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The scope of this paper is to give an insight into one of the main deep-sea ports in the United Kingdom, the London Gateway, which is a part of the Thames Gateway project and to indicate how, through becoming more rail focussed, it is possible for both output and efficiency to increase. The aim of this study is ultimately to highlight how gradually shifting the reliance of moving freight to rail from road can enhance the overall throughput and output of a port, while also improving the nation’s overall carbon emissions. However, as the results from this simulation show, there is not always the option to solely rely upon rail freight, this is because an over dependency upon one form instead of the other can ultimately have detrimental consequences upon both throughput and output, as well as questions over whether the current rail infrastructure of the United Kingdom has the capacity and ability to handle longer freight trains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Turin-Lyon railway line was completed in 1871. Its first part, between Turin and Chambéry, was previously planned by the Kingdom of Sardinia – which ended in 1861 with the unification of Italy – to connect the Piedmont region to the Savoy region, in particular with Chambéry, ancient capital of Duchy of Savoy. However, today the railway line shows relevant operating problems, due to the high sum of grade and curve resistance. A new line, whose most important section is the Fréjus base tunnel (Fig. 1), is under construction. This paper analyses the competitiveness of the new Turin-Lyon line in the complete framework of rail connections between Italy and the rest of Europe via the Alpine passes. To this end, firstly a great part of European rail network was modelled, with particular detail for the railway lines across the Alps. Three different scenarios were considered: ‘current’, in which only railway lines currently in operation are included; ‘project’, in which railway lines under construction are also considered; ‘future’, in which planned railway lines, but not yet under construction, are also included. In particular only the new base tunnel, between Bussoleno and St. Jean de Maurienne, was considered in the ‘project’ scenario, while the entire new Turin-Lyon line was considered in the ‘future’ scenario. Afterwards, the current freight demand, among European regions, which pertain to Alpine pass railway lines, was calculated using a multi-regional input-output model. Subsequently, a forecast of the freight demand was made for the year 2030, ‘project’ scenario, and 2050, ‘future’ scenario. Finally, the freight transport demand was assigned to the study network by a Probit model, in order to calculate the freight flows on the various Alpine railway passes in the different scenarios considered. This analysis shows that on the future new Fréjus railway line there will be a significant increase in freight flows, until reaching, in the ‘future’ scenario, freight flows comparable to those of the Gotthard and Brenner, albeit lower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a dynamic model of demandmodal split in a multimodal freight transport system.It has been devised in order to study the evolution of freighttransport through the Swiss Alps, which in the last decadeshas undergone profound technological transformations, aswell as marked modifications in the demand split amongwagonload rail, road haulage and intermodal transport.The model determines the dynamic characteristics of thetransport system by analyzing a sequence of times, for eachof which the demand using the various transport modes isknown. Then a map is defined and its parameters estimated,which gives the evolution over time of the demand foreach transport mode. By using the sequence of the yearlytransport demand values of the three modes through theSwiss Alps from 1984 to 2011, the model enables determiningthe evolution of transport costs of each mode duringthis time period and forecasting the future evolution of themodal split, under the hypothesis that the dynamic characteristicsof the system remain substantially unchanged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]