development of small-scale intermodal freight transportation in a ...

prioritised their single-mode operations before intermodal ones. All this has created a complicated
network of actors with business and ownership relations that is analysed with a historical
perspective in chapter 4 of the licentiate thesis 21 .
Starting with the ambitious Leber plan and corresponding initiatives in other countries,
politicians have frequently turned their eyes to intermodal transport seeking the solutions of
general problems related to road as well as rail transportation. Nevertheless, apart from the
success of intermodal transport in conjunction with transocean container shipping, it is
quite clear that intermodal transport has not fulfilled the high expectations. Some 30 million
containers pass the European ports annually and 4 million of them are moved by rail to
and from the hinterland. An additional 6 million ITUs move in intermodal road-rail services
within Europe each year (STONE, 1997, p. 2 and 1998, p. 30). The positive thing is
that politicians do not seem to have been discouraged by the weak results.
1.2.2 Current operational principles
This section contains a description of the intermodal production system with a European 22
perspective, which is deeper than the introductory description presented in section 1.1.1.
The rendering is partly practical and partly theoretical in character and the outline is based
upon the basic functions in intermodal transportation systems, that is the load-carrying
function, the transport function and the transshipment function 23 . This view upon the system
is further deepened in a conceptual model presented in section 4.1.3.
Today, the load-carrying function in intermodal transportation systems is heavily dominated
by ISO-containers, swap bodies and semi-trailers, although smaller units have been
implemented on a small scale 24 .
The ISO-container is by far the most common ITU and the world container fleet is in the
range of 10 million TEUs 25 (Containerisation International, 1996). Due to the global
agreement to encompass ISO-containers in the transportation systems, such containers are
the obvious choice when shipping semi-manufactured and manufactured goods between
21 For further reading about intermodal transport history, see: BUKOLD (1996), DEBOER (1992) and MULLER
(1995).
22 A more detailed description of the production system for Swedish domestic intermodal transport is found in
an article appended to the licentiate thesis (WOXENIUS, 1994/a). For a Scandinavian perspective to the production
system, see WOXENIUS, 1995/a. For reading about the administrative system, see WOXENIUS
(1997/a) and chapter 4 in the licentiate thesis.
23 In addition to these basic functions the operations obviously require a set of complementing administrative
functions such as management and information handling, but these are not explicitly treated here.
24 Unit load types are comprehensively described and analysed in their system context in WOXENIUS, et al.
(1995/b). For a pure technical rendering, see EURET (1994).
25 Twenty foot Equivalent Unit – a volume measurement used, e.g., for describing the capacity of container
ships and for container transport statistics.
13