- Email: [email protected]
Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration
RTBM-00278; No of Pages 9 Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Research in Transportation Business & Management
Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration☆ P.W. de Langen a,b,⁎, D.M. Lases Figueroa a, K.H. van Donselaar a, J. Bozuwa c a b c
Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology, PO Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands Ports & Logistics Advisory, Spain Ecorys, United Kingdom
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 13 September 2016 Received in revised form 9 January 2017 Accepted 9 February 2017 Available online xxxx Keywords: Intermodal transport Topic: Ports Inland terminals Europe Intermodal transport distance General remarks: themed volume on intermodal freight transport management.
a b s t r a c t In this paper we analyse the intermodal connectivity in Europe. The empirical analysis is to our knowledge the first empirical analysis of intermodal connections, and is based on a comprehensive database of intermodal connections in Europe. The paper focuses on rail and barge services, as they are the backbone of intermodal freight transport chains. The empirical analysis reveals that rail and barge are complementary, in the sense that the number of overlapping origin-destination pairs is limited and barge connections are across relatively short distances, while rail generally is used for larger transport distances. In addition the lowest transport distances of rail and barge services are relatively low. Services over short distances are feasible, especially between ports and for mountain crossings. For port-to- hinterland services, various services cover distances below 100 km. This paper provides a first indication (albeit no conclusive evidence) that a higher competition intensity between rail operators in a port may lower the distance of the shortest rail service. The analysis also reveals service frequencies are on average very substantial: around four services per week. These frequencies diminish with the distance of the service. These insights are valuable for companies involved in developing new services and provide a basis for further research. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction In this paper we analyse the intermodal connectivity in Europe. The empirical analysis is based on a comprehensive database of intermodal connections in Europe developed by Ecorys who developed an extensive intermodal database called Intermodal Links. Intermodal connections are increasingly relevant for shippers, forwarders and policy makers especially in view of the Transport White Paper ambition of a modal shift of 50% by 2050, from road to other modes, mainly rail (European Commission, 2011). This paper contains an empirical analysis of intermodal connections in Europe. To our knowledge it is the first paper with such a European wide empirical analysis. Rather than the more rigorous approach of first developing hypotheses based on theoretical considerations that then developing a research design and doing the empirical analysis, this paper aims to provide relevant insights on a number of topics, based on a unique dataset. This exploratory paper may provide a basis for more rigorous next research steps. Themes as complementarity of the modes rail and barge, the distances of intermodal services and
☆ This work was supported by the Province of North-Brabant, The Netherlands. The province did not influence the research design. ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (P.W. de Langen).
differences between continental connections (not involving a seaport) and hinterland connections from ports are addressed. The first section briefly reviews the literature on (intermodal) freight connections. The second section details the characteristics of the database used in this paper. In the third section, the findings of the empirical analysis of intermodal connections in Europe are presented. The paper ends with a concluding section.
2. Literature on intermodal connections in Europe The body of research on intermodal transport is rapidly growing (see Bontekoning, Macharis, & Trip, 2004 for the last comprehensive review). The vast majority of the research develops operation research techniques (see Caris, Macharis, & Janssens, 2008), for instance to address such themes as the optimal number and location of terminals and the optimal structure of the intermodal transport network (Andersen & Christiansen, 2009). A significant number of papers deal with policies to promote intermodal transport (see Suárez-Alemán, Trujillo, & Medda, 2015, for a recent paper). To our knowledge an empirical analysis of intermodal services in Europe is lacking. Most detailed empirical analysis is through case studies, such as Zunder, Islam, Mortimer, and Aditjandra (2013) who analyse one specific rail service and Woroniuk, Marinov, Zunder, and Mortimer (2013) who analyse a specific rail corridor.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003 2210-5395/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
2
P.W. de Langen et al. / Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx
In the US, Europe and most other areas the vast majority of intermodal freight transport uses rail as well as road transport1. In addition, barge transport is used as a complement of road transport, especially in North West Europe (Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany, see Konings, 2007) and along the Yangtze (Veenstra & Notteboom, 2011). The rail freight market in Europe is fundamentally different from North America, as in Europe rail tracks are government owned and rail operators provide services on these tracks. Vassallo and Fagan (2007) discuss why the market share of rail in Europe is low compared to US, they conclude geographical reasons are important but also suggest there are institutional bottlenecks in Europe, including stateowned rail operators with dominant market positions2. The rail freight market was liberalised from the 1990s onwards, leading to the entry of new rail operators, but in many European countries state-owned incumbents still have strong market positions (Beria, Quinet, de Rus, & Schulz, 2012). Debrie and Gouvernal (2006) point out that following liberalisation, various types of companies (including shipping lines, container terminal operators and forwarders) start developing new intermodal services. However, empirical analysis of the number, geographical coverage and networks of intermodal service providers is lacking. Most intermodal literature focuses on enhanced decision making of intermodal transport service providers, but more recently, attention has emerged for the often critical role of shippers in shifting freight form road to rail and/or barge (Eng-Larsson & Kohn, 2012). The market share of rail in Europe had declined for years (Vassallo & Fagan, 2007) and policy makers as well as other stakeholders aimed for increasing market shares. However, competition with freight trucking is fierce. Rich, Kveiborg, and Hansen (2011) identify the lack of hub and spoke networks as a barrier for modal substitution from road to rail. The structure of intermodal networks has been studied widely, see Jeong, Lee, and Bookbinder (2007) for rail and Konings, Kreutzberger, and Maraš (2013) for barge. However, in Europe hub and spoke structures for intermodal transport have not fully developed; most rail and barge services are direct services without intermediate stops hub operations (Behrends & Flodén, 2012). Some of these direct services do various stops (for instance Rotterdam-Stuttgart-Munich) but the majority consists of direct shuttles between two destinations. However, such point-to-point shuttles, especially in barge transport often do call various terminals, especially in seaports (Konings et al., 2013). However, the number of terminals in ports has not received detailed empirical analysis. Frémont and Franc (2010) assess the potential for a modal shift away from road and towards rail transport, and conclude that intermodal transport to/from a seaport is potentially attractive in France from a minimum distance of 200 km away from the seaport. Arnold, Peeters, and Thomas (2004) develop a model on intermodal transport and use it to assess minimum distances in Spain. They conclude that services below 500 km are often not economically feasible. Bärthel and Woxenius (2004) also note that rail freight in Europe is mostly across long distances and propose new concepts for short distance rail. Likewise, Reis (2014) analyses mode choice decisions of shippers with the aim to assess conditions under which relatively short train services are viable. Dablanc (2009) concludes that short haul services not connected to long haul services, (as in the case in the US) are too expensive
1 Intermodal transport is defined by the OECD as ‘movement of goods (in one and the same loading unit or a vehicle) by successive modes of transport without handling of the goods themselves when changing modes’ (OECD, 2016). However, there is some ambiguity with the term, as some industry professionals associate intermodal transport with the use of various modes – without handling the goods themselves – in the hinterland leg of a transport chain. In this use of the term, a container arriving by ship to New Jersey, with subsequent trucking to the US Mid-West would not be considered as intermodal transport. In this paper we focus on rail and barge services, as they constitute the backbone of intermodal freight transport chains. The ‘last mile’ is done by road transport, and is relatively straightforward, so not further addressed in this paper. 2 See also Ivaldi and Mc Cullough (2001) on the US freight rail system.
Table 1 Database descriptives. Database descriptive
2014
2016
Number of rail and/or barge operators in database Number of intermodal rail and/or barge terminals in database
54 122
102 469
to be economically viable. Kim and Van Wee (2011) analyse factors that affect the minimum distance, based on Monte Carlo simulations, without an empirical assessment of minimum distances. Despite these and other studies that address distance, an empirical analysis of the current distances of rail and barge transport is lacking. Given the lack of empirical analysis of the distances of intermodal services, the number of rail and barge terminal facilities in ports and characteristics of intermodal service providers, these issues are addressed in this paper. 3. The Intermodal Links database with intermodal connections Given the increasing number of providers of intermodal services following liberalisation, information for potential users on the available intermodal services creates value for these users. This led to the start of Intermodal Links, an activity that was launched in May 2013 by the company Ecorys, and that provides this information. The service details of over 100 intermodal service providers in Europe are available from Intermodal Links, a substantial number of which automatically send actualised service information so that the information in Intermodal Links remains up-to-date. The number of intermodal transport service providers included in Intermodal Links has grown significantly in the last years (see Table 1). Given the growth of companies with services in the database, a historical analysis of connections is not very valuable yet. Intermodal Links has data for train, barge and European shortsea services, primarily for container transport. In this paper we use the database from February 2016, with container transport services and only analyse barge and train services, because this is in line with most definitions of intermodal transport. In addition the database is less complete for European shortsea shipping3. Intermodal Links allows for planning intermodal trajectories that consist of various intermodal services (as an example, a rail service from Hamburg to Duisburg, followed by a barge service from Duisburg to Basel). However, given the dominance of direct services (Behrends & Flodén, 2012) such indirect connections are not included in the analysis. The February 2016 database contains 12,958 records; each record has 25 columns with data amongst others about the origin and destination for both the country, city, terminal, and region are available, transport mode (inland shipping, rail or shortsea) carrier name, frequency per week, travel time (in days) and the specific departure days. The following steps were taken to arrive at the data analysed in this paper: 1. Excluding services with shortsea shipping as mode, to keep barge and train services (after this step 6578 records remain). 2. Aggregating services that have the same origin and destination and operators, but run on different days in the week. In some cases such services are registered as two different services even though they are perceived by a user as one service. The frequencies of these services were aggregated in one service. After this step 4452 records remain and 102 carriers and 468 terminals are included. The database after these two steps allows for an analysis at the level of European terminals, for instance with terminals with the most 3 Shortsea shipping includes feeder services as well as global services of container shipping companies with various stops in Europe. However, some feeder services are not based on stable service schedules, while extra-European shipping services with multiple stops in Europe are also not included in the database.
