In the last 10 years, the volume of consignments in the courier, express and parcel service industry in Germany has doubled to 4 billion consignments per year. These consignments are mainly transported by fossil fueled road transport. The increased volume is causing rising strain on city infrastructures and has gained public and research relevance. Considering main objectives of urban logistics stakeholders a potential shift to rail in order to reduce congestion and emissions needs to be explored.
In this research, we investigate the problem of optimal sustainable mode choice in bi-modal freight networks. We then develop an Intelligent Decision Framework (ICDF) webtool to assist carriers in economically shifting goods to rail. A network flow model is developed which minimizes induced costs by deciding mode of transport between the inner-city hubs. Transport policies such as high-speed freight trains, tolls or reducing energy consumption are implemented. Different objectives of city logistic stakeholders are considered, such as carriers which aim to minimize transport costs or inhabitants, which aim to reduce noise and pollution. This research is incorporated into the newly developed webtool that combines an Intelligent Carrier Decision Framework and a Reactive Dashboard.
We demonstrate the model performance on a German parcel network and show an in-depth analysis that allows carriers to choose the optimal model split considering several transport policies. The ICDF webtool is highly flexible as it allows varying parameters such as velocity, transport costs, emission costs, capacities and a factor which measures the impact on the city. In the case study we used public data provided by the German Federal Association of Parcel and Express Logistics.
The ICDF webtool enables carriers evaluating the impact of predefined freight policies on mode choice for parcel delivery networks as well as to which extent and under which conditions rail freight traffic can be economically beneficial.