Estimating The Market Areas Of Railway Stations: A Case Study Of Containers In Korea

Railway is an environmentally-friendly mode of transportation and has recently attracted more attention, not only from the practitioners, but also scholars from a sustainable freight transportation perspective. One of the important aspects that scholars need to know about railway’s freight transportation is the size of market area (i.e. catchment area) of railway stations. Market area is needed to estimate transportation demand of commodities (i.e. O/D estimation). This study estimates the size of the market area of railway stations in the case of container transportation in Korea. Based on the interviews and surveys with carriers, factors contributing to the size of catchment areas are identified. In addition, the size of market areas under the various conditions are estimated and validated from the overall transportation perspective. The research results of this study are considered to be valuable in container O/D (Origin/Destination) estimation and in marketing activities of container railway transportation.