Opportunities for OR in intermodal freight transport research: A review

Intermodal transport reflects the combination of at least two modes of transport in a single transport chain, without a change of container for the goods, with most of the route traveled by rail, inland waterway or ocean-going vessel, and with the shortest possible initial and final journeys by road. Operational Research has focused mostly on transport problems of uni-modal transport modes. We argue that intermodal freight transportation research is emerging as a new transportation research application field, that it still is in a pre-paradigmatic phase, and that it needs a different type of models than those applicated to uni-modal transport. In this paper a review is given of the operational research models that are currently used in this emerging field and the modelling problems, which need to be addressed. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.