Location of Mid-Range Dry Ports in Multimodal Logistic Networks

In the recent literature a lot of attention has been given to intermodal transportation networks, mainly related to inland freight mobility. In particular, the landside distribution of maritime containers from/to seaports has been the focus of many research works. In fact, seaports are now suffering the lack of space at maritime terminals and the growing congestion on their access routes with the inland connections. In this regard, a well established strategic choice for maritime terminals is to perform gateway operations at inland dry ports, especially when topological and environmental constraints prevent terminals from expanding. Following this idea, in this paper we deal with the problem of locating dry ports for freight mobility in intermodal networks. In particular, the containerized flows originating at the maritime terminals of the port of Genoa, Italy, towards inland destinations throughout rail and road itineraries are examined. The present problem fits in the class of capacitated multiple hub location problems. We give a mathematical programming model for the problem, which is modelled on a two level weighted multimodal graph. Computational experiences based on randomly generated instances of different size are reported together with results related to the case study rail–road logistic network.