The first Spanish high-speed railway started to run in April 1992, between the cities of Madrid and Seville and, until now, it has only been used to transport passengers centred in Madrid, covering more than 2000 kilometres. To reap the maximum benefit of the high investments, bimodal operation (passenger and freight) is under discussion. This paper analyses the possibility (mainly in terms of demand) of using Spanish high-speed rail lines in a bimodal way not only for passengers but also for goods. The meaning of that could be translated into platform wagons loaded with cars, lorries and buses, and running along the high-speed rail lines, with a considerable time saving. As a first step, a bibliographic search was done, looking for European experience on bimodal transport and bimodal technology. Data from the characteristics of the present European high-speed lines being operated with mixed traffic (passengers and freight) and data from the characteristics of the trains running on these lines, were collected. Besides, information about the commercial systems used for bimodal transport was also studied. 3323 valid filled questionnaires were obtained from train users, which determined the preference of the potential users of "ferrytrain". A group of more than fifty companies (international and national transport operators) were selected and the operation manager of each of them was interviewed. In relation to inter-city bus companies, regular services and discretional services (private hire) were required, so 22 enterprises were interviewed. When the first interviews with these companies started, a first issue came up: their main concern was for the type of contract to establish with the passenger using the intermodal service. Once the phase of surveys and interviews was accomplished, a Linear Multiple Regression was used as a tool to model only the AVE users preferences because the sample size was good enough. For the covering abstract see ITRD E126595.
Abstract