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Burden or opportunity for modal shift? – Embracing the urban dimension of intermodal road-rail transport
Transport Policy 59 (2017) 10–16
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Burden or opportunity for modal shift? – Embracing the urban dimension of intermodal road-rail transport €nke Behrends So Division of Service Management and Logistics, Department of Technology Management and Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Intermodal transport Modal shift Urban transport Rail freight Transport planning Sustainability
Intermodal road-rail transport (IRRT) has a significant urban dimension, which affects the modal shift potential and the environmental benefits of rail freight. This paper explores the relevance of local policies for sustainable modal shift strategies by conceptualising the links between urban planning and rail freight. The presented framework identifies measures that local authorities can apply in order to increase the market and environmental improvement potential of IRRT. The results indicate that local urban transport planning has a significant role to play in the promotion of rail freight. Integrating rail freight into long-term urban development plans offers new possibilities for rail freight that are necessary in order to achieve a sustainable freight transport system in the face of ever-increasing road transport volumes.
1. Introduction
containers, rail shuttles linking seaports with inland terminals recaptured market shares from road transport. The Port of Gothenburg, Sweden is a frequently cited showcase of this case of rail competition (Woxenius and Bergqvist, 2011). However, in the market segment of continental traffic, which has significantly higher requirements on transport time, precision and frequency, progress has been marginal at best. As a result, no substantial overall changes in modal shares have been observed. Between 2000 and 2013, total inland freight transport within EU-28 increased by approximately 10 per cent. Road freight accounted for the majority of the increase (þ19 per cent), while rail freight only grew marginally (0.3 per cent) (Eurostat, 2015). Consequently, the 2006 White Paper Mid-term Review conceded that road was likely to remain the dominant mode of transport for inland freight (European Commission, 2006), and the 2011 White Paper envisioned possibilities for a modal shift only over distances longer than 300 km (European Commission, 2011). These examples indicate that the EU Commission has reduced its ambitious modal shift goals formulated in the 2001 White Paper. In the light of these disappointing results of European modal shift policies, European transport policy may need some re-thinking if a sustainable freight sector is to be achieved. Current policy measures have been widely applied at the European and national levels, focusing on rail haulage and transhipments. Local policies, on the other hand, have not paid particular attention to rail freight issues. Haywood (2003) found that local transport plans in the UK increasingly include rail freight; however, little evidence was found for effective action, and Dablanc (2009) stated that most regional governments in Germany and France are
The imbalance in the development of inland freight modes has increased in recent decades. Road freight has become the dominant mode of transport in Europe and accounted for approximately 72 per cent of total inland freight in 2013 in the European Union, while rail, inland waterways and pipelines combined represented the other 28 per cent (Eurostat, 2015). This development is unsustainable because road freight has substantially higher externalities per ton-kilometre than rail and inland waterways. As a result, road freight is responsible for almost the entire externalities of the freight sector (96 per cent in the EU in 2008) (CE Delft et al., 2011). Therefore, a key policy objective for the freight sector's sustainable development is to reduce the imbalance in the development of the different modes and to transfer road freight to less environmentally damaging modes, such as rail and inland waterways. In its 2001 White Paper on European transport policy, the EU Commission adopted modal shift from road to rail as a general objective of European transport policy (European Commission, 2001) and, in the following years, initiated a series of policy initiatives to revitalize rail freight. These initiatives included financial support to projects that aimed to transfer cargo from road to rail and waterways (Marco Polo Programmes), as well as opening up the internal rail freight market to regulated competition and eliminating operational barriers (three Railway Packages) (EEA, 2015). Some market segments have seen progress towards meeting the objective of modal shift. For example, for hinterland traffic of maritime
E-mail address: [email protected]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2017.06.004 Received 5 August 2016; Received in revised form 15 May 2017; Accepted 14 June 2017 0967-070X/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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shippers are seldom coordinated, resulting in a high share of empty driving (Morlok et al., 1995). Furthermore, PPH flows are locally and temporarily concentrated at the terminals, which can result in congestion and waiting times. In addition, since terminals as well as consigner and consignees are usually located in or in the vicinity of urban areas, PPH is affected by urban traffic congestion. Due to the rail production principle based on night jumps, PPH trips usually take place in the morning and in the afternoon during commuting peak-hours. PPH by diesel trucks is also responsible for a significant share of the transport chains' externalities. Since PPH operations usually takes place in urban areas, where they share the infrastructure with passenger traffic, their congestion, noise, accidents and air pollution impacts are much higher than for intercity traffic outside urban areas (CE Delft et al., 2011). Additionally, because of the low capacity utilization due to empty driving, which is inherent in pick-up and delivery traffic, the distance travelled in urban areas is generally higher than for all-modal road transport. As a result, PPH can account for up to 50 per cent of both the intermodal chain's externalities (Behrends, 2012) and costs (Macharis and Bontekoning, 2004; Santos et al., 2015). Therefore, PPH plays a significant role in both the economic and environmental performance of the intermodal chain, despite its relatively short distance compared to the rail haul.
less involved in the actual promotion of rail freight activities than they were a few years ago. In addition, Lindholm and Behrends (2012) found that, until recently, freight issues in general were rarely considered in urban and regional planning. Most urban freight research has addressed last-mile deliveries to retail stores in central business districts or other high-density areas that are the nexus of urban commercial activities, while only a few research works have looked at rail freight and logistics land-use issues (Behrends, 2016). In this paper, we will argue that urban transport planning has an important role to play in developing promising modal shift strategies. Given the limited success of the European and national policy measures in recent decades, a better consideration of rail freight questions in local policies may offer new potentials for the improvement of rail freight. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relevance of local policies for sustainable modal shift strategies by developing a framework that conceptualises the links between urban planning and rail freight. To achieve this, the paper takes the form of desk research and conceptual work analysing previous research on rail freight from a local authority perspective. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. First, we review and structure the literature on rail freight in order to identify the critical issues of rail freight limiting its modal shift and environmental improvement potential. Second, we present a conceptual framework for integrating rail freight into urban planning, comprising five categories, and identify measures applicable by local authorities in each category to contribute to solve these critical issues. We conclude the paper by outlining theoretical contributions, implications for policy makers and list future research directions.
2.2. Rail haul Rail operations involve the movement of the loading units between terminals. In order to be competitive to road freight, trains must carry certain volumes and cover a certain transport distance in order to compensate for the additional costs of PPH and transhipments. As a general rule, therefore, modal shift strategies are only promising for large transport flows over long distances, rather than for short-distance transports, where the rail distance is too short to compensate the additional costs from PPH and transhipment operations. The break-even distance for IRRT obviously depends on many factors (such as rail pricing, road transport costs, freight volume, balance of traffic and location of rail terminals (Nierat, 1997)), but for European intermodal transport it is usually defined as 500 km or larger (Kreutzberger, 2008). On corridors where freight volumes allow for full trainloads with the required frequency, direct terminal-to-terminal shuttle services provide good transport quality and economy. If freight flows are too small for direct rail services, the required volumes can be achieved by consolidating freight belonging to different origin and/or destinations regions along a corridor. However, the transhipments add additional handling cost and time along the corridor, and this additional impedance of consolidation has been an incentive for intermodal rail freight operators to simplify their networks. As a result, intermodal operators only provide services where the conditions are extremely favourable (Kreutzberger, 2010), resulting in a situation whereby rail freight lines link larger cities with one another but do not link to the small towns situated along the line. These direct links are the best rail product wherever full trainloads with the required frequency can be organized. This is one of the most often employed production system in Europe, connecting agglomerations, centres of industrial production and container ports with major inland locations (UIC, 2007). This reorganisation of major railway networks, driven by the need to improve their financial performance, caused a withdrawal of railway services in regions with low traffic volumes (Dablanc, 2009). Gouvernal and Daydou (2005) found that the use of dedicated trains has increased dramatically in the United Kingdom. Woodburn (2015) also stated that many freight trains in the UK are operated directly from origin to destination. As a consequence, transport customers located in peripheral regions lack access to rail freight services and are dependent on road freight. Rich et al.’s (2011) analysis of the Scandinavian region showed that a majority of all transports shorter than 500 km have no alternative to road freight. Therefore, the economic and environmental benefits of rail can only be realised for a minor share of the transport market. From an environmental perspective, rail operations are generally
2. Intermodal road-rail transport: modal shift and environmental improvement potential Since the extension of the railway network is limited, rail is not accessible for substantial shares of the transport market. Therefore, increasing the reach of rail freight requires intermodal road-rail transport (IRRT); that is, the combination of rail and road transport in a single transport chain. Macharis and Bontekoning (2004) defined four major IRRT activities (a) PPH operations for pick-up and delivery, (b) transhipment operations, (c) long-haul transport, and (d) route selection for a shipment through the whole intermodal network. The greatest distance of the transport chain is performed by rail, where the units are consolidated with other shipments and economies of scale are being achieved, while road transport is assigned to the collection and distribution of freight (Nierat, 1997). In this way, IRRT increases the reach of rail, which enhances the efficiency of the transport system and reduces its environmental impact. For example, Craig et al. (2013) estimated that the average carbon intensity of IRRT in the USA was 46 per cent lower than road transport. However, other studies are more pessimistic about its potential contribution to energy usage reduction and environmental improvement (McKinnon, 2003). Kreutzberger et al. (2006) showed that IRRT actually has a higher environmental impact than road freight when several factors cumulate, including long PPH distances, unfavourable shippers’ locations in relation to terminals and rail route, and electricity production from non-energy-efficient fossil power plants. Promising modal shift policies must address these critical issues for the economic and environmental performance of IRRT. This section analyses the economic and environmental performance of each activity related to the production of IRRT; that is, PPH, rail haul and transhipments. 2.1. Pre- and post-haulage PPH operations involve the provision of an empty trailer or container to the shipper and the subsequent transportation of a full trailer or container to the intermodal terminal (Macharis and Bontekoning, 2004). These operations are highly fragmented, with various PPH companies serving each terminal, while distribution and pick-up trips to and from 11
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significant modal shift, since existing rail terminal capacity in Europe will not be sufficient to fulfil the forecasted demand, making capacity extensions necessary to maintain market shares (UIC, 2004). This requires a significant amount of land, since modern intermodal terminals are among the most space-extensive consumers of land in urban areas (Slack, 1999). Many of the terminals, which were originally established in the 19th century at the edge of urban areas, are now surrounded by urban development (Hesse, 2008); therefore, capacity extensions face spatial constraints within crowded land-use arrangements. Finally, even if the competitiveness of IRRT can be improved in such a way that it would attract significantly higher shares of the transport market, IRRT would fall victim to its own success. As argued by Konings (1996), a significant modal shift entails the growth of PPH traffic around terminals, which threatens the accessibility of the terminal itself. The rendering above is summarised in Table 1, which categorises the identified factors into four clusters of critical issues for the sustainability performance of IRRT: (1) cost-quality performance, (2) social and environmental impacts, (3) capacity and (4) accessibility.