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
P.W. de Langen et al. / Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx
3
Table 2 Top 10 terminals based on number of services and weekly frequencies per service. Origin city
Origin terminal
Terminal type
Count of services
Sum of weekly frequency
Rotterdam Hamburg Hamburg Milano Munich Rotterdam Bremerhafen Rotterdam Bremerhafen Rotterdam
ECT Delta Container Terminal Altenwerder (CTA) Burchardkai (CTB) Busto Arsizio (Gallarate) DUSS-Terminal München-Riem Euromax Eurogate C.T. Terminal not specified North Sea Terminal Bremerhafen Rail Service Center
Deepsea terminal Deepsea terminal Deepsea terminal Inland terminal Inland terminal Deepsea terminal Deepsea terminal – Deepsea terminal Deepsea terminal
100 93 90 41 65 78 66 74 66 52
426 418 391 346 325 319 283 282 277 259
Table 3 Top 10 rail terminals. Origin city
Origin terminal
Count of services
Terminal type
Sum of weekly frequency
Hamburg Hamburg Milano Munich Rotterdam Bremerhafen Bremerhafen Rotterdam Nürnberg Verona
Container Terminal Altenwerder (CTA) Burchardkai (CTB) Busto Arsizio (Gallarate) DUSS-Terminal München-Riem ECT Delta Eurogate C.T. North Sea Terminal Bremerhafen Rail Service Center Tricon Container Terminal Nürnberg Verona Quadrante Europa
87 84 41 65 64 66 66 52 47 43
Deepsea terminal Deepsea terminal Inland terminal Inland terminal Deepsea terminal Deepsea terminal Deepsea terminal Deepsea terminal Inland terminal Inland terminal
398 371 346 325 307 283 277 259 237 233
connections (see later). However, some of the services after this stage are included various times as they call at various terminals in the same origin/destination city. Both trains and barges frequently call at various terminals in the same port (van der Horst and de Langen, 2008). However, users perceive these as one service with multiple stops. Thus, a third step of data modification was needed: 3. Aggregate all services with the same origin or destination city with the same operator, modality, frequency per week and distribution of services over the week (for a service that runs three times a week that could for instance be Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays) but different terminals in the same city are aggregated into one service as this is a service which stops at various terminals4. This third step increases the data quality, as for various services, especially barge services, the terminals are “not specified” and only the origin/destination city is specified. The reason is that in practice barge services call at barge terminals based on the volumes they carry, so the precise number of terminals used can vary per trip. Thus, these services are accurately included in the database that results after step 3. After step 3, 2426 services are identified. The database after step 3 allows for various relevant empirical observations as presented in Section 4, but is imperfect in the sense that some of the services that are included twice in the database (say Rotterdam Stuttgart and Rotterdam-Munich) in reality consist of one service with an intermediate stop (in this case Rotterdam-Stuttgart-Munich). However, there is no objective way to identify such services with intermediate stops, as in other cases there are two separate services. As one example, the same operator runs a separate service Rotterdam-Milano and Rotterdam – Novara on the same days in the week. Furthermore, in some cases operators sometimes have separate direct services and sometimes include a destination as an intermediate stop. 4 In addition 7 services – equal to 4 routes as they are included once for each direction – were excluded since these services were between different stops b20 km apart and essentially in the same region. Analysis of the websites of the service providers showed these were not offered to users but included in the database as ‘theoretically’ there is a connection, because the service does stop at both terminals.
After step three an indicative calculation sheds some light on the coverage of the database. When we assume an average capacity of around 80 TEU per intermodal service (based on a train length of around 40 to 45 wagons and 2 TEU per wagon or based on a barge capacity of around 80 TEU), one service that operates once a week would imply an annual capacity of around 4000 TEU per year. Together with the frequency information available in the database, this allows for a rough estimation of the annual intermodal capacity per port or intermodal node. This can be compared with the intermodal volumes per port or intermodal node. If we apply these assumptions to Barcelona, the capacity according to the database is 236.000 TEU (59 weekly services multiplied by 4000). The actual rail container volume of Barcelona in 2015 was 213.000 (Port of Barcelona, 2016). This suggests the database is rather complete. 4. Characteristics of European intermodal connections 4.1. Intermodal terminals The database after step 2 provides some relevant information on the coverage of terminals by intermodal services. Table 2 shows the top 10 Table 4 Rail terminals in Rotterdam and services & frequencies. Origin terminal in Rotterdam
Number of services
Sum of weekly frequency.
ECT Delta Rail Service Center Euromax APMT II (Maasvlakte II) Rotterdam World Gateway (RWG) APM Terminals Rotterdam Cobelfret ECT Home CTT Rotterdam P&O Ferries Terminal Rotterdam Container Terminal (RCT) Botlek (Bertschi)
64 52 51 28 27 12 6 5 3 2 1 1
307 259 229 143 142 58 26 17 15 11 3 2
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
4
P.W. de Langen et al. / Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx
of intermodal terminals in Europe by count of services and total service frequency. The terminal with the most intermodal connections is the ECT Delta Terminal in Rotterdam with 426 weekly arrivals/departures of train and barge services and 100 intermodal destinations. Most of the other terminals included in the top 10 are large container terminals in seaports. The largest inland terminals are DUSS in Munich and Busto Arsizio in Milano. In Table 2 rail and barge connections are included, if we focus on rail services the picture is somewhat different (see Table 3). Table 3 shows a continued dominance of container terminals in deepsea ports. However, the two largest terminals in Hamburg are at the top of this list, as a substantial part of ECT's intermodal services are barge services. This is not the case for the Hamburg terminals. A final observation at the level of terminals, is the huge number of intermodal terminals in seaports. As an illustration, Table 4 shows the total number of services and frequencies of all rail terminals in the largest (container) port of Europe, Rotterdam. Table 4 shows 12 rail terminals in Rotterdam handle container trains. Furthermore, the overall distribution of services over terminals shows the complexity of serving seaports by train: ECT and APMT receive trains at three (Euromax is an ECT terminal) respectively two different terminals and on top of that various other terminals handle trains. This clearly shows the complexity of intermodal operators to select the right (number of) terminals in seaports and suggests significant volumes of cargo move between the various terminals (see Heilig & Voß, 2016 who point to the relevance of this issue for seaports and provide a review of relevant literature).
4.2. The geographic coverage of intermodal services Figs. 1 and 2 below show the coverage of intermodal services over Europe, for rail and barge (after step 3, so at the level of cities, not at the level of intermodal terminals). The coverage of rail services is rather comprehensive. The huge density of origins/destinations in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Northern Italy is visible, and in line with the fact that the population density in these areas is relatively high. The coverage of barge services is much more limited, there is a very dense barge network in The Netherlands, Belgium and along the Rhine. This is clearly related to the location of navigable inland waterways. In addition, there are barge services along the Elbe, Seine and Rhone. Table 5 shows the dominance of the Rhine-Scheldt ports in barge transport. The database also allows the analysis of destinations of specific seaports/intermodal transport nodes. Table 6 shows the case of Rotterdam, Europe's largest seaport and also the seaport with the highest number of intermodal connections. Table 6 shows that Rotterdam has over 400 weekly service frequencies of barge and rail, with a different coverage of destinations, over 50% of the barge services are within the Netherlands, compared to only around 7% for rail. The database also allows for an analysis of the coverage of rail and barge. Only 39 out of 323 intermodal nodes have both rail and barge services, of which 17 are in Germany. Only around 2.6% of all Origin-Destination pairs are served by rail and barge. The OD pair with the largest number of rail and barge services is Rotterdam-Duisburg (Europe's
Fig. 1. Rail destinations included in the database.
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
P.W. de Langen et al. / Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx
5
Fig. 2. Barge destinations included in the database.
Table 6 Country of destination of Rotterdam's intermodal services.
Table 5 Top 10 transport nodes based on barge frequency. Transport node
Sum of weekly barge frequency
Destination countries Total weekly frequency rail Total weekly frequency barge
Rotterdam Antwerp Terneuzen Strasbourg Moerdijk Amsterdam Basel Ottmarsheim Duisburg Weil am Rhein
479 309 34 31 30 30 29 26 26 25
Germany Italy Netherlands Austria France Switzerland Poland Czech Republic Grand total
largest seaport respectively Europe's largest inland port). Overall, the geographical coverage of rail and barge is mostly complementary.
203 95 29 27 26 20 14 7 421
126 0 251 0 37 18 0 0 479
fragmented at a European scale (measured at the level of service providers, not conglomerate parent companies), the largest operator, TFG Transfracht, provides around 7% of the total intermodal services by frequency. The number of operators per port is often also substantial (see Table 7).
