Transportation

Transportation was one of the earliest application areas of operations research, and important transportation problems, such as the traveling salesman problem, vehicle routing problem, and traffic assignment problem, contributed to fundamental knowledge in operations research. Transportation remains one of the most important and vibrant areas of operations research.

We welcome papers that address any aspect of transportation, including topics that have not traditionally appeared in this journal. It is a requirement that the paper be relevant to operations research. This means that the problem addressed in the paper should be stated precisely, and some form of analysis or numerical method or experimental work be used to obtain significant results. Next I elaborate on the previous statement. Problems that are of interest to a larger part of the operations research community are preferred over problems that are of interest to only a small interest group. Problems involving the physics of transportation as well as problems involving the management of transportation are of interest. Transportation is primarily an application area of operations research, and therefore great emphasis will be placed on good modeling and relevance to real transportation problems. The analysis may involve any appropriate methodology that can be described as precise, including techniques from statistics, optimization, game theory, probability, dynamical systems, or numerical methods. Problems and approaches that are innovative and new to the community are especially welcome. Numerical work and experimental work should be described sufficiently precisely to enable replication of the work. Appendices that facilitate replication of the work, including code and data sets, are welcome. Significant results may include results that facilitate further study, or results that facilitate the solution of important practical problems.

Papers should clearly explain the contribution of the paper in the introduction. The statement of contribution should explain what was added to the knowledge base of operations research and transportation, and not just what work was done for the paper. The paper should state exactly what is new, and if relevant, the contribution of the paper should be compared with the existing literature. The explanation of the contribution should be sufficiently precise to enable an unambiguous verification whether the claim of contribution is correct.

Associate Editors: Michael Ball, Michel Bierlaire, René de Koster, Gilbert Laporte, Patrice Marcotte, Warren Powell, and Martin Savelsbergh