considered environmentally friendly, since wheel-on-rails transport is significantly more energy efficient than road transport. Furthermore, electric traction provides access to various forms of renewable energy. Therefore, it is much easier to introduce renewable energy into rail than to road transport in order to achieve zero-emission-transport and to avoid the negative consequences of oil dependency. However, electrical trains using renewable energy are not completely emission-free either, since they emit particles mainly originating from wear of rails, brakes, wheels and carbon contact strips (Fridell et al., 2010). Another significant problem of rail is noise in urban areas (CE Delft et al., 2011). On existing railway networks, freight traffic is the main source of noise, which threatens political and public support for increasing the share of rail traffic. The infrastructure also causes separation effects in urban areas as well as impacts on nature and landscape; namely, the loss and fragmentation of habitats. 2.3. Transhipments Transhipments are a necessary operation in intermodal transport facilitating the division of tasks between short haul on road and long haul on rail; however, they also add cost and time to the intermodal chain, limiting the competitiveness in relation to all-road transport. A prerequisite for intermodal transport to compete for a higher share of the transport market is a denser network of small-scale intermodal terminals. If the node operations in these networks are executed by the present conventional terminals, they would absorb too much time and money, leading to unattractive integral lead times and costs (Trip and Bontekoning, 2002). Therefore, these networks require more complex terminal operations, enabling fast and efficient transhipments. A wide range of sophisticated alternative terminal concepts have been proposed by inventors and evaluated positively by researchers; however, with very few exceptions, they have not been implemented (B€arthel and Woxenius, 2004). The main problem is that the sophisticated nature of innovative transhipment technologies is likely to result in high investment costs (Vrenken et al., 2005), while the concepts’ benefits among actors remain uncertain. Transhipments in terminals not only affect transport cost and time of the intermodal chain; they also cause environmental impacts, especially on the areas where the terminals are located. PPH traffic is concentrated around the terminals, which means it is the areas adjacent to these terminals that are affected the most by both rail operations' and PPH's congestion, noise and air pollution. Furthermore, transhipment operations at terminals generate externalities as they cause noise and, depending on the transhipment technology used, air pollution (Ricci and Black, 2005). Another critical issue is terminal capacity. In order for rail to be able to absorb the expected growth in the long-distance market segment where IRRT provides good quality and service, increased capacity is required both in terms of the rail network and intermodal terminals. Therefore, actions for supporting rail freight have focused on rail corridors where line capability is problematic (Woodburn, 2008). However, enhancing the rail link capacity would not be sufficient to achieve a
3. A conceptual framework for integrating rail freight into urban planning The variety of measures that local authorities have used to improve efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of urban transport in general is also likely to have an effect on IRRT. Hence, the integration of rail freight into urban transport planning can help resolve the critical issues identified in the previous section, leading to a more competitive and more environmentally friendly IRRT. This section defines a conceptual framework that captures this integration between urban planning and modal shift strategies. It involves local policy measures in five categories (Table 2): (1) land use planning measures, (2) infrastructure measures, (3) regulatory and market-based measures, (4) support of new technologies, and (5) management measures. 3.1. Land-use planning measures Land-use planning measures include all interventions that change the use of space. Since it takes a long time to change existing land use patterns, land-use planning must be consistent over a long period of time (MDS Transmodal, 2012). With regard to rail freight, the localisation of terminals and potential rail shippers in the urban environment is a key tool for solving the critical issues of IRRT, as the strategic location of logistics areas can reduce traffic and its related impacts (Wagner, 2010). Furthermore, Behrends (2012) showed that in cases where the intermodal terminal is located in central areas, PPH from shippers in suburban areas generates significant traffic impacts, such as congestion, accident risks and noise, which can counterbalance the climate and air pollution benefits of rail freight (Fig. 1a). Under such circumstances, a modal shift is mainly beneficial for intercity regions, while the externalities in the origin and destination cities can increase significantly. Thus, locating the intermodal terminal and industrial areas with potential shippers of rail freight in less sensitive suburban areas can reduce PPH distances and
Table 1 Critical issues for the sustainability performance of intermodal transport.
Cost/quality performance Social and ecosystem impacts
Capacity Accessibility
PPH
Rail
Terminals
Many empty trips. Urban driving conditions with low speed and unreliable trip times Dependency on fossil fuel. Local air pollution Contribution to congestion, noise, accidents in sensitive urban areas
High cost and low quality on short and medium distance transports Noise in sensitive urban area. Separation effects
High transhipment costs. Long terminal dwell time
Rail capacity bottlenecks on long-distance corridors Lack of rail services to/from small economic regions
Terminal capacity bottlenecks in economic centres
12
Noise in sensitive urban areas. Extensive land-use.
Lack of terminals in small economic regions
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Table 2 A conceptual framework for integrating rail freight into urban planning. Authority action category Land use planning measures Zoning of logistics activities
Concentrating logistics activities Infrastructure measures Capacity of terminal access roads Regulations and market-based measures Regulations New technologies Local fuel infrastructure Financial support for terminal development Management measures Cooperation of transport operators
PPH
Terminal
Rail
Location of terminal and shipper/receiver Safeguarding sites for terminal capacity Land availability for rail infrastructure determine PPH distance (extensions or new investments) Land-use pattern determines air pollution and noise impact sensitivity of PPH, terminal and rail activities Economies of scale in PPH operations Economies of scale in terminal operations Critical mass for rail services Reduced cost and time of PPH trips Access regulations affect traffic demand on terminal access roads
Regulations affect terminal Opening/ operation hours
Access to renewable fuels determines emissions of PPH traffic Enable implementation of innovative transhipment technologies Coordination of PPH trips reduces PPH costs Coordination of freight flows to reduce transhipment unit costs
Cooperation of shippers
Coordination of freight flows to achieve rail suitable volumes
Fig. 1. PPH distance and efficiency with (a) central terminal and (b) suburban terminal. (CBD: central business district. Green areas indicate low density areas with limited conflicts with urban stakeholders, red areas indicate high density and high conflicts). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
3.2. Infrastructure measures
hence PPH costs. Moreover, noise, congestion and air pollution impacts are minimised, even in case of longer PPH distances, as PPH trips avoid sensitive urban areas (Fig. 1b). In order to minimise land-use conflicts and local impacts that PPH, rail and terminal operations generate on other urban stakeholders, local land use planning needs to geographically separate terminals and shippers, as well as roads and rail tracks, from other land use forms, such as residential and commercial. Generally, geographically separating manufacturing and logistics from other landuse forms can avoid a mixing of freight and passenger traffic, thus making access to the terminals easier and PPH more efficient. Furthermore, in order to allow for terminal capacity extensions, it is important that local authorities consider rail freight facilities when formulating their development plans. Suitable sites for intermodal terminals should be protected for future development and new freight developments should be served by rail (Woodburn, 2008). Land-use planning is also an important tool for encouraging the development of new terminals in logistics areas. By encouraging (or even forcing, by way of regulations) developers of distribution centres to locate at strategic sites, an intermodal terminal can then be justified on the basis of a number of co-located new distribution facilities (Woodburn, 2008). Clustering large freight generators, such as industrial and logistics activities in the region, also makes it easier to stimulate cooperation, and siting intermodal terminals in these logistics clusters keeps PPH distances short (Vrenken et al., 2005).
