The impact of new western land and sea corridor development on port deep hinterland transport service and route selection

Abstract

New transportation corridor development aims to provide more convenient transportation conditions for port deep hinterland areas and to enhance the two-way opening of land and sea through the utilization of various transport modes, such as railroad, highway, and water transportation. In this paper, the microcontainer transport service and route selection problem is introduced within a new transportation corridor context, and a decision-making tool is provided for shippers to develop door-to-door service plans. A multiobjective 0–1 planning model is constructed with the objective of minimizing the total transportation cost, transportation time, and carbon emissions. The loading and unloading time windows of railroad and waterway transportation, as well as the time window of consignee receipt, are considered in model construction to obtain the nondominated Pareto optimal front. The validity of both the model and algorithm is demonstrated in this paper by using the Chongqing-Hamburg and Chengdu-Hamburg routes, following the development of the New Western Land and Sea Corridor (NWLSC), as examples. The example results show that the NWLSC is appealing for time-sensitive cargoes, and its economic benefits can be enhanced if relevant policies such as railroad freight reductions are supported. The findings in this paper can provide decision support for western provinces in the implementation of targeted policies to regulate and optimize the regional transportation structure, which can further promote the opening up of western Chinese provinces as well as the integrated and coordinated development of coastal and inland regions, providing practical value for reducing carbon emissions.