Institute of Transportation, MOTC

　　To promote intermodal transportation policy, government departments try to integrate transportation modes to mitigate the negative impacts on environment and promote high-efficient, seamless transportation. To follow “intermodal transportation” policy and allocate resource effectively, this paper proposes an “intercity intermodal logistics transportation” model in which the trunk line railroad system is responsible for long-distance line-haul transport and local-city logistics companies are responsible for pickup and distribution of commodities within cities. Taking the efficient transport operation at intermodal node as the key success factor to carry out “intercity intermodal logistics transportation” strategy, we formulate a multi-objective mathematical model for locating the Rail Transshipment Centers (RTC). Given the constraints of satisfying customer demand and RTC capacity restriction, the RTC locations and dispatching freight routes are the major decision variables in our model. The financial benefit of “intercity intermodal logistics transportation” strategy is also discussed in this paper.
　　Empirical results show that the “intercity intermodal logistics transportation” has its financial benefits. The model is solved by using the weighting method. It is found that along Taiwan Railroad, the stations including Shulin, Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Ilan, Hualien, and Taitung are suitable locations for RTC, if two objectives are given the same weight. The shortest path from origin to destination is the selecting results for dispatching freight routes. In addition, by performing the sensitive analysis, we found that customer demand is the major parameter that affects the financial benefit of “intercity intermodal logistics transportation” strategy.