Intercontinental freight transport impacts: Modeling and measuring choice effects

Abstract

This paper brings to the topic of world shipments an investigation of more efficient multimodal routes from the commercial (time and consumption costs) and environmental (impacts) points of view. In particular, the freight relations existing between Asia and Europe, through the Suez Canal, have been investigated because of the constant growth of these relations, despite the Europe-America ones. European destinations are reached by alternative paths, which use road or railway connections starting from the main Mediterranean (Genova, Venezia, Trieste) or North European (Antwerp, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Bremerhaven) ports. Environmental and commercial index values, evaluated for each possible route through an original software (written in the APL code), allow a comparison in order to identify which is the most sustainable transport chain relating to the different destinations. These results could be useful to re-organize a freight network in terms of managing and adjusting the existing infrastructures in order to obtain lower environmental impacts. © 2010 WIT Press.