Towards the improvement of a combined transport chain performance

Within the framework of the promotion of the environmental friendly modes, the European Commission has launched a number of research projects aiming at evaluating technical and organisational innovations that can improve the performance of the freight transport operations in the rail sector. The scope of this paper is to present a modelling approach focusing on the comparative evaluation of conventional and advanced rail-road terminal equipment. The set of models used, consists of an expert system for the terminal design, a model simulating terminal operations and a macro-model implementing rail operating forms and assigning freight flows in the transport network. This approach stems from the fact that the time savings due to efficient terminal transshipment can be used effectively only in combination with advanced rail operating forms. 2003 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.