| The development of the economic globalization has bridged the frequent trades between countries around the world. The goods transportation is without doubt the most important maintaining and contributing factor of the global economy. Nevertheless, the choice of the transportation route and mode appears to be of particular importance in that complex means of transport such as railway, road, aviation and ship transport interconnect with each other world widely. Many logistics enterprises have recognized the broad future of the intermodal transportation. They are willing to choose the intermodal transportation especially in international trade when the transport condition allows. In that case, the cost of the intermodal transportation will naturally be highlighted. However, most logistics enterprises segregate the items unscientifically in their cost accounting and neglect the external cost. While the intermodal transportation boosts the economic development, it does have many non-negligible problems such as monotonous or irrational transportation structure, inflexible transportation route and inappropriate connection between different modes of transportation. Moreover, in the context of promoting environmentally friendly transportation, the limit on the external cost of goods transportation becomes day-by-day more rigorous, the requirement on the sustainability of the transportation mode becomes more demanding. This paper, basing on the analysis above, investigates in the transport mode selection problem of the intermodal goods transportation. The main contents included are as follows:(1) The recent literatures home and abroad on intermodal transportation and transportation cost analysis are summarized in the first place. Then the key point and the trend of these two topics are made clear and the deficiencies of the previous researches are analyzed. Based on the deficiencies of previous researches, the paper analyzes the technical characteristics of different transportation modes and identifies the factors that influence the selection of transportation mode. Finally we set the total transportation cost as the objective function of the intermodal transportation model. The total transportation cost contains the internal cost and the external cost. The internal cost refers to the operation cost during the transportation activity, the external cost denotes the air pollution cost, noise cost and time cost during the transportation activity.(2) After defining the objective function and the constraint conditions, the components of the objective cost and accounting method are analyzed in detail. Based on the previous researches, the rational transportation cost item segregation and the correct external cost accounting method are found. By using transportation programming theory and graph theory, the paper finally builds the 0-1 planning model with transportation volume and time as the constraint condition that optimizes the transportation route and modes.(3) By referring to current literature and basic data, the transportation mode selection model of intermodal transportation is built. The simulation at the last of the paper shows that the transportation mode selection model for intermodal transportation provided in this paper can combines the advantages of the transportation modes and their sustainability. Still, we make a further step to study the influence of the constraint conditions of the model, analyze the role of the pollution tax in different districts and its impact on the transportation mode selection. |