Infrastructure measures have a strong impact on urban transport. Due to the high cost of planning, implementing and maintaining transport infrastructure in urban areas and their perceived “public good” nature, local authorities are often the only actors willing and able to fund their implementation (MDS Transmodal, 2012). The responsibility of ensuring that a terminal is properly integrated into the local transport system lies with the local authorities (Vrenken et al., 2005). A challenge for the integration of the terminal is increasing traffic levels, which increases congestion and, consequently, compromises the accessibility of terminals and reliability of PPH operations. For example, Behrends (2015) noted that the intermodal terminal in Stockholm is located on the ring road around the wider city centre, which is one of the most congested roads in Sweden. Congested terminal access roads can be a significant barrier for a modal shift, for two reasons. Obviously, congestion increases the PPH operating costs, but even more important is the transport time, which is often critical for the transport of high-value goods. Time windows between pick-up at the shipper and terminal closing time are often very short and if PPH trips take too much time for a delivery to the terminal before terminal closing time, road is the only alternative for these freight flows. This impedance from urban transport is especially relevant for shorter rail distances, which are more sensitive to additional PPH costs because they account for a large share of total chain costs. An extension 13
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innovative vehicles and fuels are usually not suitable for longer transport distances and are therefore difficult to introduce in freight transport. Since these systems usually have a limited driving range, they are currently preferably tested or employed in passenger transport, as most passenger cars and public buses operate in a limited region and therefore do not require a widespread coverage of refuelling and maintenance infrastructure. The same applies for the lorries that serve intermodal terminals. Since the distances driven from those terminals are comparatively short, PPH is well suited for employment of vehicles with alternative propulsion systems and alternative fuels, which has the potential to reduce the harmful emissions in urban areas (Macharis et al., 2007). Lindholm and Behrends (2012) showed that many cities actively support the introduction of alternative fuels in the public bus fleet and for the passenger cars of their citizens. Therefore, many cities already have a refuelling and maintenance infrastructure for alternative fuels and propulsion systems, which could also be used by PPH operators. Sharing the refuelling and maintenance infrastructure with passenger transport facilitates lower costs through economies of scale and a reduction of risk for PPH operators since they do not need to make their own investments. A significant barrier for the implementation of a denser terminal network is the transhipment costs of innovative terminal concepts. The investments have to be made by the terminal operator, while the potential benefits caused by the innovations end up at the rail operator and ultimately the shipper (Wiegmans et al., 2007). However, there are two reasons why rail operators focus on the core rail network rather than the development of new terminals. First, rail operators neglect the business opportunities due to a lack of system thinking, focusing on cost reductions and efficiency improvements on single routes instead of entire networks (Kreutzberger, 2010). The second reason is that the rail freight companies typically do not have sufficient resources to invest in what are often seen as expensive, speculative terminal schemes (Woodburn, 2008). Intermodal business development requires long-term cooperation and commitment among market players, but since the time horizons are long and short-term benefits are few, potential users are often discouraged from participating in potential projects. Local authorities can play a key role in enabling the required cooperation, both horizontally and vertically. A local public–private project organisation and financial contribution to the terminal investment costs can help achieve progress and maintain the commitment of players (Vrenken et al., 2005). Some examples showing the potential of local support can be found in the UK, where new terminals were the result of regional authorities’ support in the significant initial stages in funding and construction (Woodburn, 2008).
of capacity of the terminal access roads can therefore be a suitable measure for improving the preconditions for a modal shift. 3.3. Market-based and regulatory measures Additional ways to ease the impedance of urban congestion for terminal access are market-based and regulatory measures. Market-based measures aim to modify the market prices of transport services, thereby adapting the behaviour of private passenger and freight transport actors (MDS Transmodal, 2012). Two market-based measures are road pricing, where the user of the road network is charged based on the distance travelled, and congestion charges, where users are charged for access to urban areas. In cities where the terminals are located in central areas and access is limited during passenger traffic peak hours, congestion charges can be an effective policy measure to make terminal access more efficient. Cities that have implemented congestion charges have observed a significant decrease in traffic levels; examples include 16 per cent in London (Santos et al., 2010), 22 per cent in Stockholm (Eliasson et al., 2009) and 12 per cent in Gothenburg (B€ orjesson and Kristoffersson, 2015). These reductions are mainly due to the decrease in passenger transport. Therefore, congestion charges have positive effects on freight traffic, since freight traffic is relatively insensitive to road pricing, due to customer requirements on delivery times or the fact that operators can pass on the costs to the receiver (Quak, 2007). In cases where access to terminals is impaired by passenger traffic, road pricing can be an effective measure for increasing the accessibility of terminals and to reduce the operating cost of PPH traffic. Regulatory measures are “command and control” regulations; that is, rules and prohibitions aimed at controlling freight traffic for the wider benefits of society. These include restrictions on access for freight vehicles, based on time, volume or weight, and emission levels (MDS Transmodal, 2012). One possible way to increase transport efficiency is to relax the rules regarding the weights and dimensions of heavy vehicles. Allowing longer and heavier vehicles (LHV) in IRRT can lead to a reduction in PPH costs (Bergqvist and Behrends, 2011; Bergqvist and Monios, 2016). However, increasing the maximum length and weight of trucks is a controversial issue (McKinnon, 2008), since it can negatively affect safety and have implications for road transport infrastructure in urban areas. Since PPH operations are embedded in urban transport, allowing the use of LHV for PPH is even more problematic than for intercity road freight. In order to minimise the potential negative implications, local authorities can apply restrictions on the local road network regarding speed, route and time of day, etc. This underlines the importance of integrated transport and land-use planning, which separates freight and passenger transport. It also emphasises the importance of an approach that integrates modal shift and urban freight transport strategies. Allowing LHV for PPH without taking into account the urban consequences could lead to strong resistance at the local level. Local authorities also apply regulations to limit the hours of operations of terminals, when located in zones of intense environmental and land use conflict. Woodburn (2008) argued that new terminal investments, which are viewed positively at the macro-economic level, are often seen negatively at the local level, resulting in negative responses in the local planning process.
3.5. Management measures Management measures are softer in nature than market-based and regulatory measures and aim at collaboration of actors in order to reduce costs or to add value to freight operators and/or their customers (MDS Transmodal, 2012). Management measures on the local level that are relevant for IRRT include the consolidation of demand for rail freight and the consolidation of supply of PPH. Local authorities can play a key role in facilitating the required consolidation by creating awareness of the advantages of IRRT among operators and potential customers, which have, to date, mainly used all-road transport. Consolidation of demand for rail freight can contribute to overcome the barrier of a limited geographical coverage of rail services. Behrends and Floden (2012) showed that a prerequisite for a denser network of small-scale terminals is low transhipment costs. However, such low costs are difficult to achieve in peripheral regions, where rail-suitable freight flows are small. Kohn and Brodin (2008) argued that, in a centralised distribution system of a supply chain, rail-suitable volumes can be achieved by shipment consolidation. The necessary volumes for a modal shift can also be achieved by the local consolidation of freight flows belonging to different shippers and receivers, as a city is usually provisioned by hundreds of supply chains of many economic sectors (Dablanc, 2011). Hence, the
3.4. New technologies A further way for local authorities to improve IRRT performance is to support innovative technologies for PPH vehicles and intermodal terminals. Innovative technology for PPH vehicles, which makes PPH trips emission-free, can significantly reduce the environmental impact of IRRT, since PPH by diesel trucks is the major source of air pollution in the intermodal transport chain. However, vehicles with alternative propulsion systems and alternative fuels are usually not compatible with the conventional infrastructure and require special maintenance and refuelling points, which are initially geographically limited. Hence, 14
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integration of urban freight and IRRT research. Both fields have received considerable interest, but urban freight and IRRT are still handled as separate research fields. On one hand, urban freight research focuses on urban deliveries and city logistics (Behrends, 2016); on the other hand, IRRT research focuses on the core of intermodal transport including rail haulage and transhipments regarding PPH in urban areas as something beyond the system boundaries (Woxenius and B€arthel, 2008). The framework highlights the significant role of local perspectives for the promotion of rail freight. Successful modal shift strategies require commonality between rail industry plans and planning authorities’ policies, and consistent implementation of these policies (Woodburn, 2008). Furthermore, the framework emphasises that a sustainable modal shift – that is, growth of rail freight without negative consequences for the sustainability of urban areas – can only be achieved by appropriate actions that demonstrate an understanding of the urban context within which IRRT takes place. Therefore, the fact that local authorities often lack planning capacity and logistics competence (Dablanc, 2007; Lindholm and Behrends, 2012) presents a significant barrier for achieving the desired modal shift.
