Some approaches to reduce transport time of intermodal….pdfVIP

European Transport \ Trasporti Europei (Year) Issue 52, Paper n° 3, ISSN 1825-3997 Some approaches to reduce transport time of intermodal services: Smart rail investments 1 2 Jaap Vleugel , Frans Bal 1Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands 2RI SSK, Haarlem, The Netherlands Abstract Rail intermodal services are an alternative to all-road services if the average transport time offered by these services is at least comparable. One of the determinants of transport time is how well actors in the transport chain cooperate. In this paper it is shown that substantial improvements in rail transport time are possible if these actors improve their cooperation substantially. This goes along with relatively moderate investments (a few million Euros per case). Such investments may then be regarded as a cost-effective alternative for (multi-billion) investments in rail infrastructure. This is particularly relevant in an era where budgets for rail infrastructure are either limited or create an additional burden for already debt- ridden countries. Keywords: Rail freight, transport time savings, cooperation, infrastructure. Introduction The literature is not unanimous regarding the question as to what is the factor that makes one transport mode on average more attractive to shippers and/or receivers than another, but door-to-door transport time and its variability (or reliability) is in the top five of such factors (e.g., Sommar et al., 2007). Intermodal transport is handicapped compared to road-only transport, because next to commissioning trucking services, having a rail link in the transport chain means that the specific requirements and consequences of railway operations will inf