| Hinterland transport is the transport from the port to the final destination and vice versa. The sustainability of hinterland transport systems, which requires consideration of economic, social and environmental properties of transportation, is a key component to sustainable development of a nation. The sustainability evaluation of a hinterland transport system adopts the criteria that whether there are improvements on indicators that reflect the system's economic,social and environmental performances. As to hinterland transport systems of China, dry bulk possesses a highest proportion of freight volume. However, there exist some major problems in Hinterland Transport systems of Dry Bulk (HTDB) of China, such as severe overload trucking and dust pollution, which hinder sustainable development of HTDB. The local governments can not deal with this problem well because on one hand overloaded trucks cause problems such as deterioration of roads and traffic safety issues, which drive sustainability in the opposite direction than the positive mobility effects, on the other hand, however, overload trucking significantly lowers freight owners' transport cost. Modal shift is to use efficient modes of transportation (e.g., rail and water) more often than the less efficient modes (e.g., truck and air). An appropriate modal shift measure can effectively lower the average transport cost and enhance performances of HTDB on emissions,congestion and safety, which are all the important issues of freight sustainability.Therefore, it is important to come up with the effective modal shift measures to achieve the sustainability of HTDB with the premise of solving overload trucking.The objective of this research is to investigate the influence of alternative modal shift measures on the sustainability of HTDB. The main research work is concluded as follows:(1) Firstly the subsystems of HTDB were indentified and interrelationships of those subsystems were analyzed. An evolution model was then developed to investigate the evolutionary mechanism of HTDB. The model considers self-organization between the subsystems and takes modal shift measures as the effect of hetero-organization, serving to qualitatively evaluate the effectiveness of modal shift measures by judging whether they can guide the HTDB to the new ordered state.(2) The components within the subsystems of HTDB were further identified, and a System Dynamics (SD) model was established to simulate the interdependency and feedback effects of those components, and based on which, to evaluate the sustainable effects of modal shift measures and to identify those effective measures for sustainability in terms of reduction of HTDB's total costs including economic cost,environmental cost and social cost.(3) The proposed models were applied to a specific case of China, which is Hinterland Transport of dry bulk for Caofeidian Port (HTCP). Two categories of modal shift measures, with the premise of trucks meeting the statutory limit, were formulated for the case. One is the Rigid Weight Regulation (RWR), with the expected effect of shifting freight of the regular highway to the express highway; the other is modal shift to the railway, on the basis of the RWR, with the expected effect of shifting freight of highways to the railway by constructing a new local railway. The evolution model was applied to qualitatively evaluate the effects of the above modal shift measures. The results show that modal shift within highways is not helpful for HTCP to evolve to the state of sustainability while modal shift to the railway is effective. The SD model was applied to quantitatively evaluate the sustainable effects of the above modal shift measures. The results show that modal shift within highways is not an effective option because the total cumulative cost caused by this measure is higher than that of the baseline. As to the measures of modal shift to the railway, RWR plus MSR? (Modal Shift by the Railway of class ?) is the best measure, because the total cumulative cost of this measure is lesser than that of the baseline and the feasibility of this measure is higher than that of others.(4) Based on the case analysis, this research considered HTDB under more general situations by changing values of certain parameters of the SD model, and proposed some advices for sustainable development of HTDB according to the simulation results .This research contributes to the literature in three ways. (1) Based on the literature that considers self-organization effects within the HTDB, this research further introduces hetero-organization effects of modal shift measures so that the influences of modal shift measures on the evolution process of HTDB could be analyzed. (2) Much of the existing literature regarding the SD models of freight transportation does not consider the problem of overload trucking. This research advances the literature by establishing an SD model of HTDB in which overload trucking is considered, so the influences of both overload trucking and modal shift measures with the premise of trucks meeting the statutory limit on the sustainability of HTDB could be analyzed. (3)Much of the existing literature of sustainability evaluation using SD focuses on the environmental issues. This research contributes to the literature by establishing an SD model that that both the environmental issues and social and economic issues are considered, and the model is able to indentify those effective modal shift measures by which the sustainability of HTDB could be realized.This research is conducted based on the theory of complex systems, which facilitates a better understanding for local authorities of HTDB in the reciprocal mechanism between modal shift measures and sustainable performances of HTDB. The proposed SD model is also applicable to other cases by modifying the values of certain parameters, and is helpful to the decision-makers by developing the appropriate and feasible modal shift measures to achieve sustainability of HTDB with the premise of solving overload trucking. |
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