Intermodal Freight Transport

Transport expert and intermodal enthusiast David Lowe carried out a detailed study of the combined or intermodal transport scenario in the UK and Europe in the 1990s and produced a Study Report setting out the position as it stood in 1996. He has now completed an updated and expanded version to represent a much broader view of intermodalism. This is now published as a major new book, Intermodal Freight Transport, published by Elsevier. It will provide an introduction to the whole concept of intermodal freighting, including maritime intermodalism. Overall, the book is intended to provide, so far as is possible with such a fast moving scenario, a comprehensive review of intermodal freighting which should be of interest to freight shippers, intermodal road hauliers, rail service suppliers, terminal operators, equipment manufacturers and ancillary suppliers to the industry, as well as being of value to students of transport and others who may wish to keep abreast of developing trends in transportation. In particular, the text should be of general interest to industry at large seeking to fulfill public concern for reduced environmental pollution and road traffic congestion, but without any diminution in the service, speed and security with which freight is transported.

Contents

1. What is Intermodal Freight Transport?
2. UK and EU Policies for Intermodal Transport
3. Intermodal Developments in the UK
4. Intermodal Transport in Europe
5. Intermodalism in North America, the Middle East, Asia and Australia
6. The Road Haulage Role in Intermodalism
7. Rail Freight Operations
8. Inland Waterway, Short-Sea and Coastal Shipping
9. Environmental and Economic Issues
10. Grant-aid and Government Support
11. Intermodal Networks and Freight Interchanges
12. Intermodal Road and Rail Vehicles and Maritime Vessels
13. Intermodal Loading Units, Transfer Equipment and Satellite Communications
14. Carrier Liability in Intermodal Transport
15. Intermodal Documentation and Authorisations
16. Customs Procedures
17. International Carriage of Dangerous Goods
18. Safety in Transport

Glossary of Terms
Bibliography of relevant works

What is Intermodal freight transport?

Intermodal freight transport is a system for transporting goods, particularly over longer distances and across international borders, which uses a combination of two or more individual modes, such as road haulage and rail freight, or road haulage and inland waterway barge, to achieve the most economic, efficient and environmentally-friendly delivery of loads to their destination.

Typically, such operations involve the movement of either:

complete, driver-accompanied, road vehicles which travel on the road and then transfer on to a rail wagon for the long haul leg of the journey, as for example via Eurotunnel’s Freight Shuttle service through the Channel Tunnel;

unaccompanied articulated semi-trailers carried piggyback-style on rail wagons, or ISO-type shipping containers or intermodal swap bodies which are transferred from road to rail and vice versa;

road vehicles carrying ISO containers direct to a port or to a rail terminal for rail-haul to a port for short-sea or deep-sea shipping, or to an inland waterway terminal for transport via canal barge;

freight (invariably in bulk loads) deep-sea shipped from the point of origin then transferred on to a barge or lighter (e.g. for shipping via the LASH system) for onward shipment to an inland port.

Combined road-rail freighting

Combined road-rail freighting is a specialised sector within the broader concept of intermodal transportation, and one of the most widely employed. This is certainly the case in the UK where our waterways have limited freight capacity and our rail system is under-utilised. This form of intermodalism has particular relevance here in the UK due to the on-going pressure by government, environmentalists and others to see more freight switched of freight from road to rail in the interests of reducing road traffic congestion and the adverse effects of heavy lorry exhaust pollution.

This form of transportation combines the best attributes of both road haulage and rail freighting. While road haulage provides an infinitely flexible local collection and delivery service to premises that may be in congested urban areas, industrial locations or even in town or city centres where rail cannot possibly reach, rail freighting, conversely, provides the long-haul facility for conveying whole train loads of freight between terminals, quickly, economically and with the emission of minimal amounts of harmful pollutants, thus relieving our crowded road network of many individual heavy lorry loads and our urban environments of yet more poisonous exhaust fumes.

While much of the freight currently carried by road simply cannot be switched wholly to rail for obvious practical and logistical reasons, nevertheless opportunities exist for significant volumes of such traffic to complete at least part of its journey from A to B on rail to the benefit of all concerned.

Road-rail freighting is not a new concept, in fact, the practice of transferring road trailers and road-borne containers to rail for trunk haulage has existed since the earliest days of rail, although the hardware has changed over the years and many of today's international journeys are much longer than the domestic operations of yesteryear.

Simple wooden containers (used even in the days of horse-drawn transport) have given way to the ubiquitous steel ISO-approved shipping container and to the swap body built to international standards that we see in use today, while road-haulage semi-trailers have developed into highly-sophisticated, high-capacity units capable of safely carrying 30-tonne freight loads at motorway speeds. The parallel development of technically sophisticated lifting and transfer equipment enables these loading units and semi-trailers to be transferred rapidly from road to rail for long-haul transport, and back again for final delivery.

Combined road-rail transport has been widely and successfully employed in mainland Europe for many years. Especially notable, for example, is the French Novatrans 'Kangaroo' system for piggyback carriage of semi-trailers, and the German Kombiverkehr swap body, piggyback and rolling motorway systems.

Maritime intermodalism

The shipping of ISO containers on deep-sea routes, especially between the US and Europe, has developed into a major form of intermodalism since the 1950s with containers being shipped to and from deep-sea ports by road or by combined road and rail transport. This is particularly demonstrated in the UK by Freightliner which rail-hauls containers between the major UK container ports and inland terminals where train loads are broken down into individual units for onward delivery by road vehicle and vice versa.

While inland waterway transport features only minimally in the UK intermodal scene, apart from, for example, the LASH traffic shipped on the River Humber from Hull - having arrived by short-sea shipping services from Rotterdam, in Europe this form of transportation has been developing apace with keen interest being shown by officialdom in Brussels and by commercial interests both of whom appreciate the considerable advantages arising from the use of this economical and eco-friendly transport system in combination with other modes, such as road an rail. A classic example of this is to be seen on the Rhine and Danube river waterways (which link the North Sea to the Black Sea) where large volumes of barge traffic carrying ISO containers and other intermodal freight units ship between Rotterdam’s deep-sea port and inland destinations across Europe.