4.3. Intermodal transport service providers 5
The database includes services of 102 companies . Of these, 59 provide rail services only, 31 provide barge services only and 12 provide rail and barge services. Contargo is the largest operator with rail (38) and barge (75) services. The market for intermodal services is fairly 5 The database contains the name of the service provider as the company name. In a few cases, a conglomerate parent company may own various service providers. For instance, DB owns TFG Transfracht as well as DB Schenker rail UK.
Table 7 Number of rail operators in leading container ports. Port
Number of rail operators
Share of largest operator
Share of largest 2 operators
Rotterdam Hamburg Bremerhafen Antwerp Trieste
26 22 16 15 6
16% 21% 28% 25% 44%
28% 35% 41% 43% 69%
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
6
P.W. de Langen et al. / Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx
Fig. 3. The concentration of rail service providers and shortest rail services in the largest European container ports.
The top five ports based on rail services all have multiple operators, in the case of Rotterdam as much as 26. Furthermore, the shares of the largest operator respectively largest two operators are generally modest. Only in Trieste the market is rather concentrated. The large number of operators in the large ports leads to coordination problems in these ports (Van der Horst & Van der Lugt, 2014). Fig. 3 shows, for the 10 largest European seaports, the relation between the concentration of operators (defined as the share of the two largest operators, termed H2) and the shortest rail service (in km). This may be relevant as the shortest rail service could be regarded as an imperfect but still relevant performance indicator for rail transport. Although this analysis is not sufficiently detailed for a conclusive result, these results suggest that more competition is related to rail services over shorter distances. Further research on this issue is required.
Table 8 Average minimum and maximum distances of services in the database.
Transport mode
Average distance of services
Minimum distance
Maximum distance
Inland shipping Rail
237 537
21 27
553 2084
Table 9 Average rail distances in selected EU countries. Country
Average rail distance
Denmark Belgium Sweden Spain France Italy Netherlands Germany Norway Austria Poland Slovakia Switzerland United Kingdom Portugal
822 704 664 563 492 491 486 477 459 458 418 392 301 274 111
4.4. Distances of intermodal services As discussed in Section 2, the service distances are a relevant issue. Intermodal transport is only economically feasible when the costs are at least as low as the costs of an ‘road only’ alternative (see Fries, de Jong, Patterson, & Weidmann, 2010, and van den Berg & De Langen, 2016). Intermodal transport with barge and/or rail generally requires ‘last mile’ haulage to the end destination of containers. The costs of two additional handlings compared to an ‘road only’ alternative need to be made up with the lower variable costs per kilometer (see Arnold et al., 2004 as well as most other models that compare intermodal and ‘road only’ services). The different structures of the cost curves give rise to a minimum distance for intermodal transport. Various studies have addressed this minimum distance, Frémont and Franc (2010) suggest a minimum distance of 200 km away from the seaport, Arnold et al. (2004) conclude that in Spain services below 500 km are often not economically feasible. The European Commission has an explicit policy aim for freight transport with a distance of over 300 km: achieve 30% intermodal transport in 2030 and 50% in 2050. In this paper an analysis is made of the distances of the intermodal services in the database. These distances are calculated based on shortest path across the earth's surface between the geographical coordinates of the intermodal terminals in the database6. These distances are somewhat smaller than the actual transport distances. However, we argue that from the perspective of the user, this distance matters more than the distance of the precise trajectory of the barge or train. Table 8 shows that the minimum distances are well below the often cited minimum distances. The barge service with the smallest distance is between the Dutch ports of Vlissingen and Terneuzen located on the North respectively South bank of the Scheldt estuary. The longest barge service is Rotterdam-Bersfelden (Swiss). For rail, the shortest service is also between two ports, Bremerhafen and Wilhelmshafen in North Germany. The longest rail service is Duisburg (Germany) -Pendik (Turkey). The rail average distance is more than twice as large as the barge minimum distance. The average rail distances (of all
6 In cases where various terminals in the same transport node were called (services that were merged in step 3), the largest distance was taken. The distances were calculated based on the geographical coordinates of the terminal, using the spherical law of cosines as the most accurate distance is the distance measured along the surface of the sphere (as opposed to a straight line through the sphere”'s interior).
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
P.W. de Langen et al. / Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx
7
Fig. 4. A scatterplot of number of services and minimum distances per operator.
services that have an origin and/or a destination in the specific country) differ substantially per country (see Table 9). In Portugal all rail services are within the country (from the main container port Sines to Setubal, Lisbon and Entrocamento), resulting in a low maximum distance. The same applies to the UK, where all services are also within the country. The minimum distance of the rail services also varies substantially between companies. Of the 31 companies with over 10 services (to exclude very small operators) and only rail services, 21 (so N67%) have a minimum distance below the 200 km that is often treated as minimum distance for rail services, 9 have a minimum distance below 100 km7 (see the scatterplot in Fig. 4).
4.5. Service frequencies The database also provides information on the service frequencies. The average frequency of rail services is 5.0 services per week, the average for barge is 3.3 per week. Higher frequencies generate scale economies for the operator (Ishfaq & Sox, 2010) and increase attractiveness for shippers (van Klink & van den Berg, 1998). The highest frequencies (59 weekly services for the Freiburg-Novarra service and 95 weekly services for the Gries am Brenner – Wörgl service, both across the Alps) are of the so-called ‘Rolling Highways’ where complete trucks are loaded onto trains and drivers travel in an accompanying passenger coach. The highest frequency of a ‘normal’ intermodal train (transport of container only) is 25, and runs between Oslo and Bergen. Less than 6% of all intermodal services have a frequency of once a week. This confirms the need for high frequencies and the associated required substantial volumes for intermodal services. Fig. 5 shows that the frequency is related to the distance. The distance is clearly only one of the factors that influences frequency (others
7 In general, the larger the number of services, the lower the distance of the shortest service. This finding is not surprising as based on a random distribution of distances of services this conclusion would also be obtained.
may include the size of the economy in the origin and destination, competition with other modes and so on), the relation between distance and frequency is significant (at 0,01%), the explanatory power is low (−0.082)8. 4.6. Seaport related vs continental intermodal transport The last theme addressed in this paper is the relation between intermodal services with either an origin or a destination in a seaport. This is relevant as for port related freight flows intermodal transport is more attractive as there is only a need for one ‘last mile’ by road, as the containers arrive/depart by sea. Continental intermodal transport services are here defined as services between two inland destinations9. Table 10 shows the distribution of the total transport services in different types of origins and destinations. The vast majority of rail services (64%) connect ports with inland nodes, while 26% of services connect two inland nodes and 10% of services connects two ports. For barge, the share of port-hinterland connections is even higher (82%), inland shipping is hardly used for inland node to inland node services (3%), while barge is used more often to connect two seaports (15%). In conclusion, inland shipping is hardly used for inland to inland transportation. If the EU policy objectives to increase the share of intermodal transport are to be achieved, growth of rail services from inland to inland node is required. There are huge differences between countries. In the Netherlands, the share of rail inland-to-inland services as a percentage of total rail services is as low as 4%, implying that even though the Netherlands has excellent rail connections to and from its ports, inland to inland connections are minimal. This is partly explained by the small size of the country. The same applies to Belgium (6%). In Austria (44%) and Swiss
8 The data are not normally distributed, but the normal statistical tests still are valid given the huge sample size (N2400). 9 We acknowledge that this definition is not fully accurate. As seaports are often also clusters of manufacturing activity (De Langen, 2004), a part of the cargo on intermodal services from seaports to the hinterland may be ‘continental cargo’ that is not shipped overseas. However, data for a more precise classification of services is not publicly available.
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
8
P.W. de Langen et al. / Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx
Fig. 5. Frequencies and distances for rail and barge services.
(50%), both landlocked, the share of inland-to-inland services is much higher. For such a large country, with large inland population and logistics centers (Madrid, Zaragoza), Spain has a surprisingly low number of inland to inland services – only one, from Madrid to Murcia. Perhaps surprisingly, the average distances of inland-to-inland services are lower (509 km.) than those of all rail services (539 km). Finally, the analysis of the share of inland-to-inland services of different carriers shows huge variance of these shares. No rail large operators is fully specialised on inland-to-inland services, while some relatively large carriers (including EGS, Contargo, ERS, Alpe Adria) are specialised on port-hinterland connections and have not a single inland-to-inland service. The largest operator by frequencies (TFG Transfracht) has a very low share inland-to-inland, while HUPAC (56) and Kombiverkehr (49%) are relatively strong in inland-to-inland rail services.
5. Conclusions and implications for policies and further research In this paper we have analysed rail and barge connections in Europe, based on a comprehensive database. This paper is to our knowledge the first empirical exploration of such connections. This paper yields some relevant conclusions and opens avenues for further research. First, there are a large number of operators and terminals in the large seaports. This leads to coordination problems and suggests ports may need to develop interterminal transport systems (i.e. Port Shuttle Rotterdam) that can be used by all operators. Second, rail and barge are complementary, in the sense that the number of overlapping OD pairs is limited and that barge is strong in relatively short distance transport, while rail generally is used for longer transport distances. A detailed analysis of the geographical coverage of the intermodal services is beyond the scope of this paper but an important research step. For instance, it may be possible to identify ‘missing links’; OD pairs, where based on demand characteristics (container throughput volumes, industrial production, population, distances to competing ports/transport nodes) intermodal connections would seem viable but have not emerged. Third, this paper provides an indication that a higher competition intensity in a port may lower the shortest rail service. More research on competition between rail operators at the level of ports is relevant.
