The Rail Freight Consolidation Center Location Problem Based On The "Belt And Road" Initiatives

Boomed by the "Belt and Road" Initiatives,the railway freight corridors connecting Asia and Europe are becoming busier and busier.However,due to the lack of cooperation,most of the China-EU block trains are running with a very low full-load ratio,and accounting on huge financial subsidies to keep break-even.To make the Euro-Asia rail freight transportation a more sustainable business,a good strategy is to consolidate freights before leaving and entering China.Based on the freight consolidation strategy,this paper dedicates to figure out the optimal location choice of the consolidation center in the China-EU railway network.Mixed integer models for location choices of single consolidation center and multi-consolidation centers respectively are built,considering the waiting cost caused by both congestion effect and waiting-for-goods effect at the consolidation center,and solution algorithms are provided solve the problems.Furthermore,under China's Belt and Road Initiatives,an empirical study is conducted to explore the optimal location choice of freight consolidation centers on China's railway network,and sensitivity analysis is conducted to further reveal the impacts of different factors on the optimal location choice.