This report describes the design, construction, and maintenance of a geographic database of intermodal freight terminals, which are places or facilities where freight is transferred between different modes of transportation. The intermodal terminals database is itself a component of the National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD) being developed and maintained by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). The NTAD consists of computer files which describe the location, topology, and attributes of the nation's highway, railroad, waterway, air, and pipeline networks. The purpose of the intermodal terminals database is to connect the various modal networks within the NTAD so that multimodal transportation analyses can be performed.
The recent growth of and interest in intermodalism motivates the need for a database of intermodal terminals. Unfortunately, the concept of intermodalism has often been equated with containerization or with the notion of one mode of transportation carrying the equipment of another mode, such as railcars transporting loaded highway trailers. While containerization is a technological innovation that has greatly facilitated the use of intermodalism for a wide variety of commodities, intermodalism itself is a much broader concept. It occurs whenever two or more modes of transportation meet for the purpose of exchanging cargo - either directly or through intermediate storage. In its broadest sense, intermodalism refers to "a holistic view of transportation in which individual modes work together or within their own niches to provide the user with the best choices of service, and in which the consequences on all modes of policies for a single mode are considered [FELD96]."
The rapid evolution and growth of intermodalism since the 1950s is due to technological advancements and regulatory reforms which have helped to overcome or mitigate some of the historical impediments to intermodalism. Containerization and sophisticated cargo-handling equipment have addressed some of the physical or mechanical barriers to more efficient intermodalism, while the introduction of computer and telecommunications technology is beginning to alleviate some of the often more difficult organizational and logistical impediments. The economic deregulation of the transportation industry that occurred in the United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s has had a tremendous impact on the provision of transportation services in general and the practice of intermodalism in particular.
There are many reasons why shippers and carriers engage in intermodalism. In some traffic lanes, depending on a particular shipper's own unique needs and circumstances, a combination of modes may serve the shipper better than a single mode. A shipper, for example, may utilize one mode of transportation to access another mode that provides certain advantages such as low cost, high speed, or high capacity. Shippers will sometimes resort to intermodalism to avoid being dominated by a single mode or carrier, thereby reducing their transportation costs and increasing their transportation options. Despite intense competition between modes for certain kinds of freight, carriers also make use of intermodalism when it suits their purposes. Intermodalism, for example, may help a carrier reduce its operating costs or gain new business that it might not be able to serve directly.
Government involvement in intermodalism has changed dramatically. For many years the federal government's philosophy toward regulation of the transportation industry either prohibited or discouraged any attempts by carriers from different modes to coordinate or integrate their services as well as any efforts by shippers to arrange for more coordinated or integrated multimodal transport. By 1991, however, this philosophy was completely reversed as a result of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA). This landmark piece of legislation required metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to consider ways of enhancing the efficient movement of freight and improving access to ports, airports, intermodal transportation facilities, and major freight distribution routes as they prepared their transportation improvement plans. It also required DOT to develop a database containing information on public and private investment in intermodal transportation facilities and services, and enabled federal funds to be used for intermodal projects. In authorizing the designation of a National Highway System (NHS), the ISTEA specified that the latter should include highways that provide connections to major intermodal terminals.
Unfortunately for government policymakers and transportation analysts, intermodalism makes policy analysis much more difficult. The relationships between modes and carriers have become so intricate that changes or problems in one mode or in one part of the country can have a profound impact on other modes and other geographic areas. Modal choice is no longer simply a matter of choosing between truck, rail, air, water, or pipeline; that is, it is not a matter of selecting between modes but a matter of selecting between services. Traditional analytical tools and databases may not be adequate to address the current multimodal and logistics reality. Satisfactory multimodal analysis will require new tools and databases.
An important function of the intermodal terminals database is to support any analysis dealing with the flow or movement of freight through a multimodal transportation network. Another important function is to support a variety of mapping and geographic information system (GIS) applications. More than anything else, the intermodal terminals database described in this report is fundamentally an inventory of existing facilities. It documents what is on the ground. It is hard to imagine how policymakers and analysts can begin to understand the impact of policy issues and initiatives on intermodal transportation without having some sense of the size and scope of the existing intermodal infrastructure.
Just as some confusion exists about the meaning of intermodalism, the notion of an intermodal terminal also conjures up different images. It is impossible, however, to design and build a consistent and coherent database of intermodal freight terminals without having a clear idea of what constitutes an intermodal terminal. How does one recognize an intermodal terminal or facility? What distinguishes one intermodal terminal from another? What distinct types of intermodal terminals can be identified?
A freight terminal is an integrated set of facilities where cargo is loaded onto or unloaded from a particular mode of transportation. An intermodal freight terminal is a special kind of freight terminal. It is a place where two or more modes of transportation meet to interchange freight, either directly or through intermediate storage. Intermodal exchange may not be the only function performed at an intermodal terminal, or even the primary one. All that is required for a freight terminal to be an intermodal terminal is that it have the necessary space and equipment to receive cargo by one mode of transportation and ship it out by a different mode. In between the inbound and outbound movement, the cargo may be consolidated with other incoming cargo of the same type, separated into smaller outbound shipments, or directly transferred between two modes as part of a seamless intermodal shipment.
The physical characteristics, complexity, and other attributes of intermodal freight terminals vary greatly. Some intermodal terminals are relatively small and almost ad hoc in nature, while others are large and involve a considerable amount of infrastructure. As an aid in identifying and classifying intermodal terminals and thereby gaining a better understanding of the concept of intermodalism in its various forms, five features or characteristics of intermodal terminals are especially useful: the pairs of modes which the terminal directly or indirectly connects, the types of cargo or the specific commodities which the terminal handles, the types of intermodal transfers for which the terminal is designed (direct, short-term storage, or long-term storage), whether the terminal is privately or publicly owned, and whether use of the terminal is open or restricted relative to either shippers or carriers.
By employing combinations of the above five distinguishing features, several common types of intermodal terminals can be found. Between the truck and rail modes, for example, containerized freight is interchanged at TOFC/COFC facilities, automobiles and other finished vehicles at vehicle terminals, dry and liquid bulk cargoes at bulk transloading facilities, and breakbulk commodities such as lumber, steel, and paper products at numerous public warehouses, distribution centers, and other reload facilities. Grain is transferred between truck and rail, truck and water, or rail and water at thousands of grain elevators and other grain-handling facilities. Petroleum products and other liquid bulk commodities such as chemicals, vegetable oils, and molasses are gathered and distributed intermodally at hundreds of tank farms and other liquid bulk terminals and storage facilities. Along the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts, the Great Lakes, and the inland waterways can be found a variety of intermodal terminals including container-handling facilities, import and export auto terminals, grain elevators, cement terminals, rail-barge and rail-vessel bulk transloading facilities for coal, ores, and other dry bulk cargoes, and facilities for storing and transferring petroleum and non-petroleum liquid bulk commodities. Clearly, an amazing variety of intermodal terminals exists.
