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https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27432/critical-issues-in-transportation-for-2024-and-beyond

COST FUNCTIONS FOR FREIGHT TRANSPORT IN MULTIMODAL NETWORKS

In the last decade freight transport characteristics have rapidly changed due to the globalization process of world economy. Great changes in the markets have led from a local to planetary level. The transport massive facilities, like shipping, are playing an important role nowadays, because they allow economies of scale and a relative easy deployment. These changing scenarios determine great effects in the transport logistics and, at the end, in the economy of large regions. The appearance and the immediate growth of Gioia Tauro port (Italy), as an international hub port, is certainly an example of the direct consequence of these changes, with remarkable consequences for the Italian and Mediterranean commercial port system. Vessels from all over the world travel thousand of miles to reach the Mediterranean Basin, in order to serve one of the most important markets in the world, the European one. Gioia Tauro hub port has become one of the main destinations, due to its efficient equipment with deep berths and a modern logistic system, its favorable geographical position in the Mediterranean Sea. It is interesting, therefore, to understand Gioia Tauro's role in the European intermodal transportation network and, specifically, the paths of freights that transit or could transit through Gioia Tauro in the future. The paper presents some methodological elements for the representation of multi-modal freight transport networks. The aim is to contribute to the definition and implementation of decisional tools for the support of the strategic planning activities of freight transportation systems. Because of the complexity of the transportation networks, the attention is focused only on the Multimodal Transport Operator (MTO), able to define and evaluate each cost component for every possible mode and path from origin to destination. Given as traffic unity the container (TEU), the MTO can choose to dispatch the transport service using different alternative modes: road, railway, sea, intermodality. The paper proposes an integrated network model on a Euro-Mediterranean context, composed of three different sub-networks for each transport mode (road, railway and sea) and specific "intermodal nodes", where the container is transferred from one modal facility to another. The model can simulate the transport patterns under various policy impacts, such as the improvement of port facilities and port operations, through the specification and calibration of cost functions for each transportation mode. The paper presents a set of applications, executed on the current Euro-Mediterranean intermodal network scenario. The first concerns an evaluation of time and monetary costs for container transportation through alternative maritime Mediterranean routes; the second is an accessibility analysis of two important European ports as Gioia Tauro and Hamburg, with the aim to define their market influence basin.

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Features: Figures; References; Tables;
  • Pagination: 21p

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 00970668
  • Record Type: Publication
  • ISBN: 0080442749
  • Files: TRIS
  • Created Date: Mar 10 2004 12:00AM