Swiss Split—a holistic approach to the distribution of containers to private sidings

Abstract

Purpose: Swiss Split is a rail service in Switzerland which distributes containers via conventional shunting yards directly from intermodal terminals to the final recipients’ sidings by rail. Today’s Swiss Split service is quite successful, but it still has several weaknesses that reduce its competitiveness compared to container distribution by truck. Thus, the two main research questions were: Which feasible improvements for container distribution by rail can be determined? In how far do these improvements increase the competitiveness of container distribution by rail compared to container distribution by truck? Methods: The research bases on previous analyses regarding the weaknesses of container distribution by rail in Switzerland. For each of the identified weaknesses, suitable improvements were developed. The effects of these improvements were supposed to have an impact on the efficiency and the quality of the services. The improvements were then assessed by applying a cost model for rail freight and truck transportation. For this purpose, today’s Swiss Split was modelled in a base case and the input data for the cost model (e.g., round trips per day for wagons, routing for the transports, train length and train utilisation) were changed according to the estimated effects of the improvements. To finally estimate the impact of the improvements on the SWL production schemes, an agent based simulation for SWL was developed and applied. Results: The analysis of today’s Swiss Split distribution by rail showed weaknesses in the fields of rolling stock, transhipment terminal structures and the production schemes for SWL. Thus, a new container wagon has been developed to serve the sidings. The terminal structure has been improved by a new gateway terminal. The production schemes for SWL have been improved by applying a train-coupling-and-sharing network structure and an improved schedule structure for SWL trains. An agent based simulation software for rail freight has been developed to assess the improvements in the production scheme. At last, the new business model for Swiss Split has led to an integration of transhipment processes and rail distribution. In sum all of these measures have resulted in significant cost reductions for the container distribution by rail. Conclusions: The breakeven distance for Swiss Split compared to truck container distribution has been decreased from 140 to 70 km. Hence, using SWL for final distribution has proofed to be competitive to trucking even for rather short distances. This shows that rail freight can be competitive compared to road transportation if a holistic approach which tackles all weaknesses of the existing services is applied.