Designing a database of intermodal terminals is a matter of deciding what information to include and how to organize it. A long list of possible data items describing various physical and operational characteristics of intermodal terminals could easily be generated. Simply compiling all or a large subset of these items into a single record for each terminal would likely lead to a database too cumbersome and costly to build, maintain, and use. A poorly designed database, like a poorly designed bridge, will soon collapse under use. What is needed is a logical database structure based on a conceptual model of intermodal terminals and their relationships with other elements of the transportation system.
In determining the contents and organization of the intermodal terminals database, several factors were considered. Because the terminals database is a component of the broader NTAD, the specification of the latter prescribes an overall organizational structure as well as some standard file formats for the terminals database. As a result, information on terminal location is placed in a file of point-type records, while non-topological attribute data are stored in one or more files of attribute-type records. Other factors considered in deciding what information to include in the terminals database centered around the need for independence from any particular modal network database, the possible uses of the terminals database, technical problems associated with measuring or specifying terminal costs, capacity, and performance, and the availability of data and other resources for building and maintaining the database. As a further design aid, a simple conceptual model of intermodal terminals was created to highlight the important features of these facilities and their connections with the various modal subnetworks. This conceptual model revealed two important pieces of information about intermodal terminals that should be included in the database. One is the terminal's location, particularly its geographic coordinates. The other is the notion of an intermodal connector, which itself combines three other pieces of information: a pair of modes, a commodity or type of cargo, and the direction of transfer.
The resulting structure of the initial intermodal terminals database is based on the relational data model. It consists of two relational tables or files.
The first file in the database structure is the terminal location table or point file. It contains information on the identity and geographic coordinates of each intermodal terminal. The primary fields of this file are the following:
The second file in the basic intermodal terminals database structure is the intermodal connections table or attribute file. It describes the intermodal connections that can occur at each intermodal terminal. Each record in this file includes the following fields:
Because an intermodal terminal may connect more than one pair of modes or transfer more than one type of cargo between one or more pairs of modes, it may have multiple records in the intermodal connections file.
These two tables or files constitute what might be termed the basic or canonical version of the intermodal terminals database, since terminals of every type have a physical location and at least one intermodal connection. Additional files or tables of logically related attributes can be added to the canonical terminals database in the future as the need arises and as more or better data become available.
The process of adding records to the intermodal terminals database involved three primary steps or tasks.
The objective of the first task was to identify intermodal terminals of a particular type such as TOFC/COFC terminals, truck-rail bulk transfer facilities, or waterway terminals. The search for lists, directories, and other sources of information on the locations of intermodal terminals followed many avenues. Links or references to potential sources were revealed through a continuous monitoring of the freight transportation literature, including not only research reports and journal articles but also news publications, industry and trade magazines, and popular railroad and transportation periodicals. Other sources were identified by contacting government agencies, industry and trade organizations such as the AAR and the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA), persons in the railroad, trucking, and transportation equipment industries with experience in intermodalism, and researchers who have recently studied some aspect of intermodal transportation. Various World Wide Web search mechanisms were also used to uncover online sources as well as references to additional published sources.
Once the presence or identity of an intermodal terminal had been discovered from a list, directory, or other source, the terminal's location had to be pinpointed for inclusion in the terminal location or point record. Various map resources were utilized in an effort to locate each intermodal terminal as precisely as the available address information would allow. These resources included printed highway maps and railroad atlases, aerial photographs, and online maps available on the World Wide Web. In many cases, the terminal operator had to be contacted by phone to obtain directions to the intermodal facility. A CD-ROM map database software package called MapExpert, published by DeLorme Mapping Company, was used to locate the position of each intermodal terminal and measure its longitude and latitude.
The third step in adding a terminal to the database was to determine its intermodal connections; that is, ascertain what types of cargo or commodities are interchanged between which modes of transportation at the terminal. For some kinds of terminals, such as TOFC/COFC facilities and auto ramps, this was a trivial matter, but for many waterway and other types of terminals, the intermodal connections were not always so obvious. Information on the kinds of freight handled at a terminal was sometimes sketchy, ambiguous, or unavailable. Some of the principal data sources did not always clearly indicate what role, if any, railroads played in exchanging freight with other modes at a terminal, or which modes of transportation were involved in the transfer of a particular commodity or type of cargo. Whenever possible, supplementary or secondary information was used to help in resolving these ambiguities. In a number of cases, the terminal owner or operator had to be contacted by phone to obtain the needed information.
Among the principal published sources of information on intermodal terminals used to build the database were the following:
Many World Wide Web sites were also mined for data, including those of several Class I railroads and a number of port authorities which provided detailed information on one or more types of intermodal terminals, including TOFC/COFC facilities; auto ramps; bulk transload facilities; lumber, steel, and paper reload facilities; and waterway terminals. Supplementing these primary sources of data were brochures and other marketing materials supplied by several motor carriers, railroads, terminal operators, and port authorities.
As of October 1997 while this report was being written, the intermodal terminals database contained records for 2865 intermodal freight terminals and 9036 intermodal connections. Despite these large numbers, the database was only partially completed. A full database could easily contain two to three times this number of records. Serious consideration must be given to the problem of keeping a database of this size up-to-date in a reasonable and cost-effective manner.
The amount of effort required to keep the database current depends on the volatility of the data, which in turn depends on how much and how fast the intermodal infrastructure is changing. Based on the large number of news items pertaining to intermodal facilities that have appeared recently in various transportation news sources, it is apparent that the intermodal infrastructure is by no means static. New terminals have recently opened, and others are either being built or in the planning stages. At the same time, existing terminals are being expanded or consolidated, and older outmoded or underutilized facilities have recently been and will continue to be closed. Changes to the intermodal infrastructure are being driven by the continued growth of containerized traffic, recent and proposed railroad mergers, the formation of ocean carrier alliances, technological advances, freight rate incentives, the availability of federal funding for intermodal projects, and many other events and factors. While the number of intermodal terminals and intermodal connections added to or removed from the transportation system over the course of a year may be relatively small compared to the number of terminals in existence, it is nevertheless significant. Systematic maintenance of the terminals database is therefore essential.
The proposed maintenance strategy has two components. The first is a monitoring activity. Various printed and online transportation news sources should be monitored on a regular basis to keep abreast of current events involving intermodal facilities. A record should be kept of each new, planned, or closed terminal and each new, planned, or discontinued intermodal connection cited in news articles, press releases, and short news items. The second component of the database maintenance strategy consists of a multi-year cycle of incremental updates. The database should be updated each year to incorporate the terminal openings and closings uncovered by the previous year's monitoring activity. Likewise, there should be no problem in keeping the terminals database current each year with regard to TOFC/COFC facilities, given the importance of this type of terminal and the availability of good data. As each revised edition of a Port Series report is released by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, it should be used to update the terminals database. Likewise, the auto terminals records should be updated as soon as the AAR issues a new directory of motor vehicle loading and unloading terminals. The remaining types of intermodal terminals should be considered on the basis of a multiyear update cycle, in which attention would be focused on a different type of terminal each year.
This report describes the design, construction, and maintenance of a geographic database of intermodal freight terminals, which are places or facilities where freight is transferred between different modes of transportation. The intermodal terminals database is itself a component of the National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD) being developed and maintained by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). The NTAD consists of computer files which describe the location, topology, and attributes of the nation's highway, railroad, waterway, air, and pipeline networks. These files are designed for use within a geographic information system (GIS) to enable transportation analysts to study and measure the extent, usage, and performance of the U.S. freight transportation system and to determine the effects of planning and policy initiatives, capital and operational improvements, economic trends, natural disasters, and other major events on the system. [HANC94, SPEAR95].
