To cope with an intense and competitive environment, intermodal freight transport operators have increasingly adopted business practices —like horizontal and vertical business integration—which aim to reduce the operational costs, increase the profit margins, and improve their competitive position in the market. These strategies and business practices could potentially affect the competition level in the IFT market by increasing the market concentration. The impact can be on the separate submarkets (e.g., transshipment market or main-haulage market) or the whole market for IFT services at the network level. To investigate the impact of these business practices on the market structure of IFT networks, we present a model to analyze the market structure of IFT submarkets and extend the results to the network level. Using this multi-level market analysis model, we can evaluate the decisions made by firms and the market outcomes that result. The application of the presented model is also illustrated using a numerical example. The numerical example shows, for instance, that the impact of a merger, as a business practice, on the competition level in an IFT market —and its submarkets— depends on the merger type (horizontal and vertical). Furthermore, different indicators that “represent” market structure and competition, might react differently to a merger in an IFT network.

The analysis of market structure and concentration measures for the Intermodal Freight Transport (IFT) market is important to avoid market failure and to find the areas for policy making to promote IFT market share. This analysis can be performed for separate segments, for example, the market for transshipment service or the market for main-haulage service. However, due to the multistage characteristic of IFT service, the segmental analysis gives an incomplete view of the IFT market at the network level. In a previous paper (Saeedi et al., 2017), we present the Intermodal Freight Transport Market Structure (IFTMS) model to conduct a network-based study of the IFTMS in which distinctive actors (i.e., pre/post haulage operators, terminals, rail/barge operators, transport chains, and corridors) are competing at different levels inside distinctive markets to deliver an integrated IFT service. There are two main challenges in the application of IFTMS model in real cases, for example, the European IFT network. First, the definition of the geographical and spatial border of the transshipment market areas is needed to determine which actors are potentially competing for a specific service demand. The second challenge is the lack of disaggregated data and the consistency of existing data in nodes (i.e., the transshipment areas) and links (i.e., the rail and barge operators). To cope with these challenges, we develop a four-step methodology in which a model-based approach is used to define the geographic boundaries of the transshipment submarkets and provide detailed and consistent data for market analysis. We also apply the IFTMS model to study the market structure of European intermodal network. Our analysis shows that the majority of transshipment markets as well as main-haulage markets are highly concentrated markets. The corridor markets – which include the IFT chains – are unconcentrated markets. Furthermore, the majority of corridors in the European Union are inside highly concentrated origin-destination markets.

Shipping companies are striving to optimize their empty container repositioning strategies which also contribute to reduced congestion and environmental improvements. In this paper we propose a multi-commodity model that makes an explicit distinction between flows of non-damaged containers, on the one hand, and flows of damaged containers, on the other. The model is tailored for the repositioning of these containers in the representative setting of a network of off-dock empty depots, ocean terminals, and inland terminals. In our case study, cost savings of up to 17% are found, depending on the composition of the network, container type, and particular evacuation and repositioning strategy. In particular, directly transporting containers from inland terminals to other inland terminals (direct repositioning) results in cost savings of up to 15% for dry containers and up to 17% for reefer containers. Furthermore, the total costs might be optimized by actually preventing the container failure from occurring possibly leading to considerable additional cost reductions. Finally, exporting damaged containers might seem to be the optimal solution from a regional cost perspective, but, this does not necessarily lead to total cost optimization from the global perspective.

Intermodal freight transport has been discussed for decades as an alternative to unimodal road transport. However, it still does not represent a significant portion of the total freight market. A new and promising possibility to improve the performance of freight systems is the synchromodal design of hinterland transport systems. A cornerstone for synchromodality is an integrated view in the design and operation of intermodal transport. A main benefit of this integrated view is an improved flexibility in mode choice in hinterland transport. This paper gives a detailed description of this integrated view for synchromodal freight transport. Based on this description, a mathematical model for designing service schedules for synchromodal freight transport systems is also presented. The benefits of providing integrated transport services compared to separately planned transport services are also discussed for a case in the hinterland network of the Port of Rotterdam.