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

Seyed Sina Mohri and Russell Thompson

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 2022, vol. 157, issue C, 59-77

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.

Keywords: Intermodal Freight Transportation; Sustainability; Rail Tariff Discounting; Network Design; Freight Mode Choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2022.01.012

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