Improving the Container Distribution by Rail into Swiss Sidings

Nowadays a significant part of the maritime containers with origin or destination in Switzerland are distributed by rail into private sidings. The containers are transhipped in intermodal terminals from the long-distance shuttle-trains or barges to flat wagons of SBB Cargo. The wagons are distributed within the national single wagonload (SWL) network to the final recipients’ sidings. The SwissSplit nowadays has some weaknesses, which reduce the competitiveness compared to the container distribution by truck: The terminal structure in Switzerland is very dispersed with a multitude of small terminals. The actual business model covers only the rail transport from the terminal to the destination siding, this causes inefficiencies in the overall distribution process. The conventional platform wagons used for the SwissSplit are quite old and have reached the end of their economic lifetime. Within the ViWaS project HaCon, SBB Cargo, Wascosa and ETH Zurich developed several approaches to improve the SwissSplit. In general a new business model covering the entire transport chain from the terminal to the siding and back to the container depot was developed, the SWL production schemes were improved and an optimized terminal network that eases the transfer of the wagons into the SWL network was introduced. A major part of the improvements was the development of a new type of flat wagon to improve the loading and unloading processes in the sidings. The wagon was tested within the SwissSplit-network of SBB Cargo. This paper describes the findings of the development and the feasibility tests of the new SwissSplit-Wagon and the overall feasibility of the improved SwissSplit.