Table 10 The distribution of types of origins and destinations of transport services. Rail From/to Inland node Port Grand total
Inland node 488 599 1087
Barge Port 606 194 800
Inland node 15 220 235
Port 220 84 304
Fourth, the lowest transport distances are much lower than often assumed. Services over short distances are feasible, especially between ports and for mountain crossings. Nevertheless, even for more ‘regular’ port to hinterland services, various cases of services at a distance below 100 km exist. Further research, also through detailed cases, would shed more light on the success factors for short distance rail services. Fifth, the analysis revealed service frequencies are on average very substantial. These frequencies diminish with distance. This may be related to the efficient deployment of equipment, which may require higher frequencies on shorter trajectories. Sixth, the paper has addressed inland-to-inland services. Barge services are hardly used for such OD pairs, while even for rail, port hinterland connections are dominant. While various relatively large rail operators specialize in port hinterland connections, no operator specialises on inland to inland services. This exploratory paper has analysed the characteristics of intermodal services. An important next step in research is to monitor how these services change over time. While this was not feasible in this paper, due to the increasing inclusion of rail operators in the database, this remains an important next step for research, and could for instance shed light on the evolution of rail connections per port, the expansion strategies of rail operators, the evolution of shortest distances as well as the coverage of inland-to-inland networks. Appendix 1 Intermodal terminals in Rotterdam Rotterdam Origin City: all terminals and services. Values Term_Ori_ID
Origin city
Origin terminal
NL022 NL021 NL060 NL025 NL102 NL103
Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam
NL096 NL019 NL098 NL017 NL023 NL097 NL024 NL018 NL076 NL020 NL065 NL074 NL054
Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam
NL094 Grand total
Rotterdam
ECT Delta Euromax Terminal not specified Rail Service Center APMT II (Maasvlakte II) Rotterdam World Gateway (RWG) Maasvlakte terminals ECT Home City terminals APM Terminals Rotterdam CTT Rotterdam Botlek/Pernis terminals Short Sea Terminals (RST) Barge Center Waalhaven Uniport Waalhaven Botlek Terminal Cobelfret P&O Ferries Terminal Rotterdam Container Terminal (RCT) Botlek (Bertschi)
Count of services 100 78 74 52 39 38
Sum of weekly Freq 426 319 282 259 183 182
52 41 33 27 18 12 16 16 15 14 10 6 5
173 122 113 102 66 61 56 52 51 45 42 27 19
1 647
2 2582
Rotterdam Origin City - for modality rail. Values Term_Ori_ID
Origin city
Origin terminal
NL022 NL025 NL021 NL102 NL103
Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam
NL017 NL096 NL060 NL065 NL019 NL023
Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam
ECT Delta Rail Service Center Euromax APMT II (Maasvlakte II) Rotterdam World Gateway (RWG) APM Terminals Rotterdam Maasvlakte terminals Terminal not specified Cobelfret ECT Home CTT Rotterdam
Count of services 64 52 51 28 27
Sum of weekly Freq 307 259 229 143 142
12 11 9 6 5 3
58 39 32 26 17 15
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
P.W. de Langen et al. / Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx (continued) Values NL074 NL098 NL054
Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam
NL094 Grand total
Rotterdam
P&O Ferries Terminal City terminals Rotterdam Container Terminal (RCT) Botlek (Bertschi)
2 1 1
11 3 3
1 273
2 1286
References Andersen, J., & Christiansen, M. (2009). Designing new European rail freight services. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 60(3), 348–360. Arnold, P., Peeters, D., & Thomas, I. (2004). Modelling a rail/road intermodal transportation system. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 40(3), 255–270. Bärthel, F., & Woxenius, J. (2004). Developing intermodal transport for small flows over short distances. Transportation Planning and Technology, 27(5), 403–424. Behrends, S., & Flodén, J. (2012). The effect of transhipment costs on the performance of intermodal line-trains. Logistics Research, 4(3–4), 127–136. Beria, P., Quinet, E., de Rus, G., & Schulz, C. (2012). A comparison of rail liberalisation levels across four European countries. Research in Transportation Economics, 36(1), 110–120. Bontekoning, Y. M., Macharis, C., & Trip, J. J. (2004). Is a new applied transportation research field emerging?––A review of intermodal rail–truck freight transport literature. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 38(1), 1–34. Caris, A., Macharis, C., & Janssens, G. K. (2008). Planning problems in intermodal freight transport: Accomplishments and prospects. Transportation Planning and Technology, 31(3), 277–302. Dablanc, L. (2009). Regional policy issues for rail freight services. Transport Policy, 16(4), 163–172. Debrie, J., & Gouvernal, E. (2006). Intermodal rail in Western Europe: Actors and services in a new regulatory environment. Growth and Change, 37(3), 444–459. Eng-Larsson, F., & Kohn, C. (2012). Modal shift for greener logistics-the shipper's perspective. International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, 42(1), 36–59. European Commission (2011). White paper. Roadmap to a single European transport area – Towards a competitive and resource efficient transport system [COM (2011) 144 final.]. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Frémont, A., & Franc, P. (2010). Hinterland transportation in Europe: Combined transport versus road transport. Journal of Transport Geography, 18(4), 548–556. Fries, N., de Jong, G., Patterson, Z., & Weidmann, U. (2010). Shipper willingness to pay to increase environmental performance in freight transportation. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2168, 33–42. Heilig, L., & Voß, S. (2016). Inter-terminal transportation: An annotated bibliography and research agenda. Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal, 1–29. Ishfaq, R., & Sox, C. R. (2010). Intermodal logistics: The interplay of financial, operational and service issues. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 46(6), 926–949.
9
Ivaldi, M., & Mc Cullough, G. J. (2001). Density and integration effects on Class I US freight railroads. Journal of Regulatory Economics, 19(2), 161–182. Jeong, S. -J., Lee, C. -G., & Bookbinder, J. H. (2007). The European freight railway system as a hub-and-spoke network. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 41(6), 523–536. Kim, N. S., & Van Wee, B. (2011). The relative importance of factors that influence the break-even distance of intermodal freight transport systems. Journal of Transport Geography, 19(4), 859–875. van Klink, H. A., & van den Berg, G. C. (1998). Gateways and intermodalism. Journal of Transport Geography, 6(1), 1–9. Konings, R. (2007). Opportunities to improve container barge handling in the port of Rotterdam from a transport network perspective. Journal of Transport Geography, 15(6), 443–454. Konings, R., Kreutzberger, E., & Maraš, V. (2013). Major considerations in developing a hub-and-spoke network to improve the cost performance of container barge transport in the hinterland: The case of the port of Rotterdam. Journal of Transport Geography, 29, 63–73. de Langen, P. (2004). The performance of seaport clusters; A framework to analyze cluster performance and an application to the seaport clusters of Durban, Rotterdam and the Lower Mississippi. (No. ERIM PhD Series; EPS-2004-034-LIS). OECD (2016). Glossary of statistical terms. retrieved from https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/ detail.asp?ID=430. (accessed 22nd December 2016). Port of Barcelona (2016). Annual Report. retrieved from http://content.portdebarcelona. cat/cntmng/d/d/workspace/SpacesStore/46232079-0698-4d3f-bf7c-0df03150b5c2/ 2015_PortBCN_en.pdf. (accessed September 2016). Reis, V. (2014). Analysis of mode choice variables in short-distance intermodal freight transport using an agent-based model. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 61, 100–120. Rich, J., Kveiborg, O., & Hansen, C. O. (2011). On structural inelasticity of modal substitution in freight transport. Journal of Transport Geography, 19(1), 134–146. Suárez-Alemán, A., Trujillo, L., & Medda, F. (2015). Short sea shipping as intermodal competitor: A theoretical analysis of European transport policies. Maritime Policy & Management, 42(4), 317–334. van der Horst, M. R., & de Langen, P. W. (2008). Coordination in hinterland transport chains: A major challenge for the seaport community. Maritime Economics and Logistics, 10, 108–129. van der Horst, M. R., & Van der Lugt, L. M. (2014). An institutional analysis of coordination in liberalized port-related railway chains: An application to the port of Rotterdam. Transport Reviews, 34(1), 68–85. van den Berg, R., & De Langen, P. W. (2016). Environmental sustainability in container transport: the attitudes of shippers and forwarders. International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications, 1–17. Vassallo, J. M., & Fagan, M. (2007). Nature or nurture: Why do railroads carry greater freight share in the United States than in Europe? Transportation, 34(2), 177–193. Veenstra, A., & Notteboom, T. (2011). The development of the Yangtze River container port system. Journal of Transport Geography, 19(4), 772–781. Woroniuk, C., Marinov, M., Zunder, T., & Mortimer, P. (2013). Time series analysis of rail freight services by the private sector in Europe. Transport Policy, 25, 81–93. Zunder, T. H., Islam, D. M. Z., Mortimer, P. N., & Aditjandra, P. T. (2013). How far has open access enabled the growth of cross border pan European rail freight? A case study. Research in Transportation Business & Management, 6, 71–80.
