Application of the freight rate on freight flow forecast

As an important transportation mode in the urban development, highway freight transportation is of great significance to the economy of the city. Through the analysis of highway freight transportation’s development trends, the role of road transportation in economic activities can be better understood. For the lack of statistical data, the development trends of China’s urban road freight traffic have long remained unknown. This paper adopted a new method to estimate the trends of a city’s road freight based on freight rate information. Through the establishment of a national freight rate matrix, two types of urban traffic patterns were determined and then the logistic regression model was employed to analyse the influencing factors of the freight flow. The results showed that GDP, the freight volume, the secondary industry ratio and location were the main factors for the prediction of the urban freight flow tendencies.