The purpose of the intermodal terminals database is to connect the various modal networks within the NTAD so that multimodal transportation analyses can be performed. To foster a better appreciation of the need for an intermodal terminals database, this chapter provides a brief overview of the concept of intermodalism. Because different segments of the transportation industry have defined intermodalism in somewhat narrow terms, the chapter begins by defining the concept in a much broader, more general sense. It then discusses the evolution of intermodalism and the reasons why it occurs. This is followed by a discussion of why many current transportation issues, policies, and initiatives cannot be fully analysed without taking intermodalism into consideration. The chapter concludes by describing the role of the intermodal terminals database in addressing issues concerning multimodal transportation.
Ask a railroad or motor carrier official to define the term "intermodal" and the chances are you will receive an answer involving highway trailers and containers riding on railroad flatcars or articulated double-stack railcars. Likewise, ask a port operator the same question and you will likely hear about containerships, container cranes, container freight stations, and TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units). This close association of intermodalism with containerization or with one mode of transportation carrying the equipment of another mode is unfortunate. As Jennings and Holcomb [JENN96] point out, it greatly "limits the research conducted in this area, and ultimately the potential to create an integrated transportation system." Davis Helberg, Executive Director of the Seaway Port Authority of Duluth, stated the issue succinctly in a recent editorial [HELB97]:
"Where is it written ... that intermodalism is the holy domain of the container? ... When iron ore was discovered on Minnesota's Iron Range in the 1890s, it began to be shipped - and still is - on specially built railcars to specially built docks for carriage by specially built ships to specially built docks for delivery to steel mills by (what else?) specially built railcars. Fast, competitive, and with minimum lost motion, it's a system that keeps Duluth-Superior the largest ore shipping port in the U.S. - and as close to seamless as one gets short of a pipeline."
Containerization is a technological innovation that has greatly facilitated the use of intermodalism for a wide variety of commodities, but it is not synonymous with intermodalism. As Helberg demonstrated, containers are not required to effect a fast, efficient transfer of cargo between modes of transportation. Intermodalism, however, is an even broader concept than Helberg's example implies for he describes a situation where freight is directly transferred between two modes. In the more general case, the cargo may be stockpiled or placed in temporary storage before being loaded into or onto another mode's equipment.
Intermodalism occurs whenever two or more modes of transportation meet for the purpose of exchanging cargo - whether directly or through intermediate storage. The BTS publication Transportation Expressions [FELD96] defines the concept as follows:
"In its broadest interpretation, intermodalism refers to a holistic view of transportation in which individual modes work together or within their own niches to provide the user with the best choices of service, and in which the consequences on all modes of policies for a single mode are considered."
By adopting this broad definition of intermodalism for the design of an intermodal terminals database, we do not limit ourselves to certain kinds of facilities such as TOFC/COFC (trailer on flatcar/container on flatcar) ramps or to certain kinds of intermodal operations such as direct transfers. Rather, we open up the database to include facilities such as grain elevators, cement terminals, bulk transfer facilities, and transloading docks at public warehouses and distribution centers as well as operations such as reloading, bulk transloading, cross-docking, consolidation, and distribution.
Note that the above definition of intermodalism says nothing about individual shipments. Some people in the transportation industry like to distinguish between intermodal shipments and multimodal shipments. The former term is used to describe a shipment involving more than one mode of transportation between origin and destination where the cargo does not have to be unpacked and reloaded when changing modes. It therefore implies either containerization or the transfer of one mode's means of conveyance, such as a highway trailer, to another mode's means of conveyance, such as a railroad flatcar. A multimodal shipment, on the other hand, is one in which the cargo does have to be unpacked and reloaded. Both types of shipment, however, involve intermodalism.
The above definition of intermodalism also does not depend on any notion of what constitutes a shipment. Instead, it recognizes that intermodalism often involves the consolidation of many relatively small shipments into a large one or, conversely, the breakdown of a large shipment into smaller ones. For example, two 100-car unit train shipments of coal may arrive at a Mississippi River dock for consolidation into a single 15-barge tow shipment. A surface freight forwarder collects small shipments from several clients, loads them according to their destination into containers, highway trailers, or boxcars at a warehouse or freight station, and turns them over to a railroad as one large shipment from an origin to a destination. A train unloads a twelve-carload shipment of lumber at a distribution center, where the cargo is then divided into a number of small truckload shipments destined to various nearby lumber yards and building supply outlets. In each case, shipments are either merged or broken down at an intermodal facility.
Although the importance and benefits of intermodalism have only recently been articulated by the federal government and incorporated into national transportation policy, the intermodal concept is perhaps as old as transportation itself. Since intermodalism occurs whenever and wherever two or more modes of transportation meet to interchange cargo, it quite naturally began when civilizations started using navigable waterways to move goods. It developed even further when they started shipping goods across the oceans. The first intermodal terminals were thus located at strategic places where land and water met.
Even the idea of one mode carrying the loaded equipment of another mode in "piggyback" fashion has been around for quite a while. Early American settlers often loaded their covered wagons onto barges and flatboats for trips down a river or canal, and horse-drawn vehicles were rolled on and off ferries, barges, and rafts. The Pennsylvania Canal between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh had both water and overland sections. In between the canals, barges carrying both passengers and cargo were hauled overland by railroad or aboard horse-drawn wagons [MULL95]. Photographs exist showing loaded Conestoga wagons sitting atop Union Pacific Railroad flatcars in Oregon during the 1880s [WOOD96]. Starting in 1885 and continuing into the 1890s, the Long Island Railroad carried farmers along with their horses and farm wagons loaded with produce into New York City [ARMS93].
Examples of other early forms of intermodalism in the history of U.S. transportation can be found in the literature. In 1847, for example, the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and the Fall River Steamship Line began experimenting with the use of containers to facilitate the transfer of freight between the two carriers [MULL95]. Wood and Johnson [WOOD96] include a photograph of an early mule-to-rail log transfer operation. Road-to-rail intermodalism occurred at warehouses and team track locations where freight was taken off horse-drawn wagons and, later, trucks and reloaded onto railcars. And of course there is the previously cited example of the Duluth-Superior ore docks which began operation during the 1890s. The point is that the history of intermodalism is deeply interwoven with the history of transportation. It has only been in recent years that the significance and potential of this concept have been recognized not only by the government but by many in the transportation and logistics industry as well.