economic operation of a terminal in peripheral regions requires the consolidation of a significant share of the shippers’ goods flows in the region. Authorities can apply the following measures to promote this (Vrenken et al., 2005): Consolidate and provide a portal for information, which can make things easier for potential customers Achieve a change in mind-set of potential operators and customers Convince potential operators and customers and demonstrate the benefits of a modal shift by presenting successful examples. Cooperation between PPH operators and other transport companies operating in the urban area provides benefits for both PPH operators aiming for low operating costs and local authorities aiming for local sustainability. One reason for high PPH costs is the fragmented operations with various PPH companies serving each terminal. Morlok et al. (1995) showed that spatial market division or sharing transport equipment can avoid empty driving, while Walker (1992) stated that an increase in transport volumes allows for more efficient use of drivers. Both effects lead to a higher resource efficiency, leading to lower PPH costs. This can not only improve the service in the market, but also substantially decrease the transport distance at which intermodal transport can compete with road freight. Table 2 summarises the local policy measures that form the elements of the proposed framework. Due to the strong interdependency of the actors in the urban setting, there is a need to coordinate all potential actions. An urban rail freight strategy, which coordinates the identified measures, can strengthen the effect of individual actions. For example, the coordination of freight flows by the shippers and receivers to increase the rail suitable freight volumes can be supported by targeted land-use and traffic planning. Shorter PPH distances and improved traffic conditions can reduce the time needed for PPH, thereby making IRRT suitable for more freight flows. Shorter distances also reduce PPH costs and hence the costs of the total intermodal chain, making IRRT a more attractive transport option. In turn, higher rail freight volumes increase a city's attractiveness for rail operators, which can benefit from additional business opportunities. New rail freight services to the region that hosts the terminal are beneficial for the companies located in the region, as well as for the economic situation of the region as a whole. Hence, an urban rail freight strategy needs to integrate all actors; that is, shippers/ receivers, providers of transport services and local planning agencies. Local authorities have a key role to play in facilitating the required cooperation since they can influence all other stakeholders. Rail freight issues need to be embedded in the city's overall sustainable development strategy to ensure the long-term effectiveness of an urban rail freight strategy. Furthermore, cooperation and adaptation of the strategy with neighbouring municipalities is required in order to avoid several terminals in the region competing for the same freight flows.
4.2. Implications for policy makers The framework has implications for policy makers because it challenges the view that rail freight and urban transport are separate policy concerns. In order to achieve an IRRT system that facilitates a significant modal shift without negative consequences for the environment and quality of life in cities, urban transport must adapt to the demands of IRRT. Therefore, mastering the implications arising from the urban context requires an integration of urban transport and modal shift strategies. National decisions on increasing rail network and terminal capacity can only lead to the desired modal shift and positive sustainability effects if they are accompanied by measures that focus on the problems related to the urban context. This marks a major departure point from current thinking in urban transport planning, which sees increased urban rail traffic and road haulage as threats to local sustainability, and will require revisiting the transport planning procedures in urban areas that mainly focus on passenger transport. Cities should see this additional dimension in their transport planning not as a burden but as an opportunity to strengthen their local sustainable development. Dablanc (2011) showed that the urban context involves complicated trade-offs between competing environmental, social and economic issues; however, there are possibilities for progress at low costs with great benefit. As Bergqvist (2007) argued, regional logistics collaboration can contribute to the competitiveness of firms and the attractiveness of regions. This, together with the fact that an IRRT system that is adapted to the local environment imposes fewer traffic impacts on their surroundings, may further encourage cities to include rail freight in their strategic urban transport plans. By understanding freight and logistics operations and their impact, local authorities can embrace the urban context of IRRT as an opportunity rather than viewing it as a risk, which should encourage, rather than force, cities to integrate rail freight in their long-term development plans. This creates new possibilities for rail freight that are needed to create a sustainable freight transport system in the face of ever-increasing road transport volumes.
4. Conclusions In this paper, we have presented a conceptual framework that conceptualises the links between urban planning and rail freight. We have identified the measures that local authorities can apply to increase the efficiency of IRRT and reduce its environmental impacts in the urban environment. The identified measures include direct interventions such as rail-adapted land-use planning, infrastructure measures, regulations and support for new technologies, as well as indirect interventions through enabling cooperation among shippers and transport operators by involving all stakeholders in the strategic land-use and transport planning processes. The conceptual framework has both theoretical and practical contributions.
4.3. Limitations and opportunities for future research Several questions arising from the framework presented in this paper have been beyond our scope and present interesting opportunities for further research. To begin with, the links between rail freight and urban planning should be investigated further. In our framework, we show how a series of critical issues for the sustainability performance of IRRT can be addressed by several local policy measures; however, we do not claim that our analysis is complete. As neither the list of critical issues nor of local policy measures is exhaustive, we suggest a structured literature review to identify additional links between rail freight and urban
4.1. Theoretical contributions From a theoretical perspective, the framework contributes to the 15
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Transport Policy 59 (2017) 10–16 Hesse, M., 2008. The City as a Terminal – the Urban Context of Logistics and Freight Transport. Ashgate, Hampshire. Kohn, C., Brodin, M.H., 2008. Centralised distribution systems and the environment: how increased transport work can decrease the environmental impact of logistics. Int. J. Logist. Res. Appl. 11, 229–245. Konings, J.W., 1996. Integrated centres for the transshipment, storage, collection and distribution of goods: a survey of the possibilities for a high-quality intermodal transport concept. Transp. Policy 3, 3–11. Kreutzberger, E., 2010. Lowest cost intermodal rail freight transport bundling networks: conceptual structuring and identification. Eur. J. Transp. Infrastruct. Res. 10, 158–180. Kreutzberger, E., Macharis, C., Woxenius, J., 2006. Intermodal versus unimodal road freight transport – a review of comparisions of the external costs. In: Jourquin, B., Rietveld, P., Westin, K. (Eds.), Transportation Economics – towards Better Performance Systems. Routledge, New York. Kreutzberger, E.D., 2008. Distance and time in intermodal goods transport networks in Europe: a generic approach. Transp. Res. Part A Policy Pract. 42, 973–993. Lindholm, M., Behrends, S., 2012. Challenges in urban freight transport planning – a review in the Baltic sea region. J. Transp. Geogr. 22, 129–136. Macharis, C., Bontekoning, Y.M., 2004. Opportunities for OR in intermodal freight transport research: a review. Eur. J. Oper. Res. 153, 400–416. Macharis, C., Van mierlo, J., Van den Bossche, P., 2007. Combining intermodal transport with electric vehicles: towards more sustainable solutions. Transp. Plan. Technol. 30, 311–323. McKinnon, A., 2003. Logistics and the Environment. In: Hensher, D.A., Button, K.J. (Eds.), Handbook of Transport and the Environment, first ed. Pergamon, Amsterdam. McKinnon, A., 2008. Should the maximum length and weight of trucks be increased? A review of European research. In: 13th International Symposium on Logistics (ISL 2008). Bangkok, Thailand. MDS Transmodal, 2012. Dg Move European Commission: Study on Urban Freight Transport. Brussels. Morlok, E.K., Sammon, J.P., Spasovic, L.N., Nozik, L.K., 1995. Improving productivity in intermodal rail-truck transportation. In: Harker, P.T. (Ed.), The Service Productivity and Quality Challenge. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht. Nierat, P., 1997. Market area of rail-truck terminals: pertinence of the spatial theory. Transp. Res. Part A Policy Pract. 31, 109–127. Quak, H., 2007. Sustainability of Urban Freight Transport – Retail Distribution and Local Regulations in Cities (Ph.D.). Erasmus University. Ricci, A., Black, I., 2005. The social costs of intermodal freight transport. Res. Transp. Econ. 14, 245–285. Rich, J., Kveiborg, O., Hansen, C.O., 2011. On structural inelasticity of modal substitution in freight transport. J. Transp. Geogr. 19, 134–146. Santos, B.F., Limbourg, S., Carreira, J.S., 2015. The impact of transport policies on railroad intermodal freight competitiveness – the case of Belgium. Transp. Res. Part D Transp. Environ. 34, 230–244. Santos, G., Behrendt, H., Teytelboym, A., 2010. Part II: policy instruments for sustainable road transport. Res. Transp. Econ. 28, 46–91. Slack, B., 1999. Satellite terminals: a local solution to hub congestion? J. Transp. Geogr. 7, 241–246. Trip, J.J., Bontekoning, Y., 2002. Integration of small freight flows in the intermodal transport system. J. Transp. Geogr. 10, 221–229. UIC, 2004. Infrastructure Capacity Reserved for Combined Transport by 2015. International Union of Railways (UIC), Paris. UIC, 2007. International Combined Transport Production Systems Including Long and Heavy Trains, DIOMIS – Developing Infrastructure and Operating Models for Intermodal Shift. International Union of Railways, Paris. Vrenken, H., Macharis, C., Wolters, P., 2005. Intermodal Transport in Europe. European Intermodal Association, Brussels. Wagner, T., 2010. Regional traffic impacts of logistics-related land use. Transp. Policy 17, 224–229. Walker, W.,T., 1992. Network economies of scale in short haul truckload operations. J. Transp. Econ. Policy 26, 3–17. Wiegmans, B.W., Hekkert, M., Langstraat, M., 2007. Can innovations in rail freight transhipment be successful? Transp. Rev. 27, 103–122. Woodburn, A., 2008. Intermodal rail freight in britain: a terminal problem? Plan. Pract. Res. 23, 441–460. Woodburn, A., 2015. An empirical study of the variability in the composition of British freight trains. J. Rail Transp. Plan. Manag. 5, 294–308. Woxenius, J., B€arthel, F., 2008. Intermodal road-rail transport in the European union. In: Priemus, H., Nijkamp, P., Konings, R. (Eds.), The Future of Intermodal Transport: Operations, Design and Policy. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK. Woxenius, J., Bergqvist, R., 2011. Comparing maritime containers and semi-trailers in the context of hinterland transport by rail. J. Transp. Geogr. 19, 680–688.
