On Economic & Social Contributions Of Multimodal Transport Development In China

Multimodal transport is the major direction of the comprehensive transportation.Developing the multimodal transport will have a great practical significance as to deepen the construction of the comprehensive transportation system,to promote the development of modern logistics,to push forward the real economy in lowering the costs and increasing efficiency and to enhance the competitiveness of the national economy.This study is based on the analysis of the status of domestic and international development of multimodal transport and discussed the technical and economic characteristics of multimodal transport,the calculation method of expected contribution and expected direct contribution and indirect contribution.The main research contents and conclusions are as follows:(1)Multimodal has three technical characteristics as to the demand side,supply side and transaction process.The demand side includes integrity,value added and dispersion.The supply side includes the high continuity and coordination of the transportation process,the complementarity of transportation modes,the compatibility of the transportation equipment and the network economy of the transportation system.The transaction process includes transaction frequency and cost simplification and transaction complexity.The study also provides the calculation method and way of estimation of the multimodal transport's economic and social contribution and determines the base of calculation.(2)The study estimated the direct contribution of multimodal transport in five different aspects:(1)improvement of the efficiency of energy utilization,(2)reduction of greenhouse gas emissions,(3)reduction of logistics costs,(4)improvement of efficiency of comprehensive transportation,(5)improvement of transport reliability.The results show that through the development of multimodal transport,there will be an increase in energy utilization efficiency of China's transportation industry in 2020 by 8.3%,a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions by 6.6%,a reduction in transportation costs and logistics cost of the whole society by 3.5% and 1.9% respectively,more than 30% improvement of the efficiency of the comprehensive transportation,and the reduction of heavy truck traffic accidents by the number of 2960 and the number of deaths of 1620 people.(3)The study estimated the indirect contribution of multimodal transport in six aspects:(1)fuel economic growth,(2)promotion of industrial development,(3)improvement of economic competitiveness,(4)promotion of the intensive use of resources,(5)reduction of traffic congestion,(6)national energy security.The results show that the multimodal transport will(1)directly increase the investment by 4585 billion Yuan,(2)make an economic growth of about 6900-9200 billion Yuan,(3)lower commodity prices by 0.3%-0.5%,(4)increase the profit of export enterprises by 3.3%-3.5%,(5)reduce the use amount of 917.5 thousand heavy trucks and the national highway traffic volume by 7.2%,(6)reduce the oil consumption of about 24.5 million tons by the year of 2020.