As the economy becomes increasingly specialised and globalised, the importance of logistics also increases. For global transportation systems, seaports play a key role as transhipment hubs. As seaports incorporate and coordinate hinterland logistic activities within the activities of the port, the strategies they employ influence the decisions made by both local and global logistic service prov…
To be competitive with other modes of transport, railways need to be cost-effective. In order to become more competitive in the logistics sector, Indian Railways has taken new initiatives to improve their operations in recent years. A rail–truck intermodal transportation service for Indian Railways is described in this paper. The main focus of the research presented in this paper is on the jo…
Retail traffic is one of the main drivers for the growth of intermodal transport services in the UK. This paper examines the key factors underpinning this modal shift in order to learn lessons for other market and geographical contexts. Since successful retail intermodal logistics involves many actors, this paper is based on semi-structured interviews with major UK retailers, third-party logist…
This paper presents a method for assessing the financial viability of a new Freight village financed by private and public investments. The financial evaluation model constitutes four distinct phases, namely (a) site selection and traffic forecasts, (b) definition of services offered and corresponding dimensions, (c) estimation of investment and operation costs and (d) evaluation of investments…
The development of intermodal container transport is hampered in part by the cost associated with the shunting of trains in marshalling yards, inland and port railway terminals. Many new technologies have been developed in the past decade, but have still not been applied because of high capital investment costs, lack of sufficient market demand and uncertain rates of return. The key for increas…
Seaports have traditionally been the focus of maritime logistics supply chains. Changing production patterns demanding greater end to end visibility by customers and accessibility to key inland population centers assume greater importance in the organization and design of transport resources and cargo flows.While synchronization of all aspects of the supply chain has become an operational neces…
Over the recent years, the usage of containers has dramatically increased; subsequently, port container terminals annually serve more and more intensive flows, which leads to the necessity to find the ways of increasing terminal performance in order to achieve that a growing number of containers would be expeditiously served. The minimization of container handling duration in a terminal would r…
Shipping lines generally offer their clients two main value propositions: portto-port and door-to-door transport. In addition, some shipping lines offer a third value proposition in the form of transport up to inland terminals (ILTs). This third value proposition combines maritime and inland transport and is offered to two types of customers: shippers and forwarders. These two customer groups h…
The purpose of this paper is to investigate contracts of the intermodal transport market and the incentives they create for a modal shift and thus the financial and environmental efficiency of freight transport.
In this paper, we study the empty container inventory sharing and coordination problem in intermodal transport. We focus on dry ports in intermodal transport to raise the coordination issue in empty container management. We consider an intermodal transport system composed of one railway transport firm at a dry port and one liner firm at a seaport. First, we characterize the optimal delivery pol…
With their massive transhipment, major seaports in Europe can generate scale economies to operate intermodal transport cost effective to numerous destinations with high frequency. In that way, the ports seem to be able to stimulate intermodal transport and open new markets beyond their traditional hinterlands. The growing container transport by rail between Rotterdam and Northern Italy illustra…
Short distance inland container transport to Western European seaports provides opportunities for additional modal shift to intermodal transport, thanks to the concentration of transport flows transported to the immediate hinterland of these ports. The literature on modal choice behavior, however, fails to explain the (relatively low) success of this market segment. In this paper, a choice-base…
In this paper we analyse the intermodal connectivity in Europe. The empirical analysis is to our knowledge the first empirical analysis of intermodal connections, and is based on a comprehensive database of intermodal connections in Europe. The paper focuses on rail and barge services, as they are the backbone of intermodal freight transport chains. The empirical analysis reveals that rail and …
Scientifi c papers related to intermodal transport research are reviewed in the article. Attention is focused on classifi cation of scientifi c issues of intermodality. Th e methods, algorithms, models used for intermodal transport research are described. Th e areas of huge scientifi c focus and poor areas in intermodality research are highlighted.
The purpose of this paper is to develop a transport portfolio framework (TPF) and explore its use as a decision support tool for shippers wanting to improve their transport system in terms of reducing their carbon footprint.
A commonly suggested measure to make logistics greener is a shift to intermodal road-rail transportation. Most research addresses the issue from the carrier’s perspective, arguing for ways to improve the service production to better fit the shippers’ demand. In this article the issue is addressed from the shipper’s perspective. The purpose is to understand what contextual factors and oper…