An agent-based simulation approach to investigate the shift of Switzerland's inland freight transport from road to rail

Most of today's inland freight transport in Switzerland is operated on the road system. In this study, an innovative agent-based simulation approach is developed to investigate the potential shift from road to rail. In a first step, future freight demand for inland road transport is calculated based on official governmental forecasting tools provided by ARE (Bundesamt fur Raumentwicklung, Switzerland). In a second step, the agent-based simulation framework Multi-Agent Transport Simulation (MATSim) is used to investigate different supply concepts and estimate the mode shift effect from "road-only" to "intermodal road and rail transport". The simulated transport supply consists of the road network, the rail network, the cargo rail schedule, and the terminals where containers are loaded from Heavy Goods Vehicles to cargo trains and vice versa. For both, the road and rail system, dynamic queuing effects are explicitly taken into consideration. The illustrative case study for Switzerland reveals that intermodal road/rail transport provides a great potential to reduce road traffic. From the users' point of view, switching from road to intermodal transport yields an average cost reduction of 46%. Even without any optimization of the transit schedule and terminal capacities, a significant trip share of 23% is shifted from road to intermodal transport. Both train and terminal capacities as well as the number of train departures per origin destination relation are limiting factors and have a crucial impact on the demand for intermodal transport.