The Design of A Synchromodal Freight Transport System

The Design of A Synchromodal Freight Transport System

Fan, Y.

Zuidwijk, R.A. (mentor)
Van Duin, R. (mentor)
Wiegmans, B. (mentor)
Behdani, B. (mentor)

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Transport & Planning

2013-10-17

In the current situation, although there are advantages of intermodal freight transport, the performance of intermodal freight transport (IFT) is not good. The market share of IFT is low compared with single-mode road transport. It is necessary to analyze the current operation of IFT system and apply the concept of synchromodal transport to improve its performance. Firstly, the definition and characteristics of synchromodal transport need to be defined before applying it to the current IFT. Another important issue before design synchromodal transport system is to analyze the current operation of IFT. In this research, the service design is from the perspective of logistics service providers (LSPs). The position of LSPs in the current IFT market is analyzed with Porter’s five forces model. It gives a clear understanding of the operation of LSPs and their interactions with other main actors. Based on the analysis on current IFT market, it is important to better match the service capacity and transport demand to provide a flexible transport service. Therefore, the design of the synchromodal transport system realizes the following characteristics: 1. Dynamic planning of transportation; 2. Decision making based on network utilization; and 3. Combining transport flow (volume). An optimization model is developed to create synchromodal transport service schedule and analyze its impact. The model addresses the integrated service design and also takes the time factor into account. In this research, it is assumed that defining the service schedule is done by an LSP, who is able to integrate the transport volume and determine the schedule of different transport modes according to the demand data. The model aims to minimize total service cost which include transport cost and waiting penalties. The input of the model is transport volumes from a specific origin to a specific destination with the earliest pick-up time and the due date. The output is the departure time of each service and the flow distribution. Model application is based on the case of container transport on Rotterdam-Tilburg. 6 scenarios are generated to analyze the performance of synchromodal transport. Firstly the model is applied to the case with the pre-defined demand pattern. The schedule for synchromodal transport service is generated easily. Comparing the results, the total service cost is reduced and the share of sustainable modes is increased. So synchromodal transport can improve the performance of current IFT system. Furthermore, the model could also be applied to the case with undefined demand pattern. The results show that the assumptions for unit transport cost and waiting penalties are quite important, which will influence the choice of transport modes.

freight transport
synchromodality
modeling
service design

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:ed9d790c-73bd-4afa-9401-04748a5c8ddf

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2013 Fan, Y.