Intermodal Transport
Intermodal transport represents the flow of goods where the means of transport (road, rail, air, water) change at least one time on the existing transport route. A separate mode of transport is responsible for its part of the route in the transport chain. Intermodal transport carries freight using specially designed carrying and cargo protecting units. They can easily be swapped between several transport modes. Thus, unloading and reloading of individual items is avoided. It also results in a lower overall payload due to the duplicated load-bearing elements of the rail vehicle and the load carrying units.
Intermodal transport requires containers, swap bodies, pallets or semi-trailers to carry freight. Management units for transferring freight from one mode to another have facilitated intermodal transfers. The examples include piggyback (TOFC: Trailers on Flat Cars), where truck trailers are placed on rail cars, and LASH (lighter aboard ship), where river barges are placed directly on board sea-going ships.
The most important feature of intermodalism is the provision of a service with one bill of lading. This has necessitated a revolution in organization and information control. At the heart of modern intermodalism are data handling, processing and distribution systems. They are essential to ensure safe, reliable and cost effective control of freight movements.
Intermodal terminals are the transfer points and must take into account the very different properties of the transport modes involved. For example, road with single load-units carrying stochastic traffic flows, as compared to transport by trains based on timetabled transport of consolidated loads.
Today, intermodal transport is transforming a growing share of the medium and long-haul freight flows across the globe. Intermodal transportation is a leading solution to demands of today’s global supply chains, which are increasingly congested, more expensive, and environmentally unsustainable.
In Europe, intermodal transport is an inseparable part of transport policy because of its reduction of negative impacts of road transport on environment, consumption of fuels and energy, costs on roads and highways maintenance, farmland occupation and increase of road traffic safety.
The intermodal transport integrates the system advantages of various transport modes. To give an example, railway is ecologically less harmful transport system than freight road transport, which transports large volumes of goods and cargo units of intermodal transport for longer distances in particular in compliance with timetable graphic. On the other hand, freight road transport is strongly flexible as far as time and access to the end points of transportation are concerned. It assembles transport flows into combined transport terminals, which utilizes effect of massiveness of railway transportation for intermodal transport efficiency growth. As for water transport, it affords opportunity of even bigger transport flows with more favorable prices and energy consumption than railway transport. It significantly eliminates accident rate and unburdens land infrastructure.
The connection effect of the advantages of traffic departments system participating in intermodal transport demonstrates, from the national economic aspect, as following:
each freight combined transport unit relieves roads from at least one truck running, what decreases the road network burden on main long-distance road traffic routes, contributing to increase the transport road fluidity and safety on roads
the energy consumption during the transport in intermodal transport system is up to 30% lower than by straight long-distance freight road transport of goods
by reduction of environment loading by poisonous air pollutants and noise, considering much lower values of these influences relating to railway and waterway traffic, which consists the most of the transport route of
the time loss by boarder crossing is reduced if block trains are used along the lines of intermodal transport
increase of transport means running, by which the costs per one transported goods unit is reduced
the amount of transport chain participants is increasing, as well as the sphere of business activities, and the possibility to provide the complex area operation is established
the advantages of straight fast trains within railway traffic (goods delivery in appointed time, reduction of costs relating to roads charging, etc.) are utilized
whereas it eliminates the barriers of road transport (delays at the boarder crossings, mandatory resting of the crew), relating to the long-distance transports, it has a tendency to become unrivalled transport mode of the highest quality.