Intermodal Inland Waterway Transport: Modelling Conditions Influencing Its Cost Competitiveness

In this paper a model is developed to analyse and compare the transport costs of intermodal inland waterway transport and road-only-transport. The influence of the economies of scale in inland waterway transport and terminal operations are taken into account in the analysis. In the model the transport costs are defined and related to different transport operations and conditions (e.g. share of empty kilometres, capacity usage of terminals, etc.) in order to analyse the sensitivity of the cost performance of intermodal inland waterway transport. By doing this it is possible to analyse to what extent intermodal freight transport is competitive with road-only transport in terms of transport costs and specific operations and conditions (both in shipping and terminal). The conclusions prove that roundtrips, drop & pick operations in pre- and end-haulage and smaller containers (20 ft instead of 40 ft) considerably improve the competitiveness of intermodal inland waterway transport, while the relative high cost operations in small terminals reduce the competitiveness of intermodal inland waterway transport.