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? 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. 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. 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.

/pdf/swiss-split-a-holistic-approach-to-the-distribution-of-2ryvrb74r9.pdf

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

The article discusses the issues associated with the organization of empty cars by type of rolling stock and by owners, possible points of their assembly; the analysis of the plan for the formation of empty cars is carried out, in order to identify the station for concentrating empty cars by type of rolling stock and their routes to them. The analysis of groups of wagons, which can be organized into exit routes, is carried out. The criteria of the optimization of task set for the promotion of empty cars and the improvement of the quality indicators of operational work for JSC “Russian Railways” (“RR”) are well-grounded.

Organization and Movement of Exit Routes from Empty Cars

Nowadays a significant part of the maritime containers with origin or destination in Switzerland are distributed by rail into private sidings. The containers are transhipped in intermodal terminals from the long-distance shuttle-trains or barges to flat wagons of SBB Cargo. The wagons are distributed within the national single wagonload (SWL) network to the final recipients’ sidings. The SwissSplit nowadays has some weaknesses, which reduce the competitiveness compared to the container distribution by truck: The terminal structure in Switzerland is very dispersed with a multitude of small terminals. The actual business model covers only the rail transport from the terminal to the destination siding, this causes inefficiencies in the overall distribution process. The conventional platform wagons used for the SwissSplit are quite old and have reached the end of their economic lifetime. Within the ViWaS project HaCon, SBB Cargo, Wascosa and ETH Zurich developed several approaches to improve the SwissSplit. In general a new business model covering the entire transport chain from the terminal to the siding and back to the container depot was developed, the SWL production schemes were improved and an optimized terminal network that eases the transfer of the wagons into the SWL network was introduced. A major part of the improvements was the development of a new type of flat wagon to improve the loading and unloading processes in the sidings. The wagon was tested within the SwissSplit-network of SBB Cargo. This paper describes the findings of the development and the feasibility tests of the new SwissSplit-Wagon and the overall feasibility of the improved SwissSplit.

https://cyberleninka.org/article/n/682546.pdf

Improving the Container Distribution by Rail into Swiss Sidings

To achieve the modal shift projected by public transport policies, intermodal rail transport needs to improve its performance in order to become more attractive. Hub-and-spoke (HS) bundling is an option to improve its performance. It potentially increases the attractiveness of intermodal rail freight services, also for flows that are too small to fill a direct train on the required frequency level. HS bundling can be carried out in different ways (types of hubs, trains and operations). Only some of them lead to competitive transport services. This paper argues that – in many situations – the best HS network employs terminal hubs and shuttle trains, and that the hub terminal should be a real hub terminal. A real hub terminal is designed to fulfil its main function, rail-rail transhipment, effectively and efficiently. Despite their apparent advantages HS networks with real hub terminals are penetrating the market at a very slow pace. The paper discusses major barriers for a faster implementation, and advocates a change of perception of rail operators, and also of public transport policies. It is recommended that the development of hub terminals is supported by public vision-making and cooperative or more centralised network design within the sector.

The challenge of appropriate hub terminal and hub-and-spoke network development for seaports and intermodal rail transport in Europe

The advanced internationalisation of markets and production processes continuously adds to the complexity of supply chains. At the same time improving the sustainability of the related international freight transport processes and optimising their efficiency is becoming a topic of central relevance. International freight transport models are an important tool to simulate impacts of measures taken to achieve such improvements of transport processes. Yet, the requirements towards international freight transport models are complex: they need to include various modes of transport, they need to cover different industries and their dynamics, they need to consider seasonality of supply and demand of goods, demographic parameters, economic developments, technological developments including their impact on production processes and structures, and many other aspects. Furthermore, international freight transport models need to include freight flows within countries as well as freight flows between the considered countries. This paper discusses the challenges which need to be confronted when developing international freight transport models which are able to correspond to the described complexity of international freight transport. Furthermore, it maps out the most important research gaps which need to be addressed by international freight transport modelling research in order to ensure that the challenges identified are captured within the models developed to improve international freight transport.