planning. Second, as the framework is solely based on desk research and conceptual work, we suggest empirically based research to refine and validate the theory-derived framework. Finally, as the framework highlights the importance of integrating local policy measures into national modal shift strategies, we suggest studies that further investigate the implications for modal shift policies in order to ensure consistency of actions between local and national policy domains. Funding sources This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. References B€ arthel, F., Woxenius, J., 2004. Developing intermodal transport for small flows over short distances. Transp. Plan. Technol. 27, 403–424. Behrends, S., 2012. The significance of the urban context for the sustainability performance of intermodal road-rail transport. Procedia. Soc. Behav. Sci. 54, 375–386. Behrends, S., 2015. The modal shift potential of intermodal line-trains from a haulier's perspective: drivers and barriers in the mode choice process. World Rev. Intermodal Transp. Res. 5, 369–386. Behrends, S., 2016. Recent developments in urban logistics research – a review of the proceedings of the international conference on city logistics 2009 – 2013. Transp. Res. Procedia 12, 278–287. Behrends, S., Flod en, J., 2012. The effect of transhipment costs on the performance of intermodal line-trains. Logist. Res. 4, 127–136. Bergqvist, R., 2007. Studies in Regional Logistics – the Context of Public-private Collaboration and Road-rail Intermodality. Dissertation. Department of Business Administration, School of Business, Economics and Law at University of Gothenburg. Bergqvist, R., Behrends, S., 2011. Assessing the effects of longer vehicles: the case of preand post-haulage in intermodal transport chains. Transp. Rev. 31, 591–602. Bergqvist, R., Monios, J., 2016. The last mile, inbound logistics and intermodal high capacity transport – the case of jula in Sweden. World Rev. Intermodal Transp. Res. 6, 74–92. B€ orjesson, M., Kristoffersson, I., 2015. The Gothenburg congestion charge. effects, design and politics. Transp. Res. Part A Policy Pract. 75, 134–146. CE Delft, Infras, Fraunhofer ISI, 2011. External Cost of Transport in Europe – Update Study for 2008. CE Delft, Delft. Craig, A.J., Blanco, E.E., Sheffi, Y., 2013. Estimating the CO2 intensity of intermodal freight transportation. Transp. Res. Part D Transp. Environ. 22, 49–53. Dablanc, L., 2007. Goods transport in large European cities: difficult to organize, difficult to modernize. Transp. Res. Part A Policy Pract. 41, 280–285. Dablanc, L., 2009. Regional policy issues for rail freight services. Transp. Policy 16, 163–172. Dablanc, L., 2011. City distribution, a key problem for the urban economy: guidelines for practitioners. In: Macharis, C., Melo, S. (Eds.), City Distribution and Urban Freight Transport. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK. EEA, 2015. Evaluating 15 Years of Transport and Environmental Policy Integration – TERM 2015: Transport Indicators Tracking Progress towards Environmental Targets in Europe. European Environmental Agency, Luxembourg. Eliasson, J., Hultkrantz, L., Nerhagen, L., Rosqvist, L.S., 2009. The Stockholm congestioncharging trial 2006: overview of effects. Transp. Res. Part A Policy Pract. 43, 240–250. European Commission, 2001. White Paper – European Transport Policy for 2010. Time to decide, Luxembourg. European Commission, 2006. Keep Europe Moving – Sustainable Mobility for Our Continent – Mid-term Review of the European Commission's 2001 White Paper on Transport. Luxembourg. European Commission, 2011. White Paper: Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area – towards a Competitive and Resource Efficient Transport System. Luxembourg. Eurostat, 2015. Energy & Transport in Figures. European Union, Luxembourg. Fridell, E., Ferm, M., Ekberg, A., 2010. Emissions of particulate matters from railways – emission factors and condition monitoring. Transp. Res. Part D Transp. Environ. 15, 240–245. Gouvernal, E., Daydou, J., 2005. Container railfreight services in north-west Europe: diversity of organizational forms in a liberalizing environment. Transp. Rev. 25, 557–571. Haywood, R., 2003. Evaluation of the policies in British local transport plans with regard to the promotion of rail freight. Transp. Rev. 23, 387–412.
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Transport Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tranpol
Burden or opportunity for modal shift? – Embracing the urban dimension of intermodal road-rail transport €nke Behrends So Division of Service Management and Logistics, Department of Technology Management and Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Intermodal transport Modal shift Urban transport Rail freight Transport planning Sustainability
Intermodal road-rail transport (IRRT) has a significant urban dimension, which affects the modal shift potential and the environmental benefits of rail freight. This paper explores the relevance of local policies for sustainable modal shift strategies by conceptualising the links between urban planning and rail freight. The presented framework identifies measures that local authorities can apply in order to increase the market and environmental improvement potential of IRRT. The results indicate that local urban transport planning has a significant role to play in the promotion of rail freight. Integrating rail freight into long-term urban development plans offers new possibilities for rail freight that are necessary in order to achieve a sustainable freight transport system in the face of ever-increasing road transport volumes.
1. Introduction
containers, rail shuttles linking seaports with inland terminals recaptured market shares from road transport. The Port of Gothenburg, Sweden is a frequently cited showcase of this case of rail competition (Woxenius and Bergqvist, 2011). However, in the market segment of continental traffic, which has significantly higher requirements on transport time, precision and frequency, progress has been marginal at best. As a result, no substantial overall changes in modal shares have been observed. Between 2000 and 2013, total inland freight transport within EU-28 increased by approximately 10 per cent. Road freight accounted for the majority of the increase (þ19 per cent), while rail freight only grew marginally (0.3 per cent) (Eurostat, 2015). Consequently, the 2006 White Paper Mid-term Review conceded that road was likely to remain the dominant mode of transport for inland freight (European Commission, 2006), and the 2011 White Paper envisioned possibilities for a modal shift only over distances longer than 300 km (European Commission, 2011). These examples indicate that the EU Commission has reduced its ambitious modal shift goals formulated in the 2001 White Paper. In the light of these disappointing results of European modal shift policies, European transport policy may need some re-thinking if a sustainable freight sector is to be achieved. Current policy measures have been widely applied at the European and national levels, focusing on rail haulage and transhipments. Local policies, on the other hand, have not paid particular attention to rail freight issues. Haywood (2003) found that local transport plans in the UK increasingly include rail freight; however, little evidence was found for effective action, and Dablanc (2009) stated that most regional governments in Germany and France are
The imbalance in the development of inland freight modes has increased in recent decades. Road freight has become the dominant mode of transport in Europe and accounted for approximately 72 per cent of total inland freight in 2013 in the European Union, while rail, inland waterways and pipelines combined represented the other 28 per cent (Eurostat, 2015). This development is unsustainable because road freight has substantially higher externalities per ton-kilometre than rail and inland waterways. As a result, road freight is responsible for almost the entire externalities of the freight sector (96 per cent in the EU in 2008) (CE Delft et al., 2011). Therefore, a key policy objective for the freight sector's sustainable development is to reduce the imbalance in the development of the different modes and to transfer road freight to less environmentally damaging modes, such as rail and inland waterways. In its 2001 White Paper on European transport policy, the EU Commission adopted modal shift from road to rail as a general objective of European transport policy (European Commission, 2001) and, in the following years, initiated a series of policy initiatives to revitalize rail freight. These initiatives included financial support to projects that aimed to transfer cargo from road to rail and waterways (Marco Polo Programmes), as well as opening up the internal rail freight market to regulated competition and eliminating operational barriers (three Railway Packages) (EEA, 2015). Some market segments have seen progress towards meeting the objective of modal shift. For example, for hinterland traffic of maritime
E-mail address: [email protected]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2017.06.004 Received 5 August 2016; Received in revised form 15 May 2017; Accepted 14 June 2017 0967-070X/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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shippers are seldom coordinated, resulting in a high share of empty driving (Morlok et al., 1995). Furthermore, PPH flows are locally and temporarily concentrated at the terminals, which can result in congestion and waiting times. In addition, since terminals as well as consigner and consignees are usually located in or in the vicinity of urban areas, PPH is affected by urban traffic congestion. Due to the rail production principle based on night jumps, PPH trips usually take place in the morning and in the afternoon during commuting peak-hours. PPH by diesel trucks is also responsible for a significant share of the transport chains' externalities. Since PPH operations usually takes place in urban areas, where they share the infrastructure with passenger traffic, their congestion, noise, accidents and air pollution impacts are much higher than for intercity traffic outside urban areas (CE Delft et al., 2011). Additionally, because of the low capacity utilization due to empty driving, which is inherent in pick-up and delivery traffic, the distance travelled in urban areas is generally higher than for all-modal road transport. As a result, PPH can account for up to 50 per cent of both the intermodal chain's externalities (Behrends, 2012) and costs (Macharis and Bontekoning, 2004; Santos et al., 2015). Therefore, PPH plays a significant role in both the economic and environmental performance of the intermodal chain, despite its relatively short distance compared to the rail haul.
