Optimal location for intermodal transshipment facilities between transportation networks

Transshipment facilities are nodes on a network where a change occurs between modes of travel or between transportation networks. Their location is important in the competitiveness of multimodal transport. The aim of this paper is to discuss this type of location in the scope of location theory. The location of the transshipment facilities between networks is here defined as a discrete problem that locates facilities (technical equipments) enabling the transfer from one transportation network to another, and minimising total transportation costs. A mathematical formulation of the problem is proposed and discussed: it relies on integer linear programming. This formulation is quite flexible and enables several extensions that can be combined in order to represent several real-world planning situations.