Highlights A sustainable Intermodal Freight Transportation Network is developed. The government determines a controlled rail tariff discount for rail companies and compensates the money that they lose due to offering the rail tariff discount by the money that will be collected from fuel saving in road freight transportation system. The rail tariff discount is customized to the network’s OD flows and rail connections. Multiple users’ route choice behaviors is modeled by applying a stated preference method. A real case is studied and some insights are presented.

    Abstract Moving freight by intermodal services instead of road services not only saves a large amount of fuel but also improves sustainability. This paper presents a sustainable Intermodal Freight Transportation Network Design Problem (IFTNDP) in which the effectiveness of a new short-term policy, called controlled rail tariff discounting policy, is evaluated. In the IFTNDP, the government locates intermodal hubs and cooperates with rail companies to offer discounted rail tariffs on the rail connections of intermodal routes. Rail companies are allowed to customize the amount of rail tariff discounting for the network’s OD flows and rail connections. In addition, the government compensates the losses that rail companies incur due to offering the rail tariff discounts by the amount that will be collected from fuel savings in the freight transportation system. Hence, the government can boost the utility of intermodal transportation without investing funds to compensate the losses of rail companies. A stated preference model based on a questionnaire is adapted to identify users’ route choice behaviour. Then, the users’ route choice behavior is incorporated into the IFTNDP by a set of constraints, depending on the road and intermodal travelling times and costs. The model is applied to a real freight network and insights made by undertaking sensitivity analyses. The results demonstrate that the controlled rail tariff discounting policy not only increases the contribution of freight intermodal transportation in moving total freight but also enhances government’s profits from fuel savings after compensating rail companies’ losses.


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    Title :

    Designing sustainable intermodal freight transportation networks using a controlled rail tariff discounting policy – The Iranian case


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2022-01-13


    Size :

    19 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English