ROLLING SHELF - Palletised Rail Goods
Overview
Background & policy context:
For several decades the European freight transport market has considerably changed, in general leaving the rail sector with an ever-decreasing market share. These structural changes were triggered by logistics trends focusing on a limited number of distribution centres, the outsourcing and bundling of logistics services and concepts such as just-in-time delivery.
Hence the requirements, in particular for short haul shipments, shifted towards higher speed, improved availability, flexibility and timeliness, which would not be served well by railway networks. Eventually, as a major negative side effect a lot of additional traffic in road and air transport was generated and railway capacities were found unused. The true reason for the unattractiveness of rail transport can be attributed to technical problems of railway systems and organisational obstacles, most importantly related to hampered intermodal capability and poor responsiveness to customer demand.
Objectives:
In line with the policy theme to enhance intermodal transport, the Rolling Shelf project aimed at encouraging a modal shift from road transport to rail based services through technological innovations and organisational measures. The project concentrated on short distance transport of palletised goods, parcels and pallet containers.
The main objectives of ROLLING SHELF were:
- To specify and develop new freight vehicles (i.e. wagons and trains) suitable for
- fast and automated transhipment processes,
- high levels of utilisation and dynamic loading operations,
- reliable scheduled services between dedicated terminals; - to improve transhipment facilities, e.g.
- for dynamic and flexible loading and unloading of pallets and small containers,
- special terminal designs for small, medium and high volume cargo shipments; - to design and develop special load units for
- bundled palletised goods on standard pallets, to be transported on specially designed Rolling Shelf wagons, and
- small container units, to be transported on available standard flat wagons.
Methodology:
The methodology involves:
- proposing a network of terminals suited for the needs of Rolling Shelf;
- establishing a goods wagon which will allow fast and easy loading and unloading of palletised goods;
- a telematic solution enabling fast and easy tracing of goods and an efficient way of handling orders and shipments;
- evaluation of the economic aspects of the Rolling Shelf system by valuing the investment and operating costs, and comparing them with possible revenues, and also calculating the minimum service distance.
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