Abstract:To study the design methods of regional hub-and-spoke freight network, 17 technical and economic indicators that reflect regional urban freight capacity were determined from three perspectives including social economy, transportation capacity, and transportation professionals. The principal component analysis was used to quantify the comprehensive freight competitiveness of each city and determine the set of hub cities in the region. Based on calculation results, speed and cost indexes were further introduced to improve gravity model and membership model, which can effectively quantify the freight attraction between regional cities, define the influencing range of the hub city, determine the subordination of the branch city, construct the regional urban transport corridor system, and thereby help to determine the regional hub-and-spoke freight network layout. By taking 18 cities in Henan province as an example, a freight network was constructed. Results show that the obtained hub-and-spoke freight network in Henan province was in accordance with real situations, which has Zhengzhou as the center and presents the spatial characteristics of “one ring, six hubs, and seven corridors”. Therefore, the proposed model is reasonable and can effectively guide the design and operation of regional hub-and-spoke freight network.