Analytical methods and simulation models to assess innovative operational measures and technologies for rail port terminals: the case of Valencia Principe Felipe terminal

The topic of freight transport by rail is a complex theme and, in recent years, a main issue of European policy. The legislation evolution and the White Paper 2011 have demonstrated the European intention to re-launch this sector. The challenge is to promote the intermodal transport system to the detriment of road freight transport. In this context intermodal freight terminals, play a primary role for the supply chain, they are the connection point between the various transport nodes and the nodal points where the freight are handled, stored and transferred between different modes to final customer. To achieve the purpose, it is strengthen the improvement of existing intermodal freight terminals and the development of innovative intermodal freight terminals towards higher performance (ERRAC, 2012). Many terminal performances improvements have been proposed and sometime experimented. They are normally basing on combinations of operational measures and innovative technologies (e.g. automatic horizontal and parallel storage and handling, automated gate and sensors for tracking systems data exchange) tested in various terminals, with often-contradictory results. The research work described in this paper (developed within the Capacity4Rail EU project) focusses on the assessment of effects that these innovations can have in the intermodal freight terminals combined in various alternative consistent effective scenarios. The methodological framework setup to assess these innovations is basing on a combination of analytical methods based on sequential algorithms and discrete events simulation models. The output of this assessment method are key performance indicators (KPIs) selected according to terminals typologies and related to different aspects (e.g. management, operation and organization). The present paper illustrates the application of the methodological framework, tuned on the operation of various intermodal terminals, for the validation on today operation and the assessment of possible future scenarios to the case study of the Principe Felipe sea-rail terminal in Valencia

Integration of inland waterway transport in the intermodal supply chain: a taxonomy of research challenges

This paper identifies research opportunities which will enable the further integration of inland waterway transport in the intermodal supply chain. Intermodal transport may be interpreted as a chain of actors who supply a transport service. Inland navigation can play a crucial role in increasing supply chain service performance. A first group of research challenges lies in the evolving relationship between transport geography and logistics activities. The next set of research challenges has the objective to encourage efficient operations in IWT: development of a system wide model for IWT, integration of operational planning systems and analysis of bundling networks. A third group of research efforts is directed towards shippers and consignees who use the intermodal transport chain to send or receive their goods: further development of models that integrate intermodal transport decisions with supply chain decisions and creation of green supply chains. A fourth cluster of research challenges concerns the problem domain of external cost calculations. Finally detailed time series data on freight transport should be collected to support these future research tracks

The academic literature on intermodal freight transport

AbstractIt is widely accepted that non-road freight transport is less energy intensive than freight transport by road. The use of other transport modes than truck for long haul freight transport can therefore contribute to more energy efficient transportation systems. As a result, the successful promotion of intermodal transport, using rail or sea on the long haul part, has been identified as the most critical action to achieve a sustainable transport sector. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we examine the historical development of academic research on intermodal freight transport. Second, we identify the seminal works on the topic. In our analysis we identify and classify the academic literature on intermodal freight transport. This approach has also previously been used to aggregate knowledge about particular fields of research and it aims to be as unbiased as possible by being auditable and repeatable. A timeline on the evolution of the academic literature on intermodal freight transport is presented and the development in publication frequency and topics are commented on in relation to keywords, journals, author affiliations and countries. Publishing frequencies are measured, and reported, both in terms of absolute and relative values. Finally, what is likely the most important and influential papers on intermodal freight transport are identified, using citation frequency

Assignment of Freight Traffic in a Large-Scale Intermodal Network under Uncertainty

This paper presents a methodology for freight traffic assignment in a large-scale road-rail intermodal network under uncertainty. Network uncertainties caused by natural disasters have dramatically increased in recent years. Several of these disasters (e.g., Hurricane Sandy, Mississippi River Flooding, Hurricane Harvey) severely disrupted the U.S. freight transport network, and consequently, the supply chain. To account for these network uncertainties, a stochastic freight traffic assignment model is formulated. An algorithmic framework, involving the sample average approximation and gradient projection algorithm, is proposed to solve this challenging problem. The developed methodology is tested on the U.S. intermodal network with freight flow data from the Freight Analysis Framework. The experiments consider four types of natural disasters that have different risks and impacts on the transportation network: earthquake, hurricane, tornado, and flood. The results demonstrate the feasibility of the model and algorithmic framework to obtain freight flows for a realistic-sized network in reasonable time (between 417 and 716 minutes). It is found that for all disaster scenarios the freight ton-miles are higher compared to the base case without uncertainty. The increase in freight ton-miles is the highest under the flooding scenario; this is due to the fact that there are more states in the flood-risk areas and they are scattered throughout the U.S

Proposal for Management and Control of Intermodal Containers Using Monte Carlo Simulation

When examining the increased attention in freight transportation, a necessity for sustainable and efficient transportation system appears. The presence of road and traffic complications as well as environmental concerns forces us to develop or adapt an alternative operational system that allows us to overcome these issues. Moreover, the escalation in fuel prices in addition to driver issues for road-only haulage forms an unprofitable and unreliable approach. In this on-going MBA project, container management issues are addressed. A number of delays and their casuals are discussed and analysed. Moreover a Monte Carlo simulation framework is proposed to be used to analyse the interaction of different loading and unloading resources and containers within intermodal container management

Hybrid simulation and optimization approach for green intermodal transportation problem with travel time uncertainty