If intermodalism has always been such an intrinsic part of transportation, what accounts for the rapid evolution and growth of intermodalism since the 1950s and the recent surge of interest in the concept? The main reason lies in the fact that many of the barriers to intermodalism have either been overcome or at least mitigated. Historically, there have been many impediments to intermodalism. Among them are the following:
Much has already been written about the negative effects of economic regulation of the transportation industry on the provision of innovative transportation services. In the case of truck-rail intermodalism, economic regulation of the railroads and motor carriers impeded the spread of TOFC/COFC services for many years. The first modern COFC services appeared in the early 1920s when the New York Central Railroad (NYC) began hauling loaded steel containers owned by The L.C.L. Company. Not to be outdone by its archrival, the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) soon offered its own competing container service. Both services were quite successful. They were so successful in fact that the motor carriers (and some other railroads) complained to the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). The ICC ultimately issued a ruling in 1931 which essentially raised COFC rates to non-competitive levels. As a result of this ruling and the effects of the Depression on traffic levels, the NYC and PRR soon discontinued COFC service [BLAS96].
Interestingly, while the NYC and PRR were providing COFC service, several other railroads began providing successful TOFC services that were not challenged by other carriers. The Chicago, North Shore & Milwaukee, an electric interurban line, began hauling loaded truck trailers on flatcars between Milwaukee and Chicago in 1926. The first steam railroad to offer piggyback service was the Chicago Great Western. Other early providers of TOFC service were the Denver & Rio Grande; the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific; the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; and the New York, New Haven & Hartford [BLAS96]. Why were these services tolerated while NYC's and PRR's COFC services were not? The reason is that, whereas in the case of COFC service, motor carriers were the railroads' competitor, in the case of TOFC service, motor carriers were the railroads' customer. In fact, the motor carriers marketed the service.
Despite the success of these early TOFC services, growth in truck-rail intermodalism was limited for nearly three decades. Better roads, intense competition between railroads and motor carriers for long-distance traffic, and restrictive piggyback and joint motor-rail tariffs combined to prevent the widespread adoption of TOFC services. By 1953, only six railroads provided TOFC service. In that year, however, truck-rail intermodalism got a tremendous boost. The ICC ruled that railroads were not required to obtain a truck-route certificate to carry freight in their own trailers over their own tracks. Following this ruling the number of railroads offering TOFC service jumped from six in 1953 to 32 in 1955 [BLAS96].
The economic deregulation of the transportation industry that occurred in the United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s has had a tremendous impact on the provision of transportation services in general and the practice of intermodalism in particular. Among the regulatory changes affecting intermodalism are the following [MULL95]:
In intermodalism, the name of the game is efficiency. The need to move cargo between different modes of transportation is a natural impediment to intermodalism. It is an activity that shippers and carriers alike would prefer to avoid. Intermodal transfers increase transit time as well as the chances for cargo damage. Anything that facilitates cargo handling at intermodal terminals is likely to enhance the attractiveness of intermodal transportation.
In the past there were basically two types of cargo: bulk and breakbulk. Of the two, bulk cargo was generally easier to handle. Because bulk cargo is flowable and less vulnerable to loss and damage, there are many fast and efficient ways of transferring it between modal equipment. Breakbulk cargo, on the other hand, comes in all shapes and sizes. Its value per pound is usually much higher than that of bulk cargo, and its chances of being damaged rise each time it has to be handled. Breakbulk cargo somehow has to be unitized - that is, arranged or assembled into unit loads - to facilitate loading and unloading. Breakbulk cargo was usually tied into bundles, placed in small wooden crates, sacked or bagged, or stacked on flat wooden platforms or pallets.
A seemingly obvious solution to the problem of handling breakbulk cargo is to pack it into large steel boxes or containers strong enough to protect the contents. This is an old idea as precious or valuable cargo was usually placed in strong boxes in the past, at least for protection if not for ease of handling. Nevertheless, use of large steel containers did not receive serious consideration until the 1920s, and it was not until 1956 that the idea of standard-sized containers began to take off. It was during that year that trucking executive Malcolm McLean clearly demonstrated the technical and economic feasibility of land-sea container transport when he launched the first containership, a converted tanker. Why it took so long for the concept of containerized freight to gain widespread acceptance is difficult to explain. The inertia of longstanding practices and ways of thinking had to be overcome. Nevertheless, since its arrival, the so-called container revolution has had such a far-reaching impact on intermodalism that it is not surprising that many people think of intermodalism only in terms of containers.
While the maritime shipping industry was taking tentative steps toward containerization, the railroad industry was busy exploring better ways of handling highway trailers. To improve the economy and efficiency of TOFC service, three things were needed: better methods of loading and unloading trailers, better devices for securing trailers to flatcars, and lighter railcars for piggyback service [BLAS96].
For decades the conventional method of getting highway trailers on and off flatcars was by circus loading in which trailers were backed onto and pulled off flatcars by way of a ramp, usually an earthen embankment, placed at the end of a stub-end track. Although this was a simple and inexpensive procedure that could be used by any railroad, it was slow and, therefore, suitable only for low-volume loadings and unloadings. In 1960 a company named Travelift & Engineering built the first overhead crane designed to lift trailers on and off flatcars. Subsequently, Southern Pacific (SP) and its suppliers developed the first "piggypacker", essentially a large forklift designed to load and unload trailers from the side of the flatcar. Since that time the versatility and sophistication of transfer equipment have steadily improved. Currently, many of the major TOFC/COFC terminals utilize large traveling overhead cranes that can complete a transfer within 90 seconds for a rate of 40 lifts per hour. These cranes can handle either trailers or containers.
To secure a trailer firmly to a flatcar, railroads at first used a complex assortment of chocks and chains. As a result, fastening and unfastening trailers at each end of a line haul move took considerable time and manual effort. One of the first solutions was the retractable screw hitch which folded onto the deck of the flatcar. As overhead and side loading replaced circus ramps, fixed, non-retractable hitches became more common.
The third problem - the flatcar itself - was addressed in many ways. The objective was to minimize the weight of the rail equipment to reduce operating costs. Rail intermodal equipment also had to be designed to handle ever increasing trailer sizes as well as several types of domestic and international containers. Until the early 1960s, the most common type of railcar used for TOFC service was the standard flatcar. In 1961, however, Trailer Train Company (now TTX Company) introduced an 89-foot flatcar designed to handle two 40-foot trailers. Over the next two decades, this car became the standard for piggyback service. Although TTX cars could be adapted to carry containers, it was clear that more suitable and economical equipment was needed. The major breakthrough came with the development of the articulated five-unit railcar in which two containers could be stacked on top of each other in each of five wells.
While huge containerships, giant gantry cranes, and double-stack trains are some of the more visible signs of recent advances in intermodal technology, the introduction of computer and telecommunications technology may in the long run have an even greater impact on intermodalism. Containerization and more sophisticated cargo-handling equipment may have addressed some of the physical or mechanical barriers to more efficient intermodalism, but computers and communications strike at some of the thornier organizational impediments. As stated by Muller [MULL95]:
"Computerization touches every aspect of intermodal movements: rating, routing, control of containers, clearance, billing, reporting and all other functions. The container revolution produced an improvement in physical aspects, but the computer revolution makes the entire concept simple and workable, regardless of whether or not freight is containerized."
Among the telecommunications and computer technologies being employed are electronic data interchange (EDI), geographic positioning systems (GPS), and automatic equipment identification (AEI) systems. The extent to which the goal of a seamless, integrated intermodal freight transportation system is ultimately achieved will greatly depend on how well these and other information and communications technologies are designed and implemented.
