THE TRANSPORT OF PALLETIZED GOODS VIA THE INLAND WATERWAY: AN MOST OPTIMAL LOCATION ANALYSIS AND SIMULATION

摘要

The distribution of palletized goods in Belgium creates a large number of truck movements with an associated environmental impact and creating further pressure on mobility to. An innovative solution to overcome this problem is to bundle these transports over the inland waterways and organize the last mile distribution via a limited number of local water-bound warehouses, hereby reducing the truck transport distances to an absolute minimum. For the research around this solution, a location analysis model was created, which gives outcome on the most optimal locations of water bound warehouses. As one lists the given most optimal locations, one can see that the local water-bound warehouses are mostly located in or near main cities. This illustrates the possibility of combining a sustainable and multimodal city distribution with the concept of a in network organized modal shift of palletized goods. The feasibility of such combination is demonstrated through several existing projects. A cost structure was integrated in the model, so one can calculate the financial cost of the modal shift. Finally a simulation was run for the 2010 ADSEI data, concerning the inland Belgian freight transports.