Multimodal Transportation

We only have to look around us on the road while we travel to work or home, or to use our eyes at a railway station to know that the transport of goods takes up a lot of the room our modern day infrastructures provide. Sometimes perhaps a little too much; nowadays congestion seems to be the rule rather than the exception. This is an uncomfortable side effect of the explosive growth freight transport has experienced the last few decades1. Modern day transport offers a considerable array of possibilities; possibilities that are for the most part taken for granted by the general public that enjoys their benefits. The average European would not be surprised to learn that the fruit on offer in the local supermarket originates from another continent for instance. The idea that most of the things we use in our daily routine stem from a distant source, such as a cell phone from Japan, a trendy pair of designer jeans made in China or a glass of Australian wine, seems completely natural to us. Clearly the contemporary transport industry offers us a lot of benefits besides such discomforts as congestion and pollution. In earlier times, before machinery such as the steam engine had been invented it was hardly cost effective or even feasible when it came to perishables to carry goods halfway around the world if they were not at least valuable and extraordinary2. The limitations set on trade by the transport structures available did more however than simply curtail the range of affordable products on offer for the public. They also had a negative effect on the location of the industry, limited transport possibilities and forced production to take place near or in heavily populated areas to secure the necessary workforce and market possibilities. After all, industrial decentralisation is only feasible if there is an infrastructure capable of supporting a cost effective movement of goods and employees3 ...

Multimodal operations has become a major means of transport in international trade. Yet surprisingly, its risks & responsibilities are not well understood in the business & legal communities. This book offers insight into the complex legal regimes governing multimodal transport & the equally subtle commercial influences operating in the market for multimodal services. Since 1973, the international community has fashioned three sets of Multimodal Rules. In Multimodal Transport Rules, the authors analyse their application & compare their operation in a variety of typical situations. Multimodal Transport Rules provides needed information about the Multimodal Rules for traffic managers, logistics service providers, multimodal operators, carriers & other transport executives, & their legal advisors. It details the liabilities that may be incurred under the alternative rules & provides the facts needed to make informed decisions about managing risks in multimodal contracts. The book sheds light on a complex system & provides a clear picture of the commercial risks & legal responsibilities involved in modern multimodal transport operations.

"TRB's National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 17: Multimodal Freight Transportation Within the Great Lakes--Saint Lawrence Basin describes the current multimodal freight transportation system within this bi-national region--Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Ontario, and Quebec--and its importance to regional, United States, and Canadian economies. The report also analyzes the system's overall performance and related opportunities and constraints to improving performance and to meet projected freight flows. The report includes an analysis of each mode's capacity and the major commodities each of them moves; the barriers and constraints that impact each mode's ability to move cargo; the performance implications in terms of major commodity supply chains (coal, automotive parts and machinery, containerized consumer goods, grains, and iron ore); and a strategic freight planning process for multimodal transport chain performance going forward."--Publisher's description.

Rapid globalisation has led to the realization that the traditional modal approach to transporting people and goods is insufficient. Multimodal Transport Security illustrates the inevitable shift towards multimodal transportation systems, further enabled by modern technological innovations, and succinctly assesses the demanding and new security challenges that have accompanied this. The emergence of these complex transportation infrastructures has created exceedingly attractive terrorist targets owing to the potential for wide-scale disruption of global supply chains. Providing a conjoint analysis of key issues in both passenger and freight multimodal transportation security, expert contributors provide pivotal case studies highlighting the successes and failures of various policies and practices across several geographical regions. Adeptly drawing these strands together, the editors identify similarities and heterogeneities and in doing so, produce a practical illustration of the potential for further enhancement of multimodal security. An ever-increasing and worldwide concern with the improvement of security in transport places this unique and comprehensive text at the forefront of transportation literature. It will be of great value to students and scholars of public policy as well as policy makers in the fields of transportation and counter-terrorism.