Third party companies that facilitate the shipment of freight by multiple modes of transportation are another interesting facet of the evolution of intermodalism. Such companies existed even before intermodalism became a buzzword. In the past, domestic surface freight forwarders gathered the less-than-carload (LCL) shipments of several small shippers, sorted them by destination, and offered the consolidated freight to railroads. For many years the Railway Express Agency (REA), a company sponsored by the railroad industry, picked up small packages by truck, loaded them into express cars attached to passenger trains for intercity movement, and delivered the packages by truck at the destination. In 1964 REA began using 8x8x20-foot vans which were transferred by means of a side-loading device between specially-designed 85-foot flatcars and highway trailer chassis. In more recent years, hundreds of shippers' agents known as intermodal marketing companies (IMCs) have appeared on the scene. These companies purchase TOFC/COFC capacity on a wholesale multiple-carload basis and market it to individual shippers. They may pick up and deliver a customer's trailers or containers using their own equipment or they may work with local drayage firms. Using EDI and other computer and communications technology, they greatly facilitate the process of billing, reporting, and tracking intermodal shipments. Other third party companies involved in various aspects of intermodal transportation include air freight forwarders, air cargo agents and consolidators, non-vessel operating common carriers (NVOCCs), shippers' councils and cooperatives, shippers associations, transportation brokers, perishable brokers, transloaders, distribution carriers, intermodal terminal operators, customs house brokers, export management companies, insurance carriers, and third-party logistics firms [MULL95].
The multimodal transportation service provider is an especially interesting player on the intermodal field. United Parcel Service (UPS) is a well known example. In addition to owning and operating its own fleet of trucks, UPS has a large fleet of cargo aircraft, and is also one of the largest users of rail TOFC service. Its traffic often travels on dedicated, fast, high-priority TOFC trains. Thus, a UPS shipment may travel by truck only, by truck-rail-truck, or by truck-air-truck.
Under the current intermodal setting, a carrier may sometimes substitute one mode of transportation for another when it becomes expedient or necessary to do so. Air cargo carriers, for example, have been known to ship some freight by truck only [WOOD96]. J. B. Hunt Transport, a large nationwide truckload carrier and major user of TOFC/COFC service, will off-load its trailers and switch to long-distance trucking if a train is greatly behind schedule [WALL96]. Consequently, the shipper oftentimes may not know which mode or modes are being used to carry its freight. Indeed, the shipper may not care as long as the freight arrives at its destination undamaged and on time.
Why would a shipper want to use more than one mode of transportation to move its products to its markets given the many impediments to intermodal transport mentioned above? There are a number of possible reasons, many of them residing in the fact that each mode of transportation has its own advantages and disadvantages. The various modes differ in terms of cost, speed, capacity, and flexibility. The basic premise of intermodalism is that, under a well-integrated transportation system, the various modes work together or within their own niches to provide the user with the best choices of service. In some cases and depending on a particular shipper's own unique needs, a combination of modes may serve the shipper better than a single mode. Although some of the reasons for intermodalism may seem rather obvious, it is useful to enumerate them. Research by Holcomb and Jennings [JENN94, HOLC95, JENN96] into instances of intermodalism for non-containerized cargo has uncovered some reasons that may not be quite so obvious.
Intermodalism can have benefits for both the shipper and the carrier. Therefore, the reasons for intermodalism will be considered from the standpoint of each party separately.
From the shipper's standpoint, multimodal transportation is required if no single mode of transportation connects an origin with a particular destination. An obvious example of this occurs when a company wishes to ship its products to overseas markets. The company has a choice of going by air or by water. In most cases, however, the company's production facility will not be located adjacent to an airport or a seaport, and if it is, in all likelihood that will not be the case at the destination. Some other means of transport is necessary to get the cargo to or from either an airport or a seaport at one or both ends of the journey. Thus, virtually all overseas transportation is multimodal and requires intermodal connections.
A more interesting case is one in which a shipper wishes to take advantage of certain characteristics of a mode such as low cost, high speed, or high capacity but is not directly served by any carrier for that mode. Nearly all air cargo transport is multimodal for this reason, since very few shippers needing the high speed delivery service provided by overnight air carriers are located at an airport. As another example, a manufacturer of plastic pellets may want to ship in large volumes by rail to take advantage of low freight rates, but the nearest railroad may be several miles away. It may be more economical to ship the plastic pellets by truck to a nearby truck-rail bulk transloading facility than to build a rail spur to the plant or to use long-distance trucking.
Sometimes a shipper may have to resort to intermodalism in order to continue using a preferred mode of line haul transportation. This situation can occur as a result of railroad branchline abandonment. The shipper may decide it is cheaper to dray its product to a nearby truck-rail transloading facility rather than switch to long-distance trucking or try to maintain the rail line itself.
Another common reason for choosing multiple modes of transportation arises when a shipper has direct access to its preferred mode of transportation, but one or more of its customers do not. Missouri Mining Co., for example, recently built a barge-to-rail coal transloading facility at Warrenton, OH, in order to serve a utility whose power plant was not located next to the Ohio River [JENN94]. This bulk transfer terminal enabled the shipper to use its preferred mode of transportation - barge - and still reach a customer it might not otherwise have been able to serve.
Freight transportation often involves three distinct stages: collection or consolidation of freight at the origin, long-distance line haul shipment over a major traffic lane, and distribution of the cargo to multiple customers at the destination. The middle stage - the long-distance line haul movement - often has much different transportation requirements than the outer two stages. This alone accounts for much of the need for multimodal transportation and intermodal connections. It is one of the reasons why public warehouses, grain elevators, cement terminals, distribution centers, freight forwarders, and intermodal marketing companies exist. Railroads and barge lines, with their high-capacity equipment and relatively low rates, are generally well-suited for shipping large volumes over long distances. Trucks are also suitable for long-distance shipping, but with much lower capacity and higher rates. At the local end, however, trucking may be essential because trucks can obviously reach more places than either railroads or water carriers and because shipment sizes to individual customers may be too small to justify direct shipment by either rail or water. For the shipper, the decision of whether to use trucking alone or trucking in combination with some higher-capacity, lower-cost mode depends on the "need or ability to move enough product to justify the use of the larger capacity mode and the added handling expense required to make the modal transfer [JENN96]."
Finally, shippers will sometimes resort to intermodalism to avoid being dominated by a single mode or carrier, thereby reducing their transportation costs and increasing their transportation options, and to take advantage of special opportunities. Jennings cites two examples [JENN94]. In one case, soda ash miners in southwestern Wyoming hauled some of their product by truck to a transloading facility on the Burlington Northern Railroad (now part of the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway), even though they were directly served by the Union Pacific (UP). The other case involved a coal mine in Kentucky directly served by a major railroad. The mine shipped some of its coal by truck to a second railroad because the electric utility that was buying the coal had a volume guarantee with the latter railroad.
Despite intense competition between modes for certain kinds of freight, carriers also make use of intermodalism when it suits their purposes.