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Research in Transportation Business & Management
Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration☆ P.W. de Langen a,b,⁎, D.M. Lases Figueroa a, K.H. van Donselaar a, J. Bozuwa c a b c
Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology, PO Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands Ports & Logistics Advisory, Spain Ecorys, United Kingdom
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 13 September 2016 Received in revised form 9 January 2017 Accepted 9 February 2017 Available online xxxx Keywords: Intermodal transport Topic: Ports Inland terminals Europe Intermodal transport distance General remarks: themed volume on intermodal freight transport management.
a b s t r a c t In this paper we analyse the intermodal connectivity in Europe. The empirical analysis is to our knowledge the first empirical analysis of intermodal connections, and is based on a comprehensive database of intermodal connections in Europe. The paper focuses on rail and barge services, as they are the backbone of intermodal freight transport chains. The empirical analysis reveals that rail and barge are complementary, in the sense that the number of overlapping origin-destination pairs is limited and barge connections are across relatively short distances, while rail generally is used for larger transport distances. In addition the lowest transport distances of rail and barge services are relatively low. Services over short distances are feasible, especially between ports and for mountain crossings. For port-to- hinterland services, various services cover distances below 100 km. This paper provides a first indication (albeit no conclusive evidence) that a higher competition intensity between rail operators in a port may lower the distance of the shortest rail service. The analysis also reveals service frequencies are on average very substantial: around four services per week. These frequencies diminish with the distance of the service. These insights are valuable for companies involved in developing new services and provide a basis for further research. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction In this paper we analyse the intermodal connectivity in Europe. The empirical analysis is based on a comprehensive database of intermodal connections in Europe developed by Ecorys who developed an extensive intermodal database called Intermodal Links. Intermodal connections are increasingly relevant for shippers, forwarders and policy makers especially in view of the Transport White Paper ambition of a modal shift of 50% by 2050, from road to other modes, mainly rail (European Commission, 2011). This paper contains an empirical analysis of intermodal connections in Europe. To our knowledge it is the first paper with such a European wide empirical analysis. Rather than the more rigorous approach of first developing hypotheses based on theoretical considerations that then developing a research design and doing the empirical analysis, this paper aims to provide relevant insights on a number of topics, based on a unique dataset. This exploratory paper may provide a basis for more rigorous next research steps. Themes as complementarity of the modes rail and barge, the distances of intermodal services and
☆ This work was supported by the Province of North-Brabant, The Netherlands. The province did not influence the research design. ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (P.W. de Langen).
differences between continental connections (not involving a seaport) and hinterland connections from ports are addressed. The first section briefly reviews the literature on (intermodal) freight connections. The second section details the characteristics of the database used in this paper. In the third section, the findings of the empirical analysis of intermodal connections in Europe are presented. The paper ends with a concluding section.
2. Literature on intermodal connections in Europe The body of research on intermodal transport is rapidly growing (see Bontekoning, Macharis, & Trip, 2004 for the last comprehensive review). The vast majority of the research develops operation research techniques (see Caris, Macharis, & Janssens, 2008), for instance to address such themes as the optimal number and location of terminals and the optimal structure of the intermodal transport network (Andersen & Christiansen, 2009). A significant number of papers deal with policies to promote intermodal transport (see Suárez-Alemán, Trujillo, & Medda, 2015, for a recent paper). To our knowledge an empirical analysis of intermodal services in Europe is lacking. Most detailed empirical analysis is through case studies, such as Zunder, Islam, Mortimer, and Aditjandra (2013) who analyse one specific rail service and Woroniuk, Marinov, Zunder, and Mortimer (2013) who analyse a specific rail corridor.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003 2210-5395/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
2
P.W. de Langen et al. / Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx
In the US, Europe and most other areas the vast majority of intermodal freight transport uses rail as well as road transport1. In addition, barge transport is used as a complement of road transport, especially in North West Europe (Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany, see Konings, 2007) and along the Yangtze (Veenstra & Notteboom, 2011). The rail freight market in Europe is fundamentally different from North America, as in Europe rail tracks are government owned and rail operators provide services on these tracks. Vassallo and Fagan (2007) discuss why the market share of rail in Europe is low compared to US, they conclude geographical reasons are important but also suggest there are institutional bottlenecks in Europe, including stateowned rail operators with dominant market positions2. The rail freight market was liberalised from the 1990s onwards, leading to the entry of new rail operators, but in many European countries state-owned incumbents still have strong market positions (Beria, Quinet, de Rus, & Schulz, 2012). Debrie and Gouvernal (2006) point out that following liberalisation, various types of companies (including shipping lines, container terminal operators and forwarders) start developing new intermodal services. However, empirical analysis of the number, geographical coverage and networks of intermodal service providers is lacking. Most intermodal literature focuses on enhanced decision making of intermodal transport service providers, but more recently, attention has emerged for the often critical role of shippers in shifting freight form road to rail and/or barge (Eng-Larsson & Kohn, 2012). The market share of rail in Europe had declined for years (Vassallo & Fagan, 2007) and policy makers as well as other stakeholders aimed for increasing market shares. However, competition with freight trucking is fierce. Rich, Kveiborg, and Hansen (2011) identify the lack of hub and spoke networks as a barrier for modal substitution from road to rail. The structure of intermodal networks has been studied widely, see Jeong, Lee, and Bookbinder (2007) for rail and Konings, Kreutzberger, and Maraš (2013) for barge. However, in Europe hub and spoke structures for intermodal transport have not fully developed; most rail and barge services are direct services without intermediate stops hub operations (Behrends & Flodén, 2012). Some of these direct services do various stops (for instance Rotterdam-Stuttgart-Munich) but the majority consists of direct shuttles between two destinations. However, such point-to-point shuttles, especially in barge transport often do call various terminals, especially in seaports (Konings et al., 2013). However, the number of terminals in ports has not received detailed empirical analysis. Frémont and Franc (2010) assess the potential for a modal shift away from road and towards rail transport, and conclude that intermodal transport to/from a seaport is potentially attractive in France from a minimum distance of 200 km away from the seaport. Arnold, Peeters, and Thomas (2004) develop a model on intermodal transport and use it to assess minimum distances in Spain. They conclude that services below 500 km are often not economically feasible. Bärthel and Woxenius (2004) also note that rail freight in Europe is mostly across long distances and propose new concepts for short distance rail. Likewise, Reis (2014) analyses mode choice decisions of shippers with the aim to assess conditions under which relatively short train services are viable. Dablanc (2009) concludes that short haul services not connected to long haul services, (as in the case in the US) are too expensive
1 Intermodal transport is defined by the OECD as ‘movement of goods (in one and the same loading unit or a vehicle) by successive modes of transport without handling of the goods themselves when changing modes’ (OECD, 2016). However, there is some ambiguity with the term, as some industry professionals associate intermodal transport with the use of various modes – without handling the goods themselves – in the hinterland leg of a transport chain. In this use of the term, a container arriving by ship to New Jersey, with subsequent trucking to the US Mid-West would not be considered as intermodal transport. In this paper we focus on rail and barge services, as they constitute the backbone of intermodal freight transport chains. The ‘last mile’ is done by road transport, and is relatively straightforward, so not further addressed in this paper. 2 See also Ivaldi and Mc Cullough (2001) on the US freight rail system.
Table 1 Database descriptives. Database descriptive
2014
2016
Number of rail and/or barge operators in database Number of intermodal rail and/or barge terminals in database
54 122
102 469
to be economically viable. Kim and Van Wee (2011) analyse factors that affect the minimum distance, based on Monte Carlo simulations, without an empirical assessment of minimum distances. Despite these and other studies that address distance, an empirical analysis of the current distances of rail and barge transport is lacking. Given the lack of empirical analysis of the distances of intermodal services, the number of rail and barge terminal facilities in ports and characteristics of intermodal service providers, these issues are addressed in this paper. 3. The Intermodal Links database with intermodal connections Given the increasing number of providers of intermodal services following liberalisation, information for potential users on the available intermodal services creates value for these users. This led to the start of Intermodal Links, an activity that was launched in May 2013 by the company Ecorys, and that provides this information. The service details of over 100 intermodal service providers in Europe are available from Intermodal Links, a substantial number of which automatically send actualised service information so that the information in Intermodal Links remains up-to-date. The number of intermodal transport service providers included in Intermodal Links has grown significantly in the last years (see Table 1). Given the growth of companies with services in the database, a historical analysis of connections is not very valuable yet. Intermodal Links has data for train, barge and European shortsea services, primarily for container transport. In this paper we use the database from February 2016, with container transport services and only analyse barge and train services, because this is in line with most definitions of intermodal transport. In addition the database is less complete for European shortsea shipping3. Intermodal Links allows for planning intermodal trajectories that consist of various intermodal services (as an example, a rail service from Hamburg to Duisburg, followed by a barge service from Duisburg to Basel). However, given the dominance of direct services (Behrends & Flodén, 2012) such indirect connections are not included in the analysis. The February 2016 database contains 12,958 records; each record has 25 columns with data amongst others about the origin and destination for both the country, city, terminal, and region are available, transport mode (inland shipping, rail or shortsea) carrier name, frequency per week, travel time (in days) and the specific departure days. The following steps were taken to arrive at the data analysed in this paper: 1. Excluding services with shortsea shipping as mode, to keep barge and train services (after this step 6578 records remain). 2. Aggregating services that have the same origin and destination and operators, but run on different days in the week. In some cases such services are registered as two different services even though they are perceived by a user as one service. The frequencies of these services were aggregated in one service. After this step 4452 records remain and 102 carriers and 468 terminals are included. The database after these two steps allows for an analysis at the level of European terminals, for instance with terminals with the most 3 Shortsea shipping includes feeder services as well as global services of container shipping companies with various stops in Europe. However, some feeder services are not based on stable service schedules, while extra-European shipping services with multiple stops in Europe are also not included in the database.
