Investment evaluation in seaports for increasing the rail split modality in multimodal freight networks

This paper concerns an analysis aimed at choosing the best investments in seaports for improving the rail split modality when transferring goods from ports to final destinations. Starting from a current network infrastructure, already optimized according to previous studies, we show that it is possible to obtain a new rail capacity able to increase the modal split thanks to possible alternative investments. First, a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model is proposed; then, a set of possible financial interventions is examined in such a way to obtain a desired rail share for the import-containerized flows. The objective function of the proposed model aims at minimizing the costs of the adopted investments and the overall logistic costs, given by transportation, facility and external components. Externalities include pollutant, noise and congestion factors. The logistic networks originated from the Ligurian ports (Italy) is the test bed of the present research work.