In the late 1920s when modern TOFC service had its beginnings, intercity transport by rail was still often faster and safer than transport by truck because of the somewhat primitive condition of the highway system in those days. Consequently, it is not surprising that some motor carriers took advantage of the new TOFC services to ship their loaded trailers to new markets. The motor carriers, in fact, marketed these services and were the railroads' customers. In 1990, however, when J. B. Hunt Transport, one of the leading nationwide truckload carriers, formed a partnership with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (now part of the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway) to provide TOFC service, the transportation industry was amazed and skeptical. Why would a giant, successful trucking company like J. B. Hunt want to do business with a railroad?
There are several reasons why J. B. Hunt and, subsequently, other motor carriers such as Schneider National have resorted to using the railroads for line haul piggyback service [WALL96]. One reason has to do with the high turnover rate of truck drivers that has beset the long-haul motor carrier industry in recent years along with the high cost of continually having to train new drivers. The low unemployment rate has also made it difficult to find enough people willing to spend days on the road away from home. With more of their trailers on railcars rather than on the highways, motor carriers have seen their vehicle accident claims and liability insurance expenses drop significantly. Fuel and tire costs as well as other truck and trailer maintenance costs have also decreased due to less wear and tear. TOFC service in some cases has also reduced the amount of empty backhauls and enabled J. B. Hunt and other motor carriers to serve new markets that they might otherwise have avoided. It is also less costly to reposition empty trailers using rail. From the standpoint of the railroads, this partnership with the long-distance truckload carriers has enabled them to reclaim at least some of the merchandise traffic that they had lost to the motor carriers over the years.
Regional trucking firms have begun making greater use of TOFC service because it enables them to serve new markets with fewer drivers and attain better equipment utilization. It also enables them to compete with the transcontinental less-than-truckload (LTL) motor carriers.
Economics has also been the driving force behind rail-ocean intermodalism, in the wake of the container revolution. The development of the double-stack train concept was a major factor in inducing the ocean shipping companies to switch from all-water, port-to-port routing to the use of railroads as a "land bridge". The economics of stacking two containers per railcar in dedicated unit trains proved to be overwhelming. In addition to lower transport costs, the ocean shipping companies obtained faster transit times with ship-rail routing and faster vessel turnaround, resulting in better vessel utilization.
Railroads and barge companies have discovered that, through intermodalism, they can gain new business in two ways. First, they can serve new customers that do not have direct access to rail or barge service. The Dardanelle & Russellville Railroad, for example, established a rail-truck transloading facility to allow it to haul pipe for an oil pipeline construction project. The pipe was transferred from railcars to trucks at the transloading facility for delivery to the construction site [JENN94]. Railroads may also create a truck-rail transloading facility to serve a new off-line customer until the latter generates enough traffic to justify the cost of constructing a rail spur to the plant. The second way railroads and barge companies can gain new business through intermodalism is by opening up potential new markets for their existing customers, enabling the latter to reach markets not directly served by rail or barge. On the other hand, the creation of a truck-rail transloading facility may enable a railroad to retain the business of existing customers currently located on a lightly used branchline or industrial spur which the railroad wishes to abandon.
The above discussion shows that, while intermodalism has always been around in one form or another, under the current deregulated setting, it has become an integral part of freight transportation in the United States. Carriers and shippers alike have recognized the benefits of integrated and coordinated transportation services and have embraced the concept of intermodalism, although sometimes somewhat slowly and grudgingly. A vast industry devoted to one or more aspects of intermodalism has developed, including intermodal equipment manufacturers and leasing companies and various intermodal service marketers, providers, and other facilitators. Indeed, the whole concept of logistics and physical distribution has changed drastically within the past two decades. What does all of this mean to government officials and policymakers and to transportation analysts?
For many years the federal government's philosophy toward regulation of the transportation industry either prohibited or discouraged any attempts by carriers from different modes to coordinate or integrate their services as well as any efforts by shippers to arrange for more coordinated or integrated multimodal transport. Legislation and regulations were aimed at individual modes, and little consideration was given to modal coordination or intermodal connections. Cracks in this thick regulatory wall began to appear in 1940 when Congress issued a National Transportation Policy statement that called for "fair and impartial regulation of all modes of transportation" and "sound economic conditions in transportation and among the several carriers [MULL95]." In 1967 the diverse and disparate transportation programs of the federal government were finally collected under one executive-level agency when the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) was created. Nevertheless, within the DOT, each mode of transportation still had its own administration. Further erosion of the strictly single mode way of thinking appeared in the 1975 National Transportation Policy Statement which "favored elimination of unreasonable barriers to intermodal cooperation [MULL95]." In 1979 the National Transportation Policy Study Commission issued a landmark report that advocated among other things multimodal systems planning, less economic regulation, and equal government treatment among modes. Finally, in 1991, promotion of both passenger and freight intermodalism became a part of federal law under the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA).
The ISTEA was a landmark piece of legislation. Although it did not define the term "intermodalism", it required metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to consider ways of enhancing the efficient movement of freight and improving access to ports, airports, intermodal transportation facilities, and major freight distribution routes as they prepared their transportation improvement plans. It also required DOT to develop a database containing information on public and private investment in intermodal transportation facilities and services, the volume of goods and number of people carried in intermodal transportation, and the patterns of movement of goods and people carried in intermodal transportation. The ISTEA enabled federal funds to be used for intermodal projects, although it did not create a specific category of funds for that purpose. It also authorized $191.8 million for 20 priority intermodal freight projects. The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) determined that, as of September 30, 1995, ten states had obligated about $35.6 million in ISTEA funds for 23 intermodal freight projects. The GAO further determined that, of the total amount authorized for the 20 priority intermodal freight projects, states had obligated only $68.4 million as of the end of 1995 [GAO96].
It is hard to find any major transportation-related issue that does not affect either directly or indirectly more than one mode of transportation. Proposed increases in the permissible length and weight of truck-trailer combinations on the nation's major highways, for example, may adversely affect the railroads by diverting some rail traffic to motor carriers. International trade agreements such as the recent North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) can affect the patterns of freight flow across the country, creating bottlenecks where perhaps none existed before, and affecting not only the highway system but ports and railroads as well. Railroad mergers may enhance the prospects for increased intermodalism. For example, if the proposed division of Conrail is approved, both Norfolk Southern (NS) and CSX Transportation (CSXT) will be able to institute single-line TOFC/COFC services between northeastern and southeastern metropolitan areas in an attempt to capture some of the truck traffic moving along Interstate 95. The status of some eastern ports, especially the Port of Baltimore, may also be enhanced by the merger because of greater rail competition and better rail facilities at the port.
The relationships among the various modes of freight transportation have already become so intricate that when one carrier or mode of transportation encounters difficulties, it can affect many other carriers and modes as well. The problems of the Union Pacific Railroad following its merger with Southern Pacific are a prime example. As this report was being written, UP was experiencing severe service problems, particularly in Texas and Southern California, but also throughout its entire 36,000-mile system. These problems included shortages of equipment and train crews, resulting in idle trains, congestion at yards and terminals, and delays throughout the system. The reasons for these problems are complex and will require detailed analysis, but the consequences were immediately widespread. Congested rail facilities in Houston and other places also hampered the train movements of other railroads as they tried to move around or through these areas. Some chemical manufacturers along the Gulf Coast, desperate to get their products to anxious customers, switched to truck transport despite its higher cost. The bulk motor carriers, however, did not have enough capacity to absorb all of the potential demand, causing them to take steps to avoid having their own service problems. Meanwhile, containers offloaded from ships at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach sat on the ground waiting to be hauled away by rail. Some containership companies diverted their vessels to Oakland, CA, in an effort to avoid the congestion and delays at Los Angeles and Long Beach. Thus, the problems of one carrier affected the operations of carriers within three different modes as well as the operations of numerous other businesses.