An accessible introduction to multimodal contracts of carriage, Multimodal Transport Law works from general principles toward specific, technical problems. Adopting an international approach, it addresses such key topics as: Contracts of carriage Transport documents The parties to a contract of carriage International conventions on the carriage of goods Multimodal situations covered by unimodal conventions Conflict of laws The rules applicable to the individual legs of multimodal contracts of carriage The Rotterdam Rules Providing a close examination of the relevant rules, regulations and case law, this is essential reading for law students, useful for claims handlers and practitioners, and of interest for academics and legislators seeking a better appreciation of multimodal contracts of carriage.

Given its geographical expanse, Canada has always faced long-term transport policy issues and challenges. Canadian Multi-Modal Transport Policy and Governance explains how and why Canadian transportation policy and related governance changed from the Pierre Trudeau era through the Chretien, Martin, Mulroney, Harper, and Justin Trudeau eras. With particular attention paid to the diversity and ongoing evolution of transportation policy since the 1960s, the broad distribution of regulatory authority across different levels of government, and the politicization of regulatory regimes and investment decisions since the 1970s, Doern, Coleman, and Prentice attempt to answer three critical questions: How and to what extent have policy and governance changed over the decades? Where has transport policy resided in federal policy agendas? And is Canada developing the policies, institutions, and capacities it needs to have a socio-economically viable and technologically advanced transportation system for the medium and long term? A sweeping history of transportation policy in Canada that fills a gap in the existing literature, Canadian Multi-Modal Transport Policy and Governance concludes that transportation has been subordinate to other federal goals and priorities, delaying and eroding transport systems into the twenty-first century.

This book presents a specific technical solution, called intermodal transport, which became the basic technological solution that made it possible to provide global interregional transport. Every day, new technical, technological, and organizational solutions appear that significantly affect the further development of this industry. However, there are certain local differences between regions. In addition, an essential factor is the exchange of experience between scientists from different countries. Accordingly, the purpose of this monothematic book is to acquaint readers with the achievements of scientists dealing with this topic and living in different regions. Scientists and specialists from Poland, Germany, Great Britain, USA, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Italy, Kazakhstan, and Lithuania participated in the writing of individual chapters of this book. This book is intended for professionals, teachers, students, and others who are interested in new approaches to solving transport problems.

Not until the recent attacks on transport systems has transport security become a focus of public concern and academic research. Various aspects of transport security have already been analysed under different agendas. Some research was focused on the potential risk to the environment resulting from transport, in particular from the transport of hazardous or dangerous goods, while other research considered critical elements of transport networks or supply chains as vital lifelines in the case of natural disasters. Recently, new threats stimulated interest in transport security as a stand-alone issue, placing it at the forefront of political and academic agendas. A NATO Advanced Research Workshop held at Imperial College London in January 2009 brought together those with expertise in the above-mentioned fields in order to verify the current state of knowledge in the field and identify promising areas for future work. The workshop concentrated on maritime and intermodal transport, risk management and long-term strategic planning, rather than on the details of monitoring or detection techniques. This collection of papers emanates largely from that workshop. While transport systems are widely recognized as terrorist targets, complete protection of these systems is economically and practically infeasible. The workshop looked at analytical methods to identify critical points in the transport infrastructure and the prioritization of defensive and mitigating measures given the limited resources available. Deficiencies in methods for conducting such an assessment were identified and the need for cost-effective mitigation measures was emphasized.

In this book, the business of international freight forwarding is examined from both a theoretical and empirical point of view with a special emphasis on multimodal transport chains, including sea or air transport operations. In such contexts, the freight forwarder is always considered "The Architect of Transport", but this intermediary role seems to be largely neglected in research to date. Therefore, relevant concepts from economic theory and economic sociology are employed to produce both an intermediary and a network perspective of freight forwarding in order to provide a better understanding of this kind of transportation business. Furthermore, its intermediary role in such inherent network structures is explored by mapping relationship patterns in a stylized model framework applied to a questionnaire-based sample collected among freight forwarders engaged in such multimodal transport chains in Germany (especially from Hamburg, Bremen and Bremerhaven) as well as in Austria in 2003.

