Railway and Road Container: Innovation Transport Unit to Optimize Multimodal Freightage

Abstract

Lately the volume of road haulage seriously exceeds the volume of railway carriage. At the same time road transport has lower labour productivity than railway carriage, as cargo transportation at a distance over 1,500 – 2,000km should be changed to railway transport. The article provides conceptualization and formalization of the term ‘railway and road container’ within the frames of developing innovation intermodal transport units to raise efficiency of multimodal logistic operations. The research makes the problem of term discrepancy in the field of intermodal transport units more acute, as notions of ‘pickup body’ and ‘demountable body’ we sometimes understand as body of railway car and European swap body is compared with camateiner used only in road freightage. Different types of intermodal transport units are analyzed, which are used for cargo carriage all over the world. It was proposed to elaborate a unique cargo transport unit integrating advantages of railway and road systems in order to optimize cargo traffic, cut logistic costs and raise adaptability level of supply chains in conditions of global transport challenges, such as improving ecologic sustainability, dropping transit costs and intensifying multimodal integration in international communications.