The increasing volumes of road transportation contribute to congestion on road, which leads to delays and other negative impacts on the reliability of transportation. Moreover, transportation is one of the main contributors to the growth of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, where the impact of road transportation is significant. Therefore, governmental organizations and private commercial companies are looking for greener transportation solutions to eliminate the negative externalities of road transportation. In this paper, we present a novel solution framework to support the operational-level decisions for intermodal transportation networks using a combination of an optimization model and simulation. The simulation model includes stochastic elements in form of uncertain travel times, whereas the optimization model represents a deterministic and linear multi-commodity service network design formulation. The intermodal transportation plan can be optimized according to different objectives, including costs, time and CO2e emissions. The proposed approach is successfully implemented to real-life scenarios where differences in transportation plans for alternative objectives are presented. The solutions for transportation networks with up to 250 services and 20 orders show that the approach is capable of delivering reliable solutions and identifying possible disruptions and alternatives for adapting the unreliable transportation plans

Simulation of railroad terminal operations and traffic control strategies in critical scenarios

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Development of a multimodal port freight transportation model for estimating container throughput

Computer based simulation models have often been used to study the multimodal freight transportation system. But these studies have not been able to dynamically couple the various modes into one model; therefore, they are limited in their ability to inform on dynamic system level interactions. This research thesis is motivated by the need to dynamically couple the multimodal freight transportation system to operate at multiple spatial and temporal scales. It is part of a larger research program to develop a systems modeling framework applicable to freight transportation. This larger research program attempts to dynamically couple railroad, seaport, and highway freight transportation models. The focus of this thesis is the development of the coupled railroad and seaport models. A separate volume (Wall 2010) on the development of the highway model has been completed. The model railroad and seaport was developed using Arena® simulation software and it comprises of the Ports of Savannah, GA, Charleston, NC, Jacksonville, FL, their adjacent CSX rail terminal, and connecting CSX railroads in the southeastern U.S. However, only the simulation outputs for the Port of Savannah are discussed in this paper. It should be mentioned that the modeled port layout is only conceptual; therefore, any inferences drawn from the model's outputs do not represent actual port performance. The model was run for 26 continuous simulation days, generating 141 containership calls, 147 highway truck deliveries of containers, 900 trains, and a throughput of 28,738 containers at the Port of Savannah, GA. An analysis of each train's trajectory from origin to destination shows that trains spend between 24 - 67 percent of their travel time idle on the tracks waiting for permission to move. Train parking demand analysis on the adjacent shunting area at the multimodal terminal seems to indicate that there aren't enough containers coming from the port because the demand is due to only trains waiting to load. The simulation also shows that on average it takes containerships calling at the Port of Savannah about 3.2 days to find an available dock to berth and unload containers. The observed mean turnaround time for containerships was 4.5 days. This experiment also shows that container residence time within the port and adjacent multimodal rail terminal varies widely. Residence times within the port range from about 0.2 hours to 9 hours with a mean of 1 hour. The average residence time inside the rail terminal is about 20 minutes but observations varied from as little as 2 minutes to a high of 2.5 hours. In addition, about 85 percent of container residence time in the port is spent idle. This research thesis demonstrates that it is possible to dynamically couple the different sub-models of the multimodal freight transportation system. However, there are challenges that need to be addressed by future research. The principal challenge is the development of a more efficient train movement algorithm that can incorporate the actual Direct Traffic Control (DTC) and / or Automatic Block Signal (ABS) track segmentation. Such an algorithm would likely improve the capacity estimates of the railroad network. In addition, future research should seek to reduce the high computational cost imposed by a discrete process modeling methodology and the adoption of single container resolution level for terminal operations. A methodology combining both discrete and continuous process modeling as proposed in this study could lessen computational costs and lower computer system requirements at a cost of some of the feedback capabilities of the model This tradeoff must be carefully examined.M.S.Committee Chair: Rodgers, Michael; Committee Member: Guensler, Randall; Committee Member: Hunter, Michae

Impacts on modal choices of new generation freights terminals

Increasing pollution, congestion of roads and worries about the spatial and environmental impacts of road transports have promoted the idea of transferring part of freight transportation from roads to railways and waterways. Given the limited density of these two modes' networks, this policy implies necessarily the development of inter-modal transports. But their operation on a large scale is meeting several problems : the additional cost of transferring the commodities from one mode or means to another, the size of investments in new technology equipment for terminals, specialized rolling stock and information systems, the involvement of several intermediaries plus the control and management of safety and reliability of the services. In the past, many innovative plans and projects for bundling and transshipping were developed, but many plans were abandoned, and despite a steady growth of inter-modal transports, the results obtained are still limited. At the present time, the most promising projects seem to be the introduction of new shuttle connections on transport links with important flows of transports. However, lower costs and better management of services could probably make attractive the organization of more complex schemes like hub-and-spokes organizations. The paper presents a methodology to model bundling concepts on multi-modal freight networks. It is based on the extensive use of virtual links as they are implemented in the NODUS software developed by GTM . Different configurations of inter-modal networks are modeled which are implemented in a digitized trans-European multi-modal network (rail, road and waterway). Cost functions are associated with every (virtual) link which corresponds to a particular transport operation. A matrix of origins and destinations throughout the European space is generated on the basis of global EUROSTAT statistics by the use of a weighted stochastic procedure. Given this transportation task a minimization of generalized costs can be made which assigns transport flows between paths, modes and means of transport. Hence, successive simulations for different configurations and various parameters' values provide a set of measures of their impacts, which can be used for assessing the interest of concrete inter-modal propositions. The indicators are the market shares, the total operating cost of the transportation task, the total cost of a particular operation, the distances covered, the times of transport, the service frequency required, the energy consumption, etc. This research is part of the EU Commission's TERMINET project which focuses on the potentialities of innovative bundling concepts for transport nodes and terminals.