less involved in the actual promotion of rail freight activities than they were a few years ago. In addition, Lindholm and Behrends (2012) found that, until recently, freight issues in general were rarely considered in urban and regional planning. Most urban freight research has addressed last-mile deliveries to retail stores in central business districts or other high-density areas that are the nexus of urban commercial activities, while only a few research works have looked at rail freight and logistics land-use issues (Behrends, 2016). In this paper, we will argue that urban transport planning has an important role to play in developing promising modal shift strategies. Given the limited success of the European and national policy measures in recent decades, a better consideration of rail freight questions in local policies may offer new potentials for the improvement of rail freight. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relevance of local policies for sustainable modal shift strategies by developing a framework that conceptualises the links between urban planning and rail freight. To achieve this, the paper takes the form of desk research and conceptual work analysing previous research on rail freight from a local authority perspective. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. First, we review and structure the literature on rail freight in order to identify the critical issues of rail freight limiting its modal shift and environmental improvement potential. Second, we present a conceptual framework for integrating rail freight into urban planning, comprising five categories, and identify measures applicable by local authorities in each category to contribute to solve these critical issues. We conclude the paper by outlining theoretical contributions, implications for policy makers and list future research directions.
2.2. Rail haul Rail operations involve the movement of the loading units between terminals. In order to be competitive to road freight, trains must carry certain volumes and cover a certain transport distance in order to compensate for the additional costs of PPH and transhipments. As a general rule, therefore, modal shift strategies are only promising for large transport flows over long distances, rather than for short-distance transports, where the rail distance is too short to compensate the additional costs from PPH and transhipment operations. The break-even distance for IRRT obviously depends on many factors (such as rail pricing, road transport costs, freight volume, balance of traffic and location of rail terminals (Nierat, 1997)), but for European intermodal transport it is usually defined as 500 km or larger (Kreutzberger, 2008). On corridors where freight volumes allow for full trainloads with the required frequency, direct terminal-to-terminal shuttle services provide good transport quality and economy. If freight flows are too small for direct rail services, the required volumes can be achieved by consolidating freight belonging to different origin and/or destinations regions along a corridor. However, the transhipments add additional handling cost and time along the corridor, and this additional impedance of consolidation has been an incentive for intermodal rail freight operators to simplify their networks. As a result, intermodal operators only provide services where the conditions are extremely favourable (Kreutzberger, 2010), resulting in a situation whereby rail freight lines link larger cities with one another but do not link to the small towns situated along the line. These direct links are the best rail product wherever full trainloads with the required frequency can be organized. This is one of the most often employed production system in Europe, connecting agglomerations, centres of industrial production and container ports with major inland locations (UIC, 2007). This reorganisation of major railway networks, driven by the need to improve their financial performance, caused a withdrawal of railway services in regions with low traffic volumes (Dablanc, 2009). Gouvernal and Daydou (2005) found that the use of dedicated trains has increased dramatically in the United Kingdom. Woodburn (2015) also stated that many freight trains in the UK are operated directly from origin to destination. As a consequence, transport customers located in peripheral regions lack access to rail freight services and are dependent on road freight. Rich et al.’s (2011) analysis of the Scandinavian region showed that a majority of all transports shorter than 500 km have no alternative to road freight. Therefore, the economic and environmental benefits of rail can only be realised for a minor share of the transport market. From an environmental perspective, rail operations are generally
2. Intermodal road-rail transport: modal shift and environmental improvement potential Since the extension of the railway network is limited, rail is not accessible for substantial shares of the transport market. Therefore, increasing the reach of rail freight requires intermodal road-rail transport (IRRT); that is, the combination of rail and road transport in a single transport chain. Macharis and Bontekoning (2004) defined four major IRRT activities (a) PPH operations for pick-up and delivery, (b) transhipment operations, (c) long-haul transport, and (d) route selection for a shipment through the whole intermodal network. The greatest distance of the transport chain is performed by rail, where the units are consolidated with other shipments and economies of scale are being achieved, while road transport is assigned to the collection and distribution of freight (Nierat, 1997). In this way, IRRT increases the reach of rail, which enhances the efficiency of the transport system and reduces its environmental impact. For example, Craig et al. (2013) estimated that the average carbon intensity of IRRT in the USA was 46 per cent lower than road transport. However, other studies are more pessimistic about its potential contribution to energy usage reduction and environmental improvement (McKinnon, 2003). Kreutzberger et al. (2006) showed that IRRT actually has a higher environmental impact than road freight when several factors cumulate, including long PPH distances, unfavourable shippers’ locations in relation to terminals and rail route, and electricity production from non-energy-efficient fossil power plants. Promising modal shift policies must address these critical issues for the economic and environmental performance of IRRT. This section analyses the economic and environmental performance of each activity related to the production of IRRT; that is, PPH, rail haul and transhipments. 2.1. Pre- and post-haulage PPH operations involve the provision of an empty trailer or container to the shipper and the subsequent transportation of a full trailer or container to the intermodal terminal (Macharis and Bontekoning, 2004). These operations are highly fragmented, with various PPH companies serving each terminal, while distribution and pick-up trips to and from 11
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significant modal shift, since existing rail terminal capacity in Europe will not be sufficient to fulfil the forecasted demand, making capacity extensions necessary to maintain market shares (UIC, 2004). This requires a significant amount of land, since modern intermodal terminals are among the most space-extensive consumers of land in urban areas (Slack, 1999). Many of the terminals, which were originally established in the 19th century at the edge of urban areas, are now surrounded by urban development (Hesse, 2008); therefore, capacity extensions face spatial constraints within crowded land-use arrangements. Finally, even if the competitiveness of IRRT can be improved in such a way that it would attract significantly higher shares of the transport market, IRRT would fall victim to its own success. As argued by Konings (1996), a significant modal shift entails the growth of PPH traffic around terminals, which threatens the accessibility of the terminal itself. The rendering above is summarised in Table 1, which categorises the identified factors into four clusters of critical issues for the sustainability performance of IRRT: (1) cost-quality performance, (2) social and environmental impacts, (3) capacity and (4) accessibility.
considered environmentally friendly, since wheel-on-rails transport is significantly more energy efficient than road transport. Furthermore, electric traction provides access to various forms of renewable energy. Therefore, it is much easier to introduce renewable energy into rail than to road transport in order to achieve zero-emission-transport and to avoid the negative consequences of oil dependency. However, electrical trains using renewable energy are not completely emission-free either, since they emit particles mainly originating from wear of rails, brakes, wheels and carbon contact strips (Fridell et al., 2010). Another significant problem of rail is noise in urban areas (CE Delft et al., 2011). On existing railway networks, freight traffic is the main source of noise, which threatens political and public support for increasing the share of rail traffic. The infrastructure also causes separation effects in urban areas as well as impacts on nature and landscape; namely, the loss and fragmentation of habitats. 2.3. Transhipments Transhipments are a necessary operation in intermodal transport facilitating the division of tasks between short haul on road and long haul on rail; however, they also add cost and time to the intermodal chain, limiting the competitiveness in relation to all-road transport. A prerequisite for intermodal transport to compete for a higher share of the transport market is a denser network of small-scale intermodal terminals. If the node operations in these networks are executed by the present conventional terminals, they would absorb too much time and money, leading to unattractive integral lead times and costs (Trip and Bontekoning, 2002). Therefore, these networks require more complex terminal operations, enabling fast and efficient transhipments. A wide range of sophisticated alternative terminal concepts have been proposed by inventors and evaluated positively by researchers; however, with very few exceptions, they have not been implemented (B€arthel and Woxenius, 2004). The main problem is that the sophisticated nature of innovative transhipment technologies is likely to result in high investment costs (Vrenken et al., 2005), while the concepts’ benefits among actors remain uncertain. Transhipments in terminals not only affect transport cost and time of the intermodal chain; they also cause environmental impacts, especially on the areas where the terminals are located. PPH traffic is concentrated around the terminals, which means it is the areas adjacent to these terminals that are affected the most by both rail operations' and PPH's congestion, noise and air pollution. Furthermore, transhipment operations at terminals generate externalities as they cause noise and, depending on the transhipment technology used, air pollution (Ricci and Black, 2005). Another critical issue is terminal capacity. In order for rail to be able to absorb the expected growth in the long-distance market segment where IRRT provides good quality and service, increased capacity is required both in terms of the rail network and intermodal terminals. Therefore, actions for supporting rail freight have focused on rail corridors where line capability is problematic (Woodburn, 2008). However, enhancing the rail link capacity would not be sufficient to achieve a
3. A conceptual framework for integrating rail freight into urban planning The variety of measures that local authorities have used to improve efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of urban transport in general is also likely to have an effect on IRRT. Hence, the integration of rail freight into urban transport planning can help resolve the critical issues identified in the previous section, leading to a more competitive and more environmentally friendly IRRT. This section defines a conceptual framework that captures this integration between urban planning and modal shift strategies. It involves local policy measures in five categories (Table 2): (1) land use planning measures, (2) infrastructure measures, (3) regulatory and market-based measures, (4) support of new technologies, and (5) management measures. 3.1. Land-use planning measures Land-use planning measures include all interventions that change the use of space. Since it takes a long time to change existing land use patterns, land-use planning must be consistent over a long period of time (MDS Transmodal, 2012). With regard to rail freight, the localisation of terminals and potential rail shippers in the urban environment is a key tool for solving the critical issues of IRRT, as the strategic location of logistics areas can reduce traffic and its related impacts (Wagner, 2010). Furthermore, Behrends (2012) showed that in cases where the intermodal terminal is located in central areas, PPH from shippers in suburban areas generates significant traffic impacts, such as congestion, accident risks and noise, which can counterbalance the climate and air pollution benefits of rail freight (Fig. 1a). Under such circumstances, a modal shift is mainly beneficial for intercity regions, while the externalities in the origin and destination cities can increase significantly. Thus, locating the intermodal terminal and industrial areas with potential shippers of rail freight in less sensitive suburban areas can reduce PPH distances and
Table 1 Critical issues for the sustainability performance of intermodal transport.
