With increasing trade, freight transport demand has grown tremendously and as
sustainability has become an essential concern of our globe, interests in
improving and achieving effective and efficient rail freight transport have
become an essential needs and focus of the 21st century. However, achieving an
improved rail freight transport service and an
increased market share in a competitive environment is rather complex in
several aspects as freight trains would need to operate with principles and
characteristics resembling those of passenger’s traffic in order to attract new
type of goods.
In order to adopt the principles and characteristics used in passenger trains,
airlines and hotel industries into intermodal line train systems, a simulation
model has been developed and implemented. The principles for pricing which we
have considered are base on the available train capacity along a travel sub-leg
and our objective was to increase the performance of the intermodal line cargo
train system. We adopted the yield management concept with rail freight
customers given the possibility to change their start and/or end train stations
(travel sub-leg)
and/or to change their departure day in an intermodal line cargo train system.
Using our developed simulation tool, we have examined the performance of an
intermodal line cargo train system with respect to the dynamic and constant
pricing strategy. Our prime objective was to
investigate and answer the questions which pricing strategy leads to the best
space utilization and performance of an intermodal line train cargo system? Our
simulation results show that the dynamic pricing gives the best space
utilization and rail freight performance. Dynamic pricing strategy appears good
to both the train oper...