Tactical Planning on Freight Transport Networks: Service Design and Pricing

Freight transport plays an essential role in economic and societal development. In particular, consolidation-based systems, using several transport modes, are crucial to the realization of world trade activities. Also, on the environmental side in Europe, policy makers and researchers are increasingly interested in endorsing sustainable forms of transport and diverting freight flows from the heavily dominating road. New challenges are, however, identified at the decision-making level, in order to efficiently handle the complexity of the underlying network and the related high costs. During the course of this work, tactical planning issues are discussed within the view of intermodal transport management, as a relevant application context. First, service network design models are presented from the carrier’s perspective, involving long-corridor aspects. Second, pricing decisions are integrated so as to account for the reaction of the shippers, within a bilevel program. The model is enriched in different ways that encompass a level-of-service assessment. Real-world case studies are considered based on the implemented frameworks, in order to provide managerial insights into intermodal transport and evaluate EU-intended policy levers. Finally, the algorithmic aspects of the developed bilevel model are investigated within two heuristic procedures that extend classical frameworks and provide new methodological advancements.