Cost/quality performance Social and ecosystem impacts
Capacity Accessibility
PPH
Rail
Terminals
Many empty trips. Urban driving conditions with low speed and unreliable trip times Dependency on fossil fuel. Local air pollution Contribution to congestion, noise, accidents in sensitive urban areas
High cost and low quality on short and medium distance transports Noise in sensitive urban area. Separation effects
High transhipment costs. Long terminal dwell time
Rail capacity bottlenecks on long-distance corridors Lack of rail services to/from small economic regions
Terminal capacity bottlenecks in economic centres
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Noise in sensitive urban areas. Extensive land-use.
Lack of terminals in small economic regions
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Table 2 A conceptual framework for integrating rail freight into urban planning. Authority action category Land use planning measures Zoning of logistics activities
Concentrating logistics activities Infrastructure measures Capacity of terminal access roads Regulations and market-based measures Regulations New technologies Local fuel infrastructure Financial support for terminal development Management measures Cooperation of transport operators
PPH
Terminal
Rail
Location of terminal and shipper/receiver Safeguarding sites for terminal capacity Land availability for rail infrastructure determine PPH distance (extensions or new investments) Land-use pattern determines air pollution and noise impact sensitivity of PPH, terminal and rail activities Economies of scale in PPH operations Economies of scale in terminal operations Critical mass for rail services Reduced cost and time of PPH trips Access regulations affect traffic demand on terminal access roads
Regulations affect terminal Opening/ operation hours
Access to renewable fuels determines emissions of PPH traffic Enable implementation of innovative transhipment technologies Coordination of PPH trips reduces PPH costs Coordination of freight flows to reduce transhipment unit costs
Cooperation of shippers
Coordination of freight flows to achieve rail suitable volumes
Fig. 1. PPH distance and efficiency with (a) central terminal and (b) suburban terminal. (CBD: central business district. Green areas indicate low density areas with limited conflicts with urban stakeholders, red areas indicate high density and high conflicts). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
3.2. Infrastructure measures
hence PPH costs. Moreover, noise, congestion and air pollution impacts are minimised, even in case of longer PPH distances, as PPH trips avoid sensitive urban areas (Fig. 1b). In order to minimise land-use conflicts and local impacts that PPH, rail and terminal operations generate on other urban stakeholders, local land use planning needs to geographically separate terminals and shippers, as well as roads and rail tracks, from other land use forms, such as residential and commercial. Generally, geographically separating manufacturing and logistics from other landuse forms can avoid a mixing of freight and passenger traffic, thus making access to the terminals easier and PPH more efficient. Furthermore, in order to allow for terminal capacity extensions, it is important that local authorities consider rail freight facilities when formulating their development plans. Suitable sites for intermodal terminals should be protected for future development and new freight developments should be served by rail (Woodburn, 2008). Land-use planning is also an important tool for encouraging the development of new terminals in logistics areas. By encouraging (or even forcing, by way of regulations) developers of distribution centres to locate at strategic sites, an intermodal terminal can then be justified on the basis of a number of co-located new distribution facilities (Woodburn, 2008). Clustering large freight generators, such as industrial and logistics activities in the region, also makes it easier to stimulate cooperation, and siting intermodal terminals in these logistics clusters keeps PPH distances short (Vrenken et al., 2005).
Infrastructure measures have a strong impact on urban transport. Due to the high cost of planning, implementing and maintaining transport infrastructure in urban areas and their perceived “public good” nature, local authorities are often the only actors willing and able to fund their implementation (MDS Transmodal, 2012). The responsibility of ensuring that a terminal is properly integrated into the local transport system lies with the local authorities (Vrenken et al., 2005). A challenge for the integration of the terminal is increasing traffic levels, which increases congestion and, consequently, compromises the accessibility of terminals and reliability of PPH operations. For example, Behrends (2015) noted that the intermodal terminal in Stockholm is located on the ring road around the wider city centre, which is one of the most congested roads in Sweden. Congested terminal access roads can be a significant barrier for a modal shift, for two reasons. Obviously, congestion increases the PPH operating costs, but even more important is the transport time, which is often critical for the transport of high-value goods. Time windows between pick-up at the shipper and terminal closing time are often very short and if PPH trips take too much time for a delivery to the terminal before terminal closing time, road is the only alternative for these freight flows. This impedance from urban transport is especially relevant for shorter rail distances, which are more sensitive to additional PPH costs because they account for a large share of total chain costs. An extension 13
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innovative vehicles and fuels are usually not suitable for longer transport distances and are therefore difficult to introduce in freight transport. Since these systems usually have a limited driving range, they are currently preferably tested or employed in passenger transport, as most passenger cars and public buses operate in a limited region and therefore do not require a widespread coverage of refuelling and maintenance infrastructure. The same applies for the lorries that serve intermodal terminals. Since the distances driven from those terminals are comparatively short, PPH is well suited for employment of vehicles with alternative propulsion systems and alternative fuels, which has the potential to reduce the harmful emissions in urban areas (Macharis et al., 2007). Lindholm and Behrends (2012) showed that many cities actively support the introduction of alternative fuels in the public bus fleet and for the passenger cars of their citizens. Therefore, many cities already have a refuelling and maintenance infrastructure for alternative fuels and propulsion systems, which could also be used by PPH operators. Sharing the refuelling and maintenance infrastructure with passenger transport facilitates lower costs through economies of scale and a reduction of risk for PPH operators since they do not need to make their own investments. A significant barrier for the implementation of a denser terminal network is the transhipment costs of innovative terminal concepts. The investments have to be made by the terminal operator, while the potential benefits caused by the innovations end up at the rail operator and ultimately the shipper (Wiegmans et al., 2007). However, there are two reasons why rail operators focus on the core rail network rather than the development of new terminals. First, rail operators neglect the business opportunities due to a lack of system thinking, focusing on cost reductions and efficiency improvements on single routes instead of entire networks (Kreutzberger, 2010). The second reason is that the rail freight companies typically do not have sufficient resources to invest in what are often seen as expensive, speculative terminal schemes (Woodburn, 2008). Intermodal business development requires long-term cooperation and commitment among market players, but since the time horizons are long and short-term benefits are few, potential users are often discouraged from participating in potential projects. Local authorities can play a key role in enabling the required cooperation, both horizontally and vertically. A local public–private project organisation and financial contribution to the terminal investment costs can help achieve progress and maintain the commitment of players (Vrenken et al., 2005). Some examples showing the potential of local support can be found in the UK, where new terminals were the result of regional authorities’ support in the significant initial stages in funding and construction (Woodburn, 2008).
