Implementation of the dry port concept in central and Southeastern Europe logistics network

Abstract

This paper examines the Intermodal Transport (IT) network of Central and Southeastern Europe for the Dry Port (DP) concept implementation. The focus is on the analysis of the potential logistics cost savings in container flow realisation that follow the DP concept implementation. The problems of determining the necessary number of DP terminals, their location and container flows allocated to them are solved by two different approaches. The approaches differ in the ways of locating the terminals and allocating the flows. The first approach considers two-leg container flow realisation while locating individual and independent DP terminals. The second approach considers also a three-leg container flow realisation possibility and locates interconnected DP and IT terminals, where DP terminals are seen as a specialised type of IT terminals that have a direct connection with seaport terminals. Two different MILP (Mixed Integer Linear Programming) models for the two approaches are developed and applied. The obtained results indicate that both DP concept approaches could improve the existing IT network in terms of overall logistics costs.