One area in which government can potentially play a significant role in promoting intermodalism is that of access to intermodal facilities. Accessibility is a key element of efficient intermodal connections. It makes no difference how many cranes, how much berthing space, or how much on-dock storage area a marine container terminal has if its rail and highway connections are deficient. Poor accessibility will greatly hamper its ability to handle large volumes of cargo economically and efficiently. Moreover, the issue of access to an intermodal terminal can extend well beyond just the immediate vicinity of the facility. A railroad, for example, cannot provide double-stack train service to a port or TOFC/COFC facility if bridge and tunnel clearances along its route to the facility are too low. Improving access to intermodal facilities can involve widening and straightening streets and highways, eliminating highway-railroad grade crossings, relocating railroad tracks, raising bridge and tunnel clearances across multi-state areas, and dredging waterway channels. These are major capital projects requiring extensive planning and financial support from both the public and private sector.
Underscoring the importance of accessibility is the inclusion of highway connections to major intermodal facilities in the National Highway System (NHS). The ISTEA authorized the designation of the NHS "to provide an interconnected system of principal arterial routes which will serve major population centers, international border crossings, ports, airports, public transportation facilities, and other intermodal transportation facilities and other major travel destinations; meet defense requirements; and serve interstate and interregional travel" [FHWA96]. In addition to the Interstate System, non-Interstate highways essential to national defense, and high-priority corridors designated by Congress, the ISTEA also specified that the NHS should include highways that provide connections to major intermodal terminals.
When DOT submitted its recommendations for the NHS to Congress in December 1993, the proposed system consisted of 161,108 miles of primary rural and urban roads, including highway connections to 148 passenger and freight terminals. However, the initial efforts by states to identify major intermodal connectors for the NHS produced inconsistent results with insufficient coverage of intermodal terminals. DOT had not provided any guidelines to the states for identifying major intermodal facilities, and some states exerted more effort than others in identifying major intermodal terminals and their access roads. DOT requested more time to identify additional intermodal connections to be included in the NHS. Consequently, the National Highway System Designation Act of 1995, signed into law on November 28 of that year, contained a provision requiring DOT to submit within 180 days recommendations for additional intermodal connections to major ports, airports, international border crossings, public transit facilities, interstate bus terminals, and rail and other intermodal transportation facilities. FHWA had already started developing procedures and criteria for states, MPOs, terminal operators, and other interested agencies and groups to follow in identifying major intermodal terminals. The primary criteria specified volume thresholds or activity levels for each terminal type. Secondary criteria included more subjective factors for determining the importance of an intermodal terminal within a specific State. FHWA issued its final guidelines in April 1995 before the National Highway System Designation Act was passed. Using the FHWA guidelines, the states identified highway connections to an additional 1,251 major intermodal terminals consisting of 194 port facilities, 167 airports, 68 Amtrak stations, 198 rail-truck terminals, 96 intercity bus terminals, 66 pipeline terminals, 377 public transit terminals, 43 ferry terminals, and 42 multi-modal passenger terminals. These highway connections added 1,925 miles of rural and urban roads to the original NHS [FHWA96]. In May 1996, DOT submitted to Congress these recommended intermodal connections to be added to the original NHS. The proposed additional intermodal connections are eligible for improvement with NHS funds on an interim basis. They will not become a formal part of the NHS until Congress enacts a law for that purpose. Legislation codifying the DOT recommendations was expected to be included in the law reauthorizing the ISTEA.
Unfortunately for the transportation analyst, intermodalism makes policy analysis that much more difficult. As noted above, the relationships between modes and carriers have become so intricate that changes or problems in one mode or in one part of the country can have a profound impact on other modes and other geographic areas. Modal choice is no longer simply a matter of choosing between truck, rail, air, water, or pipeline; that is, it is not a matter of selecting between modes but a matter of selecting between services. Shippers are becoming less concerned about the means of transportation used and more concerned about reliability, speed, shipment tracking, and total logistics costs. Traditional analytical tools and databases may not be adequate to address the current multimodal and logistics reality. Satisfactory multimodal analysis will require new tools and better databases.
Due to the growing demand for geographic transportation data and the emphasis placed upon multimodal network analysis by ISTEA, modal network databases are becoming more popular with users both within and outside government. As private companies and federal and state agencies begin to take a more global view of economic development opportunities, the need for a high quality, well-maintained, and readily obtainable set of national modal transportation network databases will continue to grow. BTS has responded and continues to respond to this need by developing, maintaining, and improving the NTAD to support research, analysis, and decision making across all modes of passenger and freight transportation.
Initial work on the NTAD was directed toward the development of separate network models or databases for each of the main modes of freight transportation: highway, rail, waterway, air, and products pipeline. Each model describes the topology of a modal network in terms of links and nodes. The location of each node is denoted by its longitude and latitude. Important attributes of each link, which connects a pair of nodes, are also included in each network database. Versions of these network models - suitable for use within a GIS - have been made available to the public on CD-ROM.
These individual modal networks must somehow be connected before any multimodal analysis can be performed. In the real world, connections between different modes of transportation occur at intermodal terminals or facilities. In the absence of any data on the locations of intermodal terminals, it is possible to combine two or more of the single-mode networks in the NTAD by applying an algorithmic procedure. Any such procedure, however, will necessarily rely on some simplifying assumptions that may limit the quality of subsequent multimodal analyses. Therefore, including a database of intermodal terminal locations and attributes in the NTAD and using it to construct a realistic multimodal network should greatly improve the quality of multimodal analyses based on the modal network databases in the NTAD.
An important function of the national intermodal terminals database is to support any analysis dealing with the flow or movement of freight through a multimodal transportation network. This might involve determining and plotting a likely multimodal path taken by a freight shipment between an origin and a destination, or it might involve assigning interregional freight flows to a multimodal network. The results of such a multimodal traffic assignment would enable the analyst to:
Several actual applications of the intermodal terminals database demonstrate its utility for multimodal network analysis. An early version of the intermodal terminals database was used in a 1996 project to develop and test an analytic framework for considering the national impact of site specific freight bottlenecks. As a preliminary test of the proposed analytic framework, the project generated ocean-to-rail routes from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to 77 double-stack train TOFC/COFC terminals throughout the United States [SOUTH96]. In 1997, the terminals database was being used at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to determine routes and distances for multimodal shipments reported by shippers in the 1997 Commodity Flow Survey (CFS). In a future application, the terminals database will be used to develop a method for estimating region-specific truck drayage distances associated with TOFC/COFC movements.
