, exports and re-exports) for Oman were increased by more than 504% by 2040
compared to the present situation of the base year 2012. This increase would represent around 70%
compared to the “do nothing” reference scenario by the year 2040 assuming that the average
increase of international trade flows in the “do nothing” case would be around 4% annually during the
analysis period from 2012 to 2040. The predictions of average total trip time and total cost per ton
revealed an estimated decrease, compared to the reference scenario, by around 25% and 20%
respectively. These results are internally consistent and represented reasonably significant
improvements compared to the “Do nothing” reference scenario.