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
P.W. de Langen et al. / Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx
3
Table 2 Top 10 terminals based on number of services and weekly frequencies per service. Origin city
Origin terminal
Terminal type
Count of services
Sum of weekly frequency
Rotterdam Hamburg Hamburg Milano Munich Rotterdam Bremerhafen Rotterdam Bremerhafen Rotterdam
ECT Delta Container Terminal Altenwerder (CTA) Burchardkai (CTB) Busto Arsizio (Gallarate) DUSS-Terminal München-Riem Euromax Eurogate C.T. Terminal not specified North Sea Terminal Bremerhafen Rail Service Center
Deepsea terminal Deepsea terminal Deepsea terminal Inland terminal Inland terminal Deepsea terminal Deepsea terminal – Deepsea terminal Deepsea terminal
100 93 90 41 65 78 66 74 66 52
426 418 391 346 325 319 283 282 277 259
Table 3 Top 10 rail terminals. Origin city
Origin terminal
Count of services
Terminal type
Sum of weekly frequency
Hamburg Hamburg Milano Munich Rotterdam Bremerhafen Bremerhafen Rotterdam Nürnberg Verona
Container Terminal Altenwerder (CTA) Burchardkai (CTB) Busto Arsizio (Gallarate) DUSS-Terminal München-Riem ECT Delta Eurogate C.T. North Sea Terminal Bremerhafen Rail Service Center Tricon Container Terminal Nürnberg Verona Quadrante Europa
87 84 41 65 64 66 66 52 47 43
Deepsea terminal Deepsea terminal Inland terminal Inland terminal Deepsea terminal Deepsea terminal Deepsea terminal Deepsea terminal Inland terminal Inland terminal
398 371 346 325 307 283 277 259 237 233
connections (see later). However, some of the services after this stage are included various times as they call at various terminals in the same origin/destination city. Both trains and barges frequently call at various terminals in the same port (van der Horst and de Langen, 2008). However, users perceive these as one service with multiple stops. Thus, a third step of data modification was needed: 3. Aggregate all services with the same origin or destination city with the same operator, modality, frequency per week and distribution of services over the week (for a service that runs three times a week that could for instance be Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays) but different terminals in the same city are aggregated into one service as this is a service which stops at various terminals4. This third step increases the data quality, as for various services, especially barge services, the terminals are “not specified” and only the origin/destination city is specified. The reason is that in practice barge services call at barge terminals based on the volumes they carry, so the precise number of terminals used can vary per trip. Thus, these services are accurately included in the database that results after step 3. After step 3, 2426 services are identified. The database after step 3 allows for various relevant empirical observations as presented in Section 4, but is imperfect in the sense that some of the services that are included twice in the database (say Rotterdam Stuttgart and Rotterdam-Munich) in reality consist of one service with an intermediate stop (in this case Rotterdam-Stuttgart-Munich). However, there is no objective way to identify such services with intermediate stops, as in other cases there are two separate services. As one example, the same operator runs a separate service Rotterdam-Milano and Rotterdam – Novara on the same days in the week. Furthermore, in some cases operators sometimes have separate direct services and sometimes include a destination as an intermediate stop. 4 In addition 7 services – equal to 4 routes as they are included once for each direction – were excluded since these services were between different stops b20 km apart and essentially in the same region. Analysis of the websites of the service providers showed these were not offered to users but included in the database as ‘theoretically’ there is a connection, because the service does stop at both terminals.
After step three an indicative calculation sheds some light on the coverage of the database. When we assume an average capacity of around 80 TEU per intermodal service (based on a train length of around 40 to 45 wagons and 2 TEU per wagon or based on a barge capacity of around 80 TEU), one service that operates once a week would imply an annual capacity of around 4000 TEU per year. Together with the frequency information available in the database, this allows for a rough estimation of the annual intermodal capacity per port or intermodal node. This can be compared with the intermodal volumes per port or intermodal node. If we apply these assumptions to Barcelona, the capacity according to the database is 236.000 TEU (59 weekly services multiplied by 4000). The actual rail container volume of Barcelona in 2015 was 213.000 (Port of Barcelona, 2016). This suggests the database is rather complete. 4. Characteristics of European intermodal connections 4.1. Intermodal terminals The database after step 2 provides some relevant information on the coverage of terminals by intermodal services. Table 2 shows the top 10 Table 4 Rail terminals in Rotterdam and services & frequencies. Origin terminal in Rotterdam
Number of services
Sum of weekly frequency.
ECT Delta Rail Service Center Euromax APMT II (Maasvlakte II) Rotterdam World Gateway (RWG) APM Terminals Rotterdam Cobelfret ECT Home CTT Rotterdam P&O Ferries Terminal Rotterdam Container Terminal (RCT) Botlek (Bertschi)
64 52 51 28 27 12 6 5 3 2 1 1
307 259 229 143 142 58 26 17 15 11 3 2
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
4
P.W. de Langen et al. / Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx
of intermodal terminals in Europe by count of services and total service frequency. The terminal with the most intermodal connections is the ECT Delta Terminal in Rotterdam with 426 weekly arrivals/departures of train and barge services and 100 intermodal destinations. Most of the other terminals included in the top 10 are large container terminals in seaports. The largest inland terminals are DUSS in Munich and Busto Arsizio in Milano. In Table 2 rail and barge connections are included, if we focus on rail services the picture is somewhat different (see Table 3). Table 3 shows a continued dominance of container terminals in deepsea ports. However, the two largest terminals in Hamburg are at the top of this list, as a substantial part of ECT's intermodal services are barge services. This is not the case for the Hamburg terminals. A final observation at the level of terminals, is the huge number of intermodal terminals in seaports. As an illustration, Table 4 shows the total number of services and frequencies of all rail terminals in the largest (container) port of Europe, Rotterdam. Table 4 shows 12 rail terminals in Rotterdam handle container trains. Furthermore, the overall distribution of services over terminals shows the complexity of serving seaports by train: ECT and APMT receive trains at three (Euromax is an ECT terminal) respectively two different terminals and on top of that various other terminals handle trains. This clearly shows the complexity of intermodal operators to select the right (number of) terminals in seaports and suggests significant volumes of cargo move between the various terminals (see Heilig & Voß, 2016 who point to the relevance of this issue for seaports and provide a review of relevant literature).
4.2. The geographic coverage of intermodal services Figs. 1 and 2 below show the coverage of intermodal services over Europe, for rail and barge (after step 3, so at the level of cities, not at the level of intermodal terminals). The coverage of rail services is rather comprehensive. The huge density of origins/destinations in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Northern Italy is visible, and in line with the fact that the population density in these areas is relatively high. The coverage of barge services is much more limited, there is a very dense barge network in The Netherlands, Belgium and along the Rhine. This is clearly related to the location of navigable inland waterways. In addition, there are barge services along the Elbe, Seine and Rhone. Table 5 shows the dominance of the Rhine-Scheldt ports in barge transport. The database also allows the analysis of destinations of specific seaports/intermodal transport nodes. Table 6 shows the case of Rotterdam, Europe's largest seaport and also the seaport with the highest number of intermodal connections. Table 6 shows that Rotterdam has over 400 weekly service frequencies of barge and rail, with a different coverage of destinations, over 50% of the barge services are within the Netherlands, compared to only around 7% for rail. The database also allows for an analysis of the coverage of rail and barge. Only 39 out of 323 intermodal nodes have both rail and barge services, of which 17 are in Germany. Only around 2.6% of all Origin-Destination pairs are served by rail and barge. The OD pair with the largest number of rail and barge services is Rotterdam-Duisburg (Europe's
Fig. 1. Rail destinations included in the database.
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
P.W. de Langen et al. / Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx
5
Fig. 2. Barge destinations included in the database.
Table 6 Country of destination of Rotterdam's intermodal services.
Table 5 Top 10 transport nodes based on barge frequency. Transport node
Sum of weekly barge frequency
Destination countries Total weekly frequency rail Total weekly frequency barge
Rotterdam Antwerp Terneuzen Strasbourg Moerdijk Amsterdam Basel Ottmarsheim Duisburg Weil am Rhein
479 309 34 31 30 30 29 26 26 25
Germany Italy Netherlands Austria France Switzerland Poland Czech Republic Grand total
largest seaport respectively Europe's largest inland port). Overall, the geographical coverage of rail and barge is mostly complementary.
203 95 29 27 26 20 14 7 421
126 0 251 0 37 18 0 0 479
fragmented at a European scale (measured at the level of service providers, not conglomerate parent companies), the largest operator, TFG Transfracht, provides around 7% of the total intermodal services by frequency. The number of operators per port is often also substantial (see Table 7).
