Network Planning And Design For Inland Container Liner Shipping Routes

With the development of economy，the land transportation especiallythe truck transportation’s volume grows rapidly. As a result, a series ofproblems come along, including environment pollution, road congestion,traffic accidents and so on. Traffic volume shifting from land to water hasbeen a key method to alleviate this situation. To achieve this, raising theservice level of inland water container transportation and optimizing itstransportation organization and planning is of great importance.Quantitative planning can not only help to improve the competitivenessof inland water transportation but also achieve economies of scale, and itis also the demand to deal with the future growth of inland containertransportation volume.However, the real development of the inland container transportationin China is just getting started. In theory, the study of inland watercontainer transportation route optimization is still rare. Most of theexisting container literatures about liner shipping network optimizationare focused on ocean containers transportation. In addition, thequantitative planning used in the actual operation is also lacking.Problems such as un-reasonable route planning, route and capacityoverlapping are still serious. Based on the analysis of both theory andoperation, this dissertation carries out the study of inland container linerservice network optimizing and planning.Different from sea transportation, inland water transport has its owncharacteristics. The characteristics of inland container liner servicenetwork, containing inland waterway, ports, routes, routes’ organizationand inland containers transportation ships, are analyzed. Meanwhile, weanalyzed the principle, hierarchy, content and some other relatedquestions of service network design. Based on the study above and accord with the characteristics of inland container liner service network, anoptimization model targeting to the line bundling network is set up. Themodel’s objective is to minimize the overall cost of the system when allthe OD transportation demand is satisfied. To solve the model, we bringout a combinational algorithm comprising of Genetic Algorithm (GA)and Integer Programming (IP). Lastly, the case study about inlandtransportation system containing seven ports in the Yangtze River iscarried out and it verifies the rationality and feasibility of the model andalgorithm.The research of this dissertation is targeted for the public containertransport operators. It is of great significance to some extent for thesystematic network planning of inland waterway containers transportation.Meanwhile, the research method of this dissertation is also adapted forroute network planning of single shipping company. It is also helpful forthe cooperation of different shipping companies in the inland waterwaycontainers transportation.