of capacity of the terminal access roads can therefore be a suitable measure for improving the preconditions for a modal shift. 3.3. Market-based and regulatory measures Additional ways to ease the impedance of urban congestion for terminal access are market-based and regulatory measures. Market-based measures aim to modify the market prices of transport services, thereby adapting the behaviour of private passenger and freight transport actors (MDS Transmodal, 2012). Two market-based measures are road pricing, where the user of the road network is charged based on the distance travelled, and congestion charges, where users are charged for access to urban areas. In cities where the terminals are located in central areas and access is limited during passenger traffic peak hours, congestion charges can be an effective policy measure to make terminal access more efficient. Cities that have implemented congestion charges have observed a significant decrease in traffic levels; examples include 16 per cent in London (Santos et al., 2010), 22 per cent in Stockholm (Eliasson et al., 2009) and 12 per cent in Gothenburg (B€ orjesson and Kristoffersson, 2015). These reductions are mainly due to the decrease in passenger transport. Therefore, congestion charges have positive effects on freight traffic, since freight traffic is relatively insensitive to road pricing, due to customer requirements on delivery times or the fact that operators can pass on the costs to the receiver (Quak, 2007). In cases where access to terminals is impaired by passenger traffic, road pricing can be an effective measure for increasing the accessibility of terminals and to reduce the operating cost of PPH traffic. Regulatory measures are “command and control” regulations; that is, rules and prohibitions aimed at controlling freight traffic for the wider benefits of society. These include restrictions on access for freight vehicles, based on time, volume or weight, and emission levels (MDS Transmodal, 2012). One possible way to increase transport efficiency is to relax the rules regarding the weights and dimensions of heavy vehicles. Allowing longer and heavier vehicles (LHV) in IRRT can lead to a reduction in PPH costs (Bergqvist and Behrends, 2011; Bergqvist and Monios, 2016). However, increasing the maximum length and weight of trucks is a controversial issue (McKinnon, 2008), since it can negatively affect safety and have implications for road transport infrastructure in urban areas. Since PPH operations are embedded in urban transport, allowing the use of LHV for PPH is even more problematic than for intercity road freight. In order to minimise the potential negative implications, local authorities can apply restrictions on the local road network regarding speed, route and time of day, etc. This underlines the importance of integrated transport and land-use planning, which separates freight and passenger transport. It also emphasises the importance of an approach that integrates modal shift and urban freight transport strategies. Allowing LHV for PPH without taking into account the urban consequences could lead to strong resistance at the local level. Local authorities also apply regulations to limit the hours of operations of terminals, when located in zones of intense environmental and land use conflict. Woodburn (2008) argued that new terminal investments, which are viewed positively at the macro-economic level, are often seen negatively at the local level, resulting in negative responses in the local planning process.
3.5. Management measures Management measures are softer in nature than market-based and regulatory measures and aim at collaboration of actors in order to reduce costs or to add value to freight operators and/or their customers (MDS Transmodal, 2012). Management measures on the local level that are relevant for IRRT include the consolidation of demand for rail freight and the consolidation of supply of PPH. Local authorities can play a key role in facilitating the required consolidation by creating awareness of the advantages of IRRT among operators and potential customers, which have, to date, mainly used all-road transport. Consolidation of demand for rail freight can contribute to overcome the barrier of a limited geographical coverage of rail services. Behrends and Floden (2012) showed that a prerequisite for a denser network of small-scale terminals is low transhipment costs. However, such low costs are difficult to achieve in peripheral regions, where rail-suitable freight flows are small. Kohn and Brodin (2008) argued that, in a centralised distribution system of a supply chain, rail-suitable volumes can be achieved by shipment consolidation. The necessary volumes for a modal shift can also be achieved by the local consolidation of freight flows belonging to different shippers and receivers, as a city is usually provisioned by hundreds of supply chains of many economic sectors (Dablanc, 2011). Hence, the
3.4. New technologies A further way for local authorities to improve IRRT performance is to support innovative technologies for PPH vehicles and intermodal terminals. Innovative technology for PPH vehicles, which makes PPH trips emission-free, can significantly reduce the environmental impact of IRRT, since PPH by diesel trucks is the major source of air pollution in the intermodal transport chain. However, vehicles with alternative propulsion systems and alternative fuels are usually not compatible with the conventional infrastructure and require special maintenance and refuelling points, which are initially geographically limited. Hence, 14
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integration of urban freight and IRRT research. Both fields have received considerable interest, but urban freight and IRRT are still handled as separate research fields. On one hand, urban freight research focuses on urban deliveries and city logistics (Behrends, 2016); on the other hand, IRRT research focuses on the core of intermodal transport including rail haulage and transhipments regarding PPH in urban areas as something beyond the system boundaries (Woxenius and B€arthel, 2008). The framework highlights the significant role of local perspectives for the promotion of rail freight. Successful modal shift strategies require commonality between rail industry plans and planning authorities’ policies, and consistent implementation of these policies (Woodburn, 2008). Furthermore, the framework emphasises that a sustainable modal shift – that is, growth of rail freight without negative consequences for the sustainability of urban areas – can only be achieved by appropriate actions that demonstrate an understanding of the urban context within which IRRT takes place. Therefore, the fact that local authorities often lack planning capacity and logistics competence (Dablanc, 2007; Lindholm and Behrends, 2012) presents a significant barrier for achieving the desired modal shift.
economic operation of a terminal in peripheral regions requires the consolidation of a significant share of the shippers’ goods flows in the region. Authorities can apply the following measures to promote this (Vrenken et al., 2005): Consolidate and provide a portal for information, which can make things easier for potential customers Achieve a change in mind-set of potential operators and customers Convince potential operators and customers and demonstrate the benefits of a modal shift by presenting successful examples. Cooperation between PPH operators and other transport companies operating in the urban area provides benefits for both PPH operators aiming for low operating costs and local authorities aiming for local sustainability. One reason for high PPH costs is the fragmented operations with various PPH companies serving each terminal. Morlok et al. (1995) showed that spatial market division or sharing transport equipment can avoid empty driving, while Walker (1992) stated that an increase in transport volumes allows for more efficient use of drivers. Both effects lead to a higher resource efficiency, leading to lower PPH costs. This can not only improve the service in the market, but also substantially decrease the transport distance at which intermodal transport can compete with road freight. Table 2 summarises the local policy measures that form the elements of the proposed framework. Due to the strong interdependency of the actors in the urban setting, there is a need to coordinate all potential actions. An urban rail freight strategy, which coordinates the identified measures, can strengthen the effect of individual actions. For example, the coordination of freight flows by the shippers and receivers to increase the rail suitable freight volumes can be supported by targeted land-use and traffic planning. Shorter PPH distances and improved traffic conditions can reduce the time needed for PPH, thereby making IRRT suitable for more freight flows. Shorter distances also reduce PPH costs and hence the costs of the total intermodal chain, making IRRT a more attractive transport option. In turn, higher rail freight volumes increase a city's attractiveness for rail operators, which can benefit from additional business opportunities. New rail freight services to the region that hosts the terminal are beneficial for the companies located in the region, as well as for the economic situation of the region as a whole. Hence, an urban rail freight strategy needs to integrate all actors; that is, shippers/ receivers, providers of transport services and local planning agencies. Local authorities have a key role to play in facilitating the required cooperation since they can influence all other stakeholders. Rail freight issues need to be embedded in the city's overall sustainable development strategy to ensure the long-term effectiveness of an urban rail freight strategy. Furthermore, cooperation and adaptation of the strategy with neighbouring municipalities is required in order to avoid several terminals in the region competing for the same freight flows.
4.2. Implications for policy makers The framework has implications for policy makers because it challenges the view that rail freight and urban transport are separate policy concerns. In order to achieve an IRRT system that facilitates a significant modal shift without negative consequences for the environment and quality of life in cities, urban transport must adapt to the demands of IRRT. Therefore, mastering the implications arising from the urban context requires an integration of urban transport and modal shift strategies. National decisions on increasing rail network and terminal capacity can only lead to the desired modal shift and positive sustainability effects if they are accompanied by measures that focus on the problems related to the urban context. This marks a major departure point from current thinking in urban transport planning, which sees increased urban rail traffic and road haulage as threats to local sustainability, and will require revisiting the transport planning procedures in urban areas that mainly focus on passenger transport. Cities should see this additional dimension in their transport planning not as a burden but as an opportunity to strengthen their local sustainable development. Dablanc (2011) showed that the urban context involves complicated trade-offs between competing environmental, social and economic issues; however, there are possibilities for progress at low costs with great benefit. As Bergqvist (2007) argued, regional logistics collaboration can contribute to the competitiveness of firms and the attractiveness of regions. This, together with the fact that an IRRT system that is adapted to the local environment imposes fewer traffic impacts on their surroundings, may further encourage cities to include rail freight in their strategic urban transport plans. By understanding freight and logistics operations and their impact, local authorities can embrace the urban context of IRRT as an opportunity rather than viewing it as a risk, which should encourage, rather than force, cities to integrate rail freight in their long-term development plans. This creates new possibilities for rail freight that are needed to create a sustainable freight transport system in the face of ever-increasing road transport volumes.
4. Conclusions In this paper, we have presented a conceptual framework that conceptualises the links between urban planning and rail freight. We have identified the measures that local authorities can apply to increase the efficiency of IRRT and reduce its environmental impacts in the urban environment. The identified measures include direct interventions such as rail-adapted land-use planning, infrastructure measures, regulations and support for new technologies, as well as indirect interventions through enabling cooperation among shippers and transport operators by involving all stakeholders in the strategic land-use and transport planning processes. The conceptual framework has both theoretical and practical contributions.
4.3. Limitations and opportunities for future research Several questions arising from the framework presented in this paper have been beyond our scope and present interesting opportunities for further research. To begin with, the links between rail freight and urban planning should be investigated further. In our framework, we show how a series of critical issues for the sustainability performance of IRRT can be addressed by several local policy measures; however, we do not claim that our analysis is complete. As neither the list of critical issues nor of local policy measures is exhaustive, we suggest a structured literature review to identify additional links between rail freight and urban
4.1. Theoretical contributions From a theoretical perspective, the framework contributes to the 15
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