Abstract
This paper investigates the problem of inter-terminal movements of containers and vehicles within a port area in order to achieve an integrated and effective transport within the port and towards the hinterland. Containers from different port terminals are first moved to a rail yard and then delivered to the hinterland by rail. To provide insights for stakeholders such as port authority and terminal operators into tactical planning problems, e.g., the coordination between terminals, railway timetable and train sizes, this paper proposes an optimization model describing the movement of containers and various vehicles between and inside terminals. The model aims at improving the container delivery from container terminals to the hinterland considering both railway hinterland transport and terminal handling operations. A network inspired by a real-life port area and its hinterland is used as a test case to test different components, i.e., inter-terminal transport connections, train formation, railway timetable. A rolling horizon framework is used to improve the computation efficiency in large transport demand cases. The result of the optimization helps in identifying the most promising features, namely, that more connections between terminals and a flexible outbound railway timetable could contribute to improving the integrated container transport performance.
Highlights
Container ports need to handle large container volumes, for example, tens of thousands of containers arrive at Rotterdam port by sea every day
It is assumed that the rail–rail transshipment is performed in the following way: a Rail Mounted Gantries (RMGs) unloads the container from an inter-terminal transport (ITT) train and moves it to the storage blocks; when the train to the hinterland is ready for loading, that container will be loaded onto that train
This paper focused on the integration of inter-terminal transport (ITT) within the port area considering the transshipment operations and railway timetable
Summary
Container ports need to handle large container volumes, for example, tens of thousands of containers arrive at Rotterdam port by sea every day To move these containers, road, inland waterway and railway transport are provided connecting terminals and the hinterland. ITT connects MTRRs and RTRs, which makes it possible to exchange containers between different rail yards in the port area in order to fill the trains towards the hinterland with containers. The port authority and terminal operators must first determine if and how it is possible to share the resources, e.g., rail yards and ITT trains. Different ITT connections, hinterland train sizes and railway timetables are tested with a given ITT fleet to provide insights into the possible strategies which could improve the integrated container delivery to the hinterland.
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