4.3. Intermodal transport service providers 5
The database includes services of 102 companies . Of these, 59 provide rail services only, 31 provide barge services only and 12 provide rail and barge services. Contargo is the largest operator with rail (38) and barge (75) services. The market for intermodal services is fairly 5 The database contains the name of the service provider as the company name. In a few cases, a conglomerate parent company may own various service providers. For instance, DB owns TFG Transfracht as well as DB Schenker rail UK.
Table 7 Number of rail operators in leading container ports. Port
Number of rail operators
Share of largest operator
Share of largest 2 operators
Rotterdam Hamburg Bremerhafen Antwerp Trieste
26 22 16 15 6
16% 21% 28% 25% 44%
28% 35% 41% 43% 69%
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
6
P.W. de Langen et al. / Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx
Fig. 3. The concentration of rail service providers and shortest rail services in the largest European container ports.
The top five ports based on rail services all have multiple operators, in the case of Rotterdam as much as 26. Furthermore, the shares of the largest operator respectively largest two operators are generally modest. Only in Trieste the market is rather concentrated. The large number of operators in the large ports leads to coordination problems in these ports (Van der Horst & Van der Lugt, 2014). Fig. 3 shows, for the 10 largest European seaports, the relation between the concentration of operators (defined as the share of the two largest operators, termed H2) and the shortest rail service (in km). This may be relevant as the shortest rail service could be regarded as an imperfect but still relevant performance indicator for rail transport. Although this analysis is not sufficiently detailed for a conclusive result, these results suggest that more competition is related to rail services over shorter distances. Further research on this issue is required.
Table 8 Average minimum and maximum distances of services in the database.
Transport mode
Average distance of services
Minimum distance
Maximum distance
Inland shipping Rail
237 537
21 27
553 2084
Table 9 Average rail distances in selected EU countries. Country
Average rail distance
Denmark Belgium Sweden Spain France Italy Netherlands Germany Norway Austria Poland Slovakia Switzerland United Kingdom Portugal
822 704 664 563 492 491 486 477 459 458 418 392 301 274 111
4.4. Distances of intermodal services As discussed in Section 2, the service distances are a relevant issue. Intermodal transport is only economically feasible when the costs are at least as low as the costs of an ‘road only’ alternative (see Fries, de Jong, Patterson, & Weidmann, 2010, and van den Berg & De Langen, 2016). Intermodal transport with barge and/or rail generally requires ‘last mile’ haulage to the end destination of containers. The costs of two additional handlings compared to an ‘road only’ alternative need to be made up with the lower variable costs per kilometer (see Arnold et al., 2004 as well as most other models that compare intermodal and ‘road only’ services). The different structures of the cost curves give rise to a minimum distance for intermodal transport. Various studies have addressed this minimum distance, Frémont and Franc (2010) suggest a minimum distance of 200 km away from the seaport, Arnold et al. (2004) conclude that in Spain services below 500 km are often not economically feasible. The European Commission has an explicit policy aim for freight transport with a distance of over 300 km: achieve 30% intermodal transport in 2030 and 50% in 2050. In this paper an analysis is made of the distances of the intermodal services in the database. These distances are calculated based on shortest path across the earth's surface between the geographical coordinates of the intermodal terminals in the database6. These distances are somewhat smaller than the actual transport distances. However, we argue that from the perspective of the user, this distance matters more than the distance of the precise trajectory of the barge or train. Table 8 shows that the minimum distances are well below the often cited minimum distances. The barge service with the smallest distance is between the Dutch ports of Vlissingen and Terneuzen located on the North respectively South bank of the Scheldt estuary. The longest barge service is Rotterdam-Bersfelden (Swiss). For rail, the shortest service is also between two ports, Bremerhafen and Wilhelmshafen in North Germany. The longest rail service is Duisburg (Germany) -Pendik (Turkey). The rail average distance is more than twice as large as the barge minimum distance. The average rail distances (of all
6 In cases where various terminals in the same transport node were called (services that were merged in step 3), the largest distance was taken. The distances were calculated based on the geographical coordinates of the terminal, using the spherical law of cosines as the most accurate distance is the distance measured along the surface of the sphere (as opposed to a straight line through the sphere”'s interior).
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
P.W. de Langen et al. / Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx
7
Fig. 4. A scatterplot of number of services and minimum distances per operator.
services that have an origin and/or a destination in the specific country) differ substantially per country (see Table 9). In Portugal all rail services are within the country (from the main container port Sines to Setubal, Lisbon and Entrocamento), resulting in a low maximum distance. The same applies to the UK, where all services are also within the country. The minimum distance of the rail services also varies substantially between companies. Of the 31 companies with over 10 services (to exclude very small operators) and only rail services, 21 (so N67%) have a minimum distance below the 200 km that is often treated as minimum distance for rail services, 9 have a minimum distance below 100 km7 (see the scatterplot in Fig. 4).
4.5. Service frequencies The database also provides information on the service frequencies. The average frequency of rail services is 5.0 services per week, the average for barge is 3.3 per week. Higher frequencies generate scale economies for the operator (Ishfaq & Sox, 2010) and increase attractiveness for shippers (van Klink & van den Berg, 1998). The highest frequencies (59 weekly services for the Freiburg-Novarra service and 95 weekly services for the Gries am Brenner – Wörgl service, both across the Alps) are of the so-called ‘Rolling Highways’ where complete trucks are loaded onto trains and drivers travel in an accompanying passenger coach. The highest frequency of a ‘normal’ intermodal train (transport of container only) is 25, and runs between Oslo and Bergen. Less than 6% of all intermodal services have a frequency of once a week. This confirms the need for high frequencies and the associated required substantial volumes for intermodal services. Fig. 5 shows that the frequency is related to the distance. The distance is clearly only one of the factors that influences frequency (others
7 In general, the larger the number of services, the lower the distance of the shortest service. This finding is not surprising as based on a random distribution of distances of services this conclusion would also be obtained.
may include the size of the economy in the origin and destination, competition with other modes and so on), the relation between distance and frequency is significant (at 0,01%), the explanatory power is low (−0.082)8. 4.6. Seaport related vs continental intermodal transport The last theme addressed in this paper is the relation between intermodal services with either an origin or a destination in a seaport. This is relevant as for port related freight flows intermodal transport is more attractive as there is only a need for one ‘last mile’ by road, as the containers arrive/depart by sea. Continental intermodal transport services are here defined as services between two inland destinations9. Table 10 shows the distribution of the total transport services in different types of origins and destinations. The vast majority of rail services (64%) connect ports with inland nodes, while 26% of services connect two inland nodes and 10% of services connects two ports. For barge, the share of port-hinterland connections is even higher (82%), inland shipping is hardly used for inland node to inland node services (3%), while barge is used more often to connect two seaports (15%). In conclusion, inland shipping is hardly used for inland to inland transportation. If the EU policy objectives to increase the share of intermodal transport are to be achieved, growth of rail services from inland to inland node is required. There are huge differences between countries. In the Netherlands, the share of rail inland-to-inland services as a percentage of total rail services is as low as 4%, implying that even though the Netherlands has excellent rail connections to and from its ports, inland to inland connections are minimal. This is partly explained by the small size of the country. The same applies to Belgium (6%). In Austria (44%) and Swiss
8 The data are not normally distributed, but the normal statistical tests still are valid given the huge sample size (N2400). 9 We acknowledge that this definition is not fully accurate. As seaports are often also clusters of manufacturing activity (De Langen, 2004), a part of the cargo on intermodal services from seaports to the hinterland may be ‘continental cargo’ that is not shipped overseas. However, data for a more precise classification of services is not publicly available.
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
8
P.W. de Langen et al. / Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx
Fig. 5. Frequencies and distances for rail and barge services.
(50%), both landlocked, the share of inland-to-inland services is much higher. For such a large country, with large inland population and logistics centers (Madrid, Zaragoza), Spain has a surprisingly low number of inland to inland services – only one, from Madrid to Murcia. Perhaps surprisingly, the average distances of inland-to-inland services are lower (509 km.) than those of all rail services (539 km). Finally, the analysis of the share of inland-to-inland services of different carriers shows huge variance of these shares. No rail large operators is fully specialised on inland-to-inland services, while some relatively large carriers (including EGS, Contargo, ERS, Alpe Adria) are specialised on port-hinterland connections and have not a single inland-to-inland service. The largest operator by frequencies (TFG Transfracht) has a very low share inland-to-inland, while HUPAC (56) and Kombiverkehr (49%) are relatively strong in inland-to-inland rail services.
5. Conclusions and implications for policies and further research In this paper we have analysed rail and barge connections in Europe, based on a comprehensive database. This paper is to our knowledge the first empirical exploration of such connections. This paper yields some relevant conclusions and opens avenues for further research. First, there are a large number of operators and terminals in the large seaports. This leads to coordination problems and suggests ports may need to develop interterminal transport systems (i.e. Port Shuttle Rotterdam) that can be used by all operators. Second, rail and barge are complementary, in the sense that the number of overlapping OD pairs is limited and that barge is strong in relatively short distance transport, while rail generally is used for longer transport distances. A detailed analysis of the geographical coverage of the intermodal services is beyond the scope of this paper but an important research step. For instance, it may be possible to identify ‘missing links’; OD pairs, where based on demand characteristics (container throughput volumes, industrial production, population, distances to competing ports/transport nodes) intermodal connections would seem viable but have not emerged. Third, this paper provides an indication that a higher competition intensity in a port may lower the shortest rail service. More research on competition between rail operators at the level of ports is relevant.
