Access management in intermodal freight terminals: The perspective of road haulier operations

Licentiate thesis, 2017

Given its possibilities of switching freight from road to more sustainable modes such as rail, inland water ways and seaways, intermodal freight transportation depends on environmental and economic variables. At the same time, intermodal freight transportation is essentially complex due to the variety of modes of transport and their corresponding actors. To reduce the complexity of such transport, the interaction of those actors and the exchange of information are crucial. In short, the more enhanced information exchange among actors, the higher potential of improving their management of access to intermodal terminals (e.g. railroad terminals and seaports). In this work, access management, refers to the management of the process of actors accessing resources for specific activities in transportation systems. Improved access management that relies upon increased information exchange among those actors might increase resource efficiency via the improved management of truck arrivals to terminals and of road haulier operations. The goal of this research is to clarify how access management affects resource efficiency in road haulage in intermodal freight transportation. Accordingly, the purpose of the research is to improve access management at intermodal freight terminals from the perspective of road haulier operators. The thesis is a compilation of three papers that reports studies involving literature reviews, participant observations, interviews, focus group meetings, and time measurements. First, literature regarding access management and information exchange for road hauliers in intermodal freight transportation was studied. Second, a framework was developed in order to sort and analyse the identified information-related attributes required to improve access management for road hauliers. Third, a differentiation and segmentation framework with corresponding strategies are devised afford a better overview for analysing different access management service used by the industry, as well as to segment access depending on whether the terminal is a railroad terminal or a seaport. Fourth, an information exchange framework was developed and implemented in a smartphone app to measure and analyse the potential operational benefits of improved access management. The major contributions of this work, except the definition of access management, are clarifications of how contemporary access is handled, how access management can be improved, and investigations of the potential operational benefits of improved access management.