Green Freight Movement: The Dilemma of the Shifting of Road Freight to Alternatives

摘要

Abstract: Today, there is a real issue of an alternative to road freight transport. This paper presents experience from Egypt during which time a mathematical procedure was developed to analyze the impact of shifting cargo movement from the road transport sector to the alternatives of water and rail. Currently in Egypt more than 90% of national cargo is carried via the road transport sector. In fact Egypt has a distinctive advantage in comparison to many other countries with respect to modal shift from the road sector. A proportion of national Cargo movements are along the alignment of the Nile River which for the most part is navigable. There is an existing parallel rail alignment. During this analysis, there were several issues for consideration in the transfer of Cargo to an environmentally friendly or a green freight alternative. Not least of these issues was the fact that fuel was heavily subsidized at that time in the country. So road cargo transport providers did not pay for the use of road infrastructure but in addition also had the usage of cheap fuel. Whereas cargo providers on the alternatives within the water and rail sector had to fund fuel and infrastructure maintenance costs. The mathematical model described in this paper is used to consider freight modal shifts under various infrastructure development scenarios. It was the intention during this analysis to emphasize the change from the fact that road infrastructure currently receives the highest investment priority but the utilization of this capacity is weak due to less-than-optimum management as well as poor transport equipment (outdated and badly maintained).The outcome from the analysis results in a recommendation for the future development of national cargo transport to shift from the road sector to the non-road sector. This shows that within the framework of mathematical analysis that it is possible to evaluate the impact of the shift of the movement of cargo away from the road sector.