Intermodal freight transport | EPFL Graph Search

Intermodal freight transport involves the transportation of freight in an intermodal container or vehicle, using multiple modes of transportation (e.g., rail, ship, aircraft, and truck), without any handling of the freight itself when changing modes. The method reduces cargo handling, and so improves security, reduces damage and loss, and allows freight to be transported faster. Reduced costs over road trucking is the key benefit for inter-continental use. This may be offset by reduced timings for road transport over shorter distances. Intermodal transportation has its origin in 18th century England and predates the railways. Some of the earliest containers were those used for shipping coal on the Bridgewater Canal in England in the 1780s. Coal containers (called "loose boxes" or "tubs") were soon deployed on the early canals and railways and were used for road/rail transfers (road at the time meaning horse-drawn vehicles). Wooden coal containers were first used on the railways in the 1830s on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. In 1841, Isambard Kingdom Brunel introduced iron containers to move coal from the vale of Neath to Swansea Docks. By the outbreak of the First World War the Great Eastern Railway was using wooden containers to trans-ship passenger luggage between trains and sailings via the port of Harwich. The early 1900s saw the first adoption of covered containers, primarily for the movement of furniture and intermodal freight between road and rail. A lack of standards limited the value of this service and this in turn drove standardisation. In the U.S. such containers, known as "lift vans", were in use from as early as 1911. In the United Kingdom, containers were first standardised by the Railway Clearing House (RCH) in the 1920s, allowing both railway-owned and privately-owned vehicles to be carried on standard container flats. By modern standards these containers were small, being long, normally wooden and with a curved roof and insufficient strength for stacking.

Brine Absorption in Concrete at Low Temperature: Experimental Investigation and Modeling

David Conciatori

An experimental campaign supports a model named TransChlor for bringing liquid water moved by capillary suction and chloride ions into concrete. The principal objective of the experimental campaign is to represent conventional concretes under real conditions of a local microclimate. Capillarity tests were performed on specimens of three different types of concrete dried at different levels of relative humidity at low temperatures (to -20 degrees C) to represent the effect of a real climate in winter. This article shows that low temperatures decrease water absorption by capillarity. The use of TransChlor to simulate liquid water and chloride ion penetration into concrete is presented with an emphasis on the faster transport mode of chloride ions by convection when water is in contact with concrete. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)MT.1943-5533.0000238. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.

American Society of Civil Engineers2011

The Potential for Premium-intermodal Services to Reduce Freight CO2 Emissions in the Quebec City - Windsor Corridor

The Quebec City-Windsor corridor (the Corridor) is the busiest and most important trade and transportation corridor in Canada. The transportation sector is the second largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emission category in the country. This paper develops estimates of the potential for CO2 emission reductions in the freight transportation sector by estimating demand for premium-intermodal services between the main Corridor destinations. CO2 reductions are estimated on the basis of a stated-preference carrier-choice survey of shippers in the Corridor. Survey data were used to develop mode share models for five different categories of shipments between eighteen city-pairs. A railyard-catchment approach was taken to arrive at estimates of contestable intercity truck traffic using a subset of the Ontario Ministry of Transportations Commercial Vehicle Survey. CO2 emissions were based on current truck traffic estimates, and emissions factors obtained from MOBILE6.2C. The results show that premium-intermodal service has the potential to capture a significant share of traffic between the main Corridor destinations with potential CO2 emissions reductions in the range of 0.058 to 0.484 Mt a year.

2008

Mode and Carrier Choice in the Quebec City - Windsor Corridor: A Random Parameters Approach

The Quebec City-Windsor corridor is the busiest and most important trade and transportation corridor in Canada. The transportation sector is the second largest contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the country. Governments around the world, including Canada, are considering increased mode share by rail as a way to reduce transportation emissions. Evaluating the potential of freight mode shift as a means to reduce transportation emissions requires rigorous analytical models that can predict the effect of government policy on mode split. This paper presents the findings of a random parameters mixed-logit model of shipper carrier choice in the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor. The model itself was developed using the results of a stated preference Survey undertaken in the fall of 2005. The survey was designed explicitly to evaluate shipper preferences for the carriage of intercity consignments, and particularly for their preferences for carriers that contract the services of rail companies to carry these shipments via rail. A fixed parameters approach suggests that shippers are very mistrustful of using rail to move their consignments and suggests that increasing rails share of freight faces tremendous challenges. This result is not entirely consistent with shipper interviews conducted during survey development that suggested some shippers might prefer rail for environmental-public relations reasons. A random-parameters approach was adopted to test whether preference variation across respondents would be able to explain this inconsistency. This random-parameter analysis suggests that there is some variation in shippers preferences for the use of intermodal transportation. In particular, the model suggests that for 20% of shippers, knowledge of a carriers use of rail has a positive effect. This appears to be the first attempt at a random parameter approach in the freight choice literature.

2007

Mode and Carrier Choice in the Quebec City - Windsor Corridor: A Random Parameters Approach

2007