One of the most important processes integrating the economic activities of a country is the distribution of freight traffic. This paper studies how freight traffic is distributed in different types of regions in Mainland China.
Specifically, the analysis of freight distribution is partitioned into two coastal inland areas, six economic regions, and twenty-nine provinces.
In the second section of the paper, after employing three different series of relative coefficients and the ANOVA method, the author concludes that in general freight tonnage within a region is handled almost exclusively by that region’s transportation department. Therefore, it is reasonable to study the freight traffic of one region or of one province separately, rather than focusing on the overall traffic.
The third section looks into the overall balance of freight traffic in Mainland China. Freight traffic throughout the nation is found to be relatively balanced, although the balance is weaker in terms of tons-kms than in terms of tons.
In the fourth section an explanation is sought to explain the weaker degree of tons-kms balance. Here it is concluded that the relative regional differences in railway, highway, and waterway transport facilities is very significant in terms of the relative coefficients of average Km per ton (average hauled distance). The distribution of average hauled distance, however, is not relative to the length of transport routes.
The fifth section looks into the factors underlying the differing degrees of use of highways, railways, and waterways in the twenty-nine provinces in the provinces. This can very possibly be accounted for by the significant gaps found between provinces in the efficiency of per unit length of transport routes, but not by the directed demand strength of per unit production-sales activities.
In the concluding section, some questions and problems are presented as in need of future study. Collecting transport capacity data and how choices of transport modes are made are two such examples. Answering these types of questions will better enable future evaluation of traffic congestion and freight traffic distribution.