Table 10 The distribution of types of origins and destinations of transport services. Rail From/to Inland node Port Grand total
Inland node 488 599 1087
Barge Port 606 194 800
Inland node 15 220 235
Port 220 84 304
Fourth, the lowest transport distances are much lower than often assumed. Services over short distances are feasible, especially between ports and for mountain crossings. Nevertheless, even for more ‘regular’ port to hinterland services, various cases of services at a distance below 100 km exist. Further research, also through detailed cases, would shed more light on the success factors for short distance rail services. Fifth, the analysis revealed service frequencies are on average very substantial. These frequencies diminish with distance. This may be related to the efficient deployment of equipment, which may require higher frequencies on shorter trajectories. Sixth, the paper has addressed inland-to-inland services. Barge services are hardly used for such OD pairs, while even for rail, port hinterland connections are dominant. While various relatively large rail operators specialize in port hinterland connections, no operator specialises on inland to inland services. This exploratory paper has analysed the characteristics of intermodal services. An important next step in research is to monitor how these services change over time. While this was not feasible in this paper, due to the increasing inclusion of rail operators in the database, this remains an important next step for research, and could for instance shed light on the evolution of rail connections per port, the expansion strategies of rail operators, the evolution of shortest distances as well as the coverage of inland-to-inland networks. Appendix 1 Intermodal terminals in Rotterdam Rotterdam Origin City: all terminals and services. Values Term_Ori_ID
Origin city
Origin terminal
NL022 NL021 NL060 NL025 NL102 NL103
Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam
NL096 NL019 NL098 NL017 NL023 NL097 NL024 NL018 NL076 NL020 NL065 NL074 NL054
Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam
NL094 Grand total
Rotterdam
ECT Delta Euromax Terminal not specified Rail Service Center APMT II (Maasvlakte II) Rotterdam World Gateway (RWG) Maasvlakte terminals ECT Home City terminals APM Terminals Rotterdam CTT Rotterdam Botlek/Pernis terminals Short Sea Terminals (RST) Barge Center Waalhaven Uniport Waalhaven Botlek Terminal Cobelfret P&O Ferries Terminal Rotterdam Container Terminal (RCT) Botlek (Bertschi)
Count of services 100 78 74 52 39 38
Sum of weekly Freq 426 319 282 259 183 182
52 41 33 27 18 12 16 16 15 14 10 6 5
173 122 113 102 66 61 56 52 51 45 42 27 19
1 647
2 2582
Rotterdam Origin City - for modality rail. Values Term_Ori_ID
Origin city
Origin terminal
NL022 NL025 NL021 NL102 NL103
Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam
NL017 NL096 NL060 NL065 NL019 NL023
Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam
ECT Delta Rail Service Center Euromax APMT II (Maasvlakte II) Rotterdam World Gateway (RWG) APM Terminals Rotterdam Maasvlakte terminals Terminal not specified Cobelfret ECT Home CTT Rotterdam
Count of services 64 52 51 28 27
Sum of weekly Freq 307 259 229 143 142
12 11 9 6 5 3
58 39 32 26 17 15
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003
P.W. de Langen et al. / Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx (continued) Values NL074 NL098 NL054
Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam
NL094 Grand total
Rotterdam
P&O Ferries Terminal City terminals Rotterdam Container Terminal (RCT) Botlek (Bertschi)
2 1 1
11 3 3
1 273
2 1286
References Andersen, J., & Christiansen, M. (2009). Designing new European rail freight services. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 60(3), 348–360. Arnold, P., Peeters, D., & Thomas, I. (2004). Modelling a rail/road intermodal transportation system. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 40(3), 255–270. Bärthel, F., & Woxenius, J. (2004). Developing intermodal transport for small flows over short distances. Transportation Planning and Technology, 27(5), 403–424. Behrends, S., & Flodén, J. (2012). The effect of transhipment costs on the performance of intermodal line-trains. Logistics Research, 4(3–4), 127–136. Beria, P., Quinet, E., de Rus, G., & Schulz, C. (2012). A comparison of rail liberalisation levels across four European countries. Research in Transportation Economics, 36(1), 110–120. Bontekoning, Y. M., Macharis, C., & Trip, J. J. (2004). Is a new applied transportation research field emerging?––A review of intermodal rail–truck freight transport literature. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 38(1), 1–34. Caris, A., Macharis, C., & Janssens, G. K. (2008). Planning problems in intermodal freight transport: Accomplishments and prospects. Transportation Planning and Technology, 31(3), 277–302. Dablanc, L. (2009). Regional policy issues for rail freight services. Transport Policy, 16(4), 163–172. Debrie, J., & Gouvernal, E. (2006). Intermodal rail in Western Europe: Actors and services in a new regulatory environment. Growth and Change, 37(3), 444–459. Eng-Larsson, F., & Kohn, C. (2012). Modal shift for greener logistics-the shipper's perspective. International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, 42(1), 36–59. European Commission (2011). White paper. Roadmap to a single European transport area – Towards a competitive and resource efficient transport system [COM (2011) 144 final.]. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Frémont, A., & Franc, P. (2010). Hinterland transportation in Europe: Combined transport versus road transport. Journal of Transport Geography, 18(4), 548–556. Fries, N., de Jong, G., Patterson, Z., & Weidmann, U. (2010). Shipper willingness to pay to increase environmental performance in freight transportation. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2168, 33–42. Heilig, L., & Voß, S. (2016). Inter-terminal transportation: An annotated bibliography and research agenda. Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal, 1–29. Ishfaq, R., & Sox, C. R. (2010). Intermodal logistics: The interplay of financial, operational and service issues. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 46(6), 926–949.
9
Ivaldi, M., & Mc Cullough, G. J. (2001). Density and integration effects on Class I US freight railroads. Journal of Regulatory Economics, 19(2), 161–182. Jeong, S. -J., Lee, C. -G., & Bookbinder, J. H. (2007). The European freight railway system as a hub-and-spoke network. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 41(6), 523–536. Kim, N. S., & Van Wee, B. (2011). The relative importance of factors that influence the break-even distance of intermodal freight transport systems. Journal of Transport Geography, 19(4), 859–875. van Klink, H. A., & van den Berg, G. C. (1998). Gateways and intermodalism. Journal of Transport Geography, 6(1), 1–9. Konings, R. (2007). Opportunities to improve container barge handling in the port of Rotterdam from a transport network perspective. Journal of Transport Geography, 15(6), 443–454. Konings, R., Kreutzberger, E., & Maraš, V. (2013). Major considerations in developing a hub-and-spoke network to improve the cost performance of container barge transport in the hinterland: The case of the port of Rotterdam. Journal of Transport Geography, 29, 63–73. de Langen, P. (2004). The performance of seaport clusters; A framework to analyze cluster performance and an application to the seaport clusters of Durban, Rotterdam and the Lower Mississippi. (No. ERIM PhD Series; EPS-2004-034-LIS). OECD (2016). Glossary of statistical terms. retrieved from https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/ detail.asp?ID=430. (accessed 22nd December 2016). Port of Barcelona (2016). Annual Report. retrieved from http://content.portdebarcelona. cat/cntmng/d/d/workspace/SpacesStore/46232079-0698-4d3f-bf7c-0df03150b5c2/ 2015_PortBCN_en.pdf. (accessed September 2016). Reis, V. (2014). Analysis of mode choice variables in short-distance intermodal freight transport using an agent-based model. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 61, 100–120. Rich, J., Kveiborg, O., & Hansen, C. O. (2011). On structural inelasticity of modal substitution in freight transport. Journal of Transport Geography, 19(1), 134–146. Suárez-Alemán, A., Trujillo, L., & Medda, F. (2015). Short sea shipping as intermodal competitor: A theoretical analysis of European transport policies. Maritime Policy & Management, 42(4), 317–334. van der Horst, M. R., & de Langen, P. W. (2008). Coordination in hinterland transport chains: A major challenge for the seaport community. Maritime Economics and Logistics, 10, 108–129. van der Horst, M. R., & Van der Lugt, L. M. (2014). An institutional analysis of coordination in liberalized port-related railway chains: An application to the port of Rotterdam. Transport Reviews, 34(1), 68–85. van den Berg, R., & De Langen, P. W. (2016). Environmental sustainability in container transport: the attitudes of shippers and forwarders. International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications, 1–17. Vassallo, J. M., & Fagan, M. (2007). Nature or nurture: Why do railroads carry greater freight share in the United States than in Europe? Transportation, 34(2), 177–193. Veenstra, A., & Notteboom, T. (2011). The development of the Yangtze River container port system. Journal of Transport Geography, 19(4), 772–781. Woroniuk, C., Marinov, M., Zunder, T., & Mortimer, P. (2013). Time series analysis of rail freight services by the private sector in Europe. Transport Policy, 25, 81–93. Zunder, T. H., Islam, D. M. Z., Mortimer, P. N., & Aditjandra, P. T. (2013). How far has open access enabled the growth of cross border pan European rail freight? A case study. Research in Transportation Business & Management, 6, 71–80.
Please cite this article as: de Langen, P.W., et al., Intermodal connectivity in Europe, an empirical exploration, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2017.02.003