International trade has made logistics a strategic consideration for firms. The decision-making framework is substantially different in the case of international logistics, as this involves cross-border movement of goods and multimodal transportation. An integrated framework based on customer's requirement, their country regulations, risk, and cost specific to goods and countries needs to be developed. Global Supply Chains and Multimodal Logistics: Emerging Research and Opportunities is an essential reference source that provides concepts of global logistics and its risk factors and provides an integrated framework for effective decision making. Highlighting such topics as enterprise resource planning, forecasting models, and logistics systems, this publication is ideally designed for managers, business professionals, researchers, academicians, and students in fields including but not limited to supply chain management, international business, and logistics.

Freight Forwarding and Multimodal Transport Contracts, 2nd Edition, is a comprehensive guide to the law in relation to contract forms and terms created by operators, trade associations or international bodies such as the UN and used as a basis for trading conditions by freight forwarders, logistics suppliers, combined or multimodal transport operators and container operators. This second edition examines the latest editions of contract forms and terms, both where their object is the supply or procurement of multimodal carriage, as well as where they are directed to the use of combined transport equipment (ie containers, swap bodies). Of particular prominence will be a detailed examination of the latest versions of conditions used by the principal UK forwarding, logistics, intermodal and container operators such as the British International Freight Association (BIFA) conditions 2005A and the current Freightliner Conditions as well as updates on many of the conditions in use and legal developments relevant to them, eg Road Haulage Association Conditions 2009, Maersk Conditions of Carriage, TT Club Conditions.

Applying sophisticated management techniques to freight transport offers the potential for significant cost savings as well as greater efficiency. Yet the inherent complexity of intermodal transport presents many challenges. This practical textbook on the operations of intermodal transport and logistics focuses on the practical concerns and the basics of operations, such as vehicles, containers, handling operations, logistics management and optimisation. All chapters are written by field specialists, and the volume includes additional chapters on economics, law and the environment to put the practical topics into context. It presents a balanced textbook for postgraduate students and also a reference text for those in industry or the public sector involved in the planning of intermodal freight transport.

The main rationale of the conventions on international transport law is to limit the liability of the carrier. However, an aspect common to these conventions is that in cases of "wilful misconduct" the carrier is liable without any financial limitation. "Wilful misconduct" denoting a high degree of fault is an established term in English law. The Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules relating to International Carriage by Air (Warsaw Convention) of 1929 was the first international convention on transport law where the term was employed. A definition of "wilful misconduct", which can be found in later conventions regarding carriage of goods and passengers as well, was implemented in the Hague Protocol of 1955, amending the Warsaw Convention. However, the question as to exactly which degree of fault constitutes "wilful misconduct" has to date remained controversial and unanswered. This work seeks to answer this question. To this end, the historical background of the term, together with its function and role in marine insurance law, case law and international transport law, are examined from a comparative perspective.

Freight transportation is both multimodal and intermodal in nature, involving highways, railways, waterways, air transportation, terminals, and intermodal transfers. Multimodal and intermodal orientation holds major promise in significantly improving freight transportation efficiency. The project developed the Florida Multimodal Network (FMN), an integrated multimodal network for Florida that combines airway linkages, highways, railways, waterways, and intermodal facilities. The project also developed an impedance function based on both time and cost to characterize mode preferences and a multimodal and intermodal routing procedure. This was done to establish multimodal freight flow patterns on the FMN utilizing the commodity flow O-D data from the 2003 TRANSEARCH database. The results are compared to the observed highway truck VMT data. Recommendations for future research include the development of better cost functions, consideration of congestion effects, refinement of O-D flow data, improvement in freight cost and delay data, and incorporation of the capacity of intermodal facilities.