Integrating drayage and intermodal routing decisions: a real-life case study

Abstract

Intermodal transport provides a promising alternative for unimodal road transport within the evolution towards a more sustainable transport system. The integration of planning problems as well as the inclusion of real-life features results in improvements in intermodal decision processes. Including these aspects in decision support systems to provide planning support may stimulate the use of intermodal transport. In this paper, decisions on local drayage operations within service regions are integrated with long-haul rail routing decisions between service regions, taking into account real-life problem characteristics. A case study shows how the integrated planning tool can be used to analyse the impact of tactical decisions by minimizing total operational transport costs. These operational costs are usually ignored when making decisions at the tactical decision level. These results can be used by intermodal service operators for adequate price setting when accepting new customers, or for renegotiations of contracts for purchasing slots on long-haul rail services managed by other parties or railway paths of own trains.