Development Of Modern Intermodal Freight Transport And Its Economic Organization

The development of economy is highly depended on an efficient freight transport system. The future of the system is one integrated freight system in which each mode of transport is effectively connected and integrated. As an advanced organized form of transportation, Intermodal Freight Transportation (IFT) utilizes the inherent advantages of each mode involved, creating synergies and efficiencies not otherwise attainable and realizes the integration and high efficiency of transport service. Especially, the phenomenal growth of containerization during the past 50 years has expanded the scale of IFT. Accordingly, the intermodal container transportation becomes one highlight of the modern transport industry.The major objectives of this thesis are to describe and analyse the economic organization of IFT and the relationship between the development of IFT and its economic organization. In this thesis, the author presents two economics propositions as follows:(1) the achievement of production efficiency is depended on the improvement of transaction efficiency, the innovation of economic organization is a key factor to promote the development of IFT, the transport industry and corporations with significant economies of scale must change the organizational form in order to maximize economies of scale, enhance the efficiency of intermodal transport chains to achieve to the matching of the diversified demands and focus on supply in the transportation market and meet the need of the economic development to the integrated transport system. (2) The organizational change of rail intermodal container transprot is the status quo to improve the necessary conditions of development for Chinese intermodal transport, but also an important impetus for change to promote Chinese railway industry from the traditional industry to one modern industry.To demonstrate the above proposition, this paper studied the role and significance of economic organizational change in modern development of the intermodal transports with the history and the event study method, based on the study of the development process of modern multimodal transport. Second, the integrated application of transaction cost economics theory, the middle layer of organization theory and transport "production-resource-network economy" way of thinking, studied the multimodal transport organizational structure, morphology and its influencing factors, based on the in-depth analysis of characteristics of a modern inter-modal system, to build an interpretative framework for multimodal transport economic organizations. Subsequently, further studied the organizational change of the maritime industry in the modern multimodal transport development, for further discussion of the important role and significance of organizational change to the transportation industry with significant economies of scale involved in multimodal transport, and At the same time, through the case study of multimodal transport economic organizations during Europe and the United States and other developed countries, further refine the way of economic organizations and its decision-making factors, and testing the interpretation framework of this article. Finally, combing the organizational changes process of shipping industry adapted to intermodal development, drawing on the effectiveness of economic organization of the rail intermodal container transport in European and American developed countries, for the existing organizational issues about rail intermodal container transport system in China, raised suggestions by improving the economic organization to enhance efficiency of the intermodal freight chains, and ultimately summarized the conclusions of the full text.