Longer combination vehicles - solution to sustainable pre and post haulage in Sweden?

Other conference contribution, 2010

Reduced energy consumption, optimization of the usage of the main strength of different modes, reduction of congestion on road networks, and low environmental impacts are considered as the main advantages of intermodal (road-rail) transport. However, there are disadvantages such as unease of monitoring due to complexity of the transport chain or high cost for pre-and post haulage. Recently sustainability has received increasing attention and with it also the role that logistics concepts can play in making transport more sustainable. One of these concepts is a concept of Longer Combination Vehicles, i.e. vehicles of up to 35 m in length, which might be good solution for pre and post haulage. This concept has potential to improve performance of intermodal transport in Sweden; however the same is not allowed by the regulations. Purpose of this paper is to investigate how to improve intermodal freight transports with use of long vehicles; from environmental and economic perspective. This study should support the recent discussions on whether the traffic regulations regarding the length of the vehicles should be investigated. Data for the study are collected through interviews, field observations and internal documents. The results indicate that the use of Longer Combination Vehicles would decrease the number of trips per route and therefore lower the environmental effect on the route. However, to achieve transport cost savings the utilization rate should be high.