Challenges and future research needs towards international freight transport modelling

Grossterminalstudie: Beurteilung der Terminalprojekte Gateway Limmattal und Basel-Nord: Schlussbericht

Im Rahmen der nationalen Verkehrsmodellierung im UVEK (VM-UVEK) betreiben ARE, ASTRA und BAV neben dem Nationalen Personenverkehrsmodell (NPVM) auch ein disaggregiertes Modell zum Guterverkehr (NGVM). Methodische und technische Grunde schranken den Anwendungsbereich des NGVM ein, zudem fokussiert es auf den Binnenverkehr. Vor diesem Hintergrund wurde eine Evaluierung der nationalen Guterverkehrsmodellierung angestossen. Die Evaluierung wurde nach drei Schwerpunkten gegliedert: Analyse des Bedarfs an Fragestellungen zum Guterverkehr, Auslegeordnung zu Methoden und (vergleichbaren nationalen) Modellen inkl. des bestehenden Modells sowie Sichtung der Verfugbarkeit von (modellrelevanten) Daten zum Guterverkehr. Ziel war es, aus der Evaluierung Stossrichtungen und Strategien fur die weitere Entwicklung der Nationalen Guterverkehrsmodellierung abzuleiten. Die Bedarfsanalyse hat gezeigt, dass es einen breiten, kunftig gar steigenden Bedarf an strategisch modellierten Daten zum Guterverkehr gibt. Die damit verbundenen Fragestellungen lassen sich grob in solche mit eher aggregiertem Blickwinkel (nationale Ebene, zusammengefasste Marktsegmente) und solche mit stark disaggregiertem Blickwinkel (ortlich eingegrenzt, auf Teilsegmente fokussierend) unterscheiden. Die Betrachtung von Methoden und Modellen hat gezeigt, dass die Komplexitat der Wirkungszusammenhange im Guterverkehr die Moglichkeiten der Modellierung begrenzt – zumindest ist derzeit kein Modell in Sicht, welches gegenuber dem bestehenden, eher disaggregiert arbeitendem NGVM signifikante Vorteile aufweisen wurde. Es gibt aber Methoden, welche mit aggregierten Ansatzen vereinfachend einige der ubergeordneten Fragestellungen besser abzubilden vermogen als disaggregiert arbeitende Modelle. Die Datenlage lasst sich ahnlich zweiteilen: Fur eher ubergeordnete Blickwinkel und den dafur infrage kommenden Modellen liegen deutlich mehr Daten vor als fur disaggregierte Betrachtungsweisen, wobei Daten mit Prognosecharakter generell nur eingeschrankt verfugbar sind. Die Einstellung der nationalen Guterverkehrsmodellierung ware aus Sicht des Bedarfes kontraproduktiv; der Aufbau eines neuen disagregierten Modells bietet sich ebenfalls nicht an. Daher erscheint es empfehlenswert, im weiteren Umgang zu einer nationalen Guterverkehrsmodellierung eine Strategie zu verfolgen, die modular die aggregierten und disaggregierten Blickwinkel berucksichtigt und dabei das bestehende NGVM einbezieht. Etappenweise konnte mit dem Aufbau eines aggregiert arbeitenden Modells begonnen werden – abgestimmt auf spatere Querbeziehungen zum bestehenden Modell. Dieses ist dann fur disaggregierte Betrachtungen zu optimieren. Begleitet werden sollte die Nationale Guterverkehrsmodellierung von einem Betriebskonzept und einer angemessenen Kommunikation zu den Moglichkeiten und Grenzen der Daten, Methoden und Modelle.

Verkehrsmodellierung im UVEK: Evaluierung der nationalen Güterverkehrsmodellierung

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Lutz Ickert

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Grossterminalstudie: Beurteilung der Terminalprojekte Gateway Limmattal und Basel-Nord: Schlussbericht

Verkehrsmodellierung im UVEK: Evaluierung der nationalen Güterverkehrsmodellierung