An important European Union policy is to decrease the share of freight transport moving by truck in favour of alternative land transport modes (rail and waterway). The research projects purpose was to identify strategies for increasing the share of intermodal freight transportation between Eastern and Western Europe. The project evaluated the demand for transport in this market and identified a potential candidate corridor. This corridor was used to help analyze strategies for addressing the key problems in increasing intermodal transport. The three main problems with intermodal transport are: quality, price and coverage; more specifically, intermodal transport is often slower, less reliable and more expensive, than truck-only transport, and furthermore it is only offered in selected corridors. Addressing these problems is the key to increasing intermodal transport. Quality is the most important factor in todays freight transport market. There aretwo main ways to improve the quality of intermodal transport: consolidatemanagement and improve the infrastructure. Intermodal transport in Europetoday is relatively disorganized; often it involves multiple parties working together on an ad-hoc basis. The best option would be a single companyproviding door-to-door service (similar to truck transport), but this is practically impossible for long distance intermodal transport. One common requirement is that the intermodal terminal operator be responsible for providing the pre- and post-haulage service (to increase pre- and post-haulage (PPH) efficiency). Ideally both the origin and destination terminals would be under the control of the same operator. The terminal operator couldeither contract with a railroad for the main haulage or (preferably) operate its own trains (under Europe's Open Access rules) between terminals. In cases where the origin and destination terminals are operated by different companies, these companies must develop a real working partnership. Europe's intermodal transport infrastructure must be improved to increase itsshare of the freight market. New terminals must be built and the capacityof existing terminals increased to support development of new operationalstrategies (e.g. liner trains or hub-and-spoke systems). In some locations new track infrastructure must be built to help freight trains travel quickly and efficiently between terminals. The main responsibility for planning and financing these infrastructure investments must be government because of their high cost, long life and impact on economic development; however, intermodal operators should strongly support these efforts. Many of the recommendations for increasing quality will also reduce expenses. A goodexample is using coordinated information systems to quickly and accurately transmit information between partners. The research found that the cost of inefficient pre- and post-haulage process adds up to 37% to the cost ofintermodal transport in typical markets. Two ways to reduce these costs are to better plan the PPH operation (making more efficient use of PPH trucks) and locating intermodal terminals closer to customers (or vice-versa).The best markets for intermodal transport are large volumes of freight moving on a concentrated axis over relatively long distances (around 1000 kmor more). Intermodal operators can build these markets using the cooperative strategies outlined above. Another strategy is to increase freight volumes by serving smaller markets with a multi-level service offer (which increases the number of efficient direct trains). For the covering abstract see ITRD E137145.
Abstract