A model to design a national high-speed network for freight distribution

High-speed rail is often touted as a way to reduce congestion on the United States' highways by removing passenger car traffic. But reducing the amount of freight traffic would also reduce highway congestion. So, given the advances in high-speed rail, the potential exists for developing a national high-speed network for freight distribution. We present an uncapacitated network design problem with a post-processing step for the capacity constraint to construct such a network that considers highway traffic and transit times. We apply our models with data from a major truckload carrier and the U.S. Census to serve as a potential case study. We find that only if adequate capacity is built into the high-speed network can reductions in the predicted amount of freight traffic on the nation's highways and the freight transit times be accomplished.