Another important function of the intermodal terminals database is to support a variety of mapping and GIS applications. Maps depicting the locations of particular types of intermodal facilities can be a valuable aid for visualizing the connectivity of the national multimodal transportation network and the relative density of intermodal terminals in different parts of the country. GIS can be used to answer a wide variety of questions such as:
More than anything else, the intermodal terminals database described in the remainder of this report is fundamentally an inventory of existing facilities. Intermodal terminals are an important component of the nation's transportation infrastructure just like highways and railroad lines. Except for certain types of terminals such as airports and port facilities, no attempt has been made until now to try to inventory all of the places where freight can be exchanged between different modes of transportation. At a minimum, the national intermodal terminals database, when completed, will document what is on the ground. It is hard to imagine how policymakers and analysts can begin to understand the impact of policy issues and initiatives on intermodal transportation without having some sense of the size and scope of the existing intermodal infrastructure.
The previous chapter stated that intermodalism occurs at places where two or more modes of transportation meet to interchange freight - either directly or through intermediate storage. These places represent intermodal freight terminals or facilities. Just as some confusion exists about the meaning of intermodalism, the notion of an intermodal terminal also conjures up different images. It is impossible, however, to design and build a consistent and coherent database of intermodal freight terminals without having a clear idea of what constitutes an intermodal terminal. How does one recognize an intermodal terminal or facility? What distinguishes one intermodal terminal from another? What distinct types of intermodal terminals can be identified? This chapter addresses these questions.
Before we can define an intermodal terminal, we need to specify what we mean by a mode of transportation. This is not as straightfoward as it may seem at first. For example, Section 171.8 of Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) defines mode of transportation as any of the following transportation methods: rail, highway, air, or water. Similarly, Wood and Johnson [WOOD96] devote separate chapters to highway carriers, railroads, pipelines, domestic water carriers, and domestic aviation, implying that highway, rail, pipeline, water, and air constitute the principal modes of transportation. Note that each of these principal modes represents a distinct medium on which or through which freight can move. On the other hand, the survey form used to gather individual shipment data for the 1997 Commodity Flow Survey (CFS) identifies eight modes of transport: parcel delivery, courier, or U.S. Postal Service; private truck; for-hire truck; railroad; shallow draft vessel; deep draft vessel; pipeline; and air. These categories are a mixture of different media, types of vehicle using a particular medium, a type of service that may utilize different media to handle a shipment, and private versus for-hire carriage. In the broadest sense, "mode" refers to any specific means of transportation of interest or concern to a particular analysis or planning application. In a study of truck size and weight issues, for example, transportation analysts might consider different truck-trailer combinations as separate modes or means of transportation. The problem with this broad definition of mode of transportation is that it produces overlapping or non-orthogonal modal categories such as those used for the 1997 CFS.
For purposes of identifying intermodal terminals and designing an intermodal terminals database, a mode of transportation is defined by the medium on which or through which cargo moves. Thus, the principal modes of transportation are highway or road, rail, water, air, and pipeline. It is recognized, however, that within some of these principal modes, different sub-modes can be defined. Sub-modes can be specified on the basis of types of vehicle such as shallow draft and deep draft vessels or standard gauge and narrow gauge railcars, methods of operation such as fixed-route and flexible-route transit, types of carrier such as private versus for-hire trucking, and types of cargo such as pipelines for crude oil and pipelines for petroleum products. Although the initial version of the intermodal terminals database does not recognize any sub-modes, a case can be made for including a few of them, particularly within the water and pipeline modes, in future versions of the database.
As an aid to understanding what an intermodal terminal is, it is helpful to consider what other types of freight terminals exist. A freight terminal in general is a station, facility, or integrated set of facilities which has as one of its primary functions the loading or unloading of freight onto or off a particular transportation mode's network. It is a place where the movement of freight either begins or ends on a particular mode of transportation. It makes no difference whether the commodities being transported were produced or will be used at the terminal or whether the commodities were transferred from or will be transferred to another mode of transportation.
Freight terminals can be categorized into three types: freight traffic generators and attractors, intramodal terminals, and intermodal terminals.
Freight traffic generators and attractors are places where cargo is produced for shipment or where cargo is received for subsequent use. Because virtually any residence or place of business could be regarded as a freight traffic generator or attractor, transportation planners and analysts are generally more concerned with major generators and attractors. These may be defined as places that ship or receive such large volumes of freight that they include extensive facilities for loading, unloading, and storing cargo. These places may even have their own in-plant railroad, pipeline, or roadway networks connecting them to the intercity modal networks. Examples include coal, iron ore, potash, soda ash, and other kinds of mines; vehicle manufacturing and assembly plants; steel mills; paper mills; refineries; lumber mills; chemical manufacturing plants; power generating stations; soybean processing plants; flour mills; and so on. Clusters of smaller businesses sharing the same local transportation infrastructure such as industrial parks, regional shopping centers, and central business districts might also be regarded as major freight traffic generators and attractors. Although these terminals are clearly important for freight transportation planning purposes and probably deserve their own database, at least on a metropolitan or regional basis, they technically are not intermodal terminals because their function is not to transfer cargo from one mode of transportation to another.
The second type of freight terminal - intramodal terminals - consists of facilities where cargo changes carriers or vehicles within the same mode of transportation or between sub-modes within one of the principal modes of transportation. Many public warehouses and distribution centers are served only by trucks and, therefore, are intramodal in nature. Businesses that operate their own truck fleets and local drayage companies often handle the local pickup and delivery at these facilities, while for-hire trucking companies provide long-haul shipping to and from these locations. Some regional motor carriers have truck terminals where freight can be transferred to other regional trucking companies for interregional or transcontinental hauls. Less-than-truckload (LTL) shipments usually involve a pair of truck terminals and three separate truck moves: local pickup to a truck terminal for sorting and consolidation by destination, long-distance transport to another truck terminal, and local delivery from the second terminal to the consignee. Intramodal terminals, however, are not strictly the domain of motor carriers. Air cargo may get transferred between air carriers at an air cargo terminal. On the lower Mississippi River at and below Baton Rouge, LA, mid-stream facilities exist to transfer coal, grain, and other bulk commodities from shallow draft barges to ocean vessels. On the Columbia-Snake River System, containerized freight is loaded into barges at Lewiston, ID, Boardman, OR, and other locations for transport to Portland, OR, where it is reloaded onto containerships for export. On the West Coast, Matson Navigation Company provides a coastwise container shuttle service, picking up loaded containers dropped off by ocean-going containerships at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, taking them to Seattle and Vancouver, BC, and bringing back containers from these places to Southern California for loading back onto trans-Pacific vessels [MONG97]. Like the major freight traffic generators and attractors, intramodal terminals, especially the truck terminals, may warrant their own geographic database. Indeed, some of these intramodal terminals might be classified as intermodal, depending on what set of modes of transportation one adopts. In particular, barge-to-vessel transloading facilities might be considered intermodal rather than intramodal.
Intermodal freight terminals have equipment and facilities designed to transfer freight between two or more principal modes of transportation, either directly or through intermediate storage. Air cargo terminals, for example, provide the interface between the air and highway modes of transportation. Various kinds of port facilities accommodate the transfer of freight between water and land modes of transport, including rail, highway, and pipeline. Port terminals tend to be equipped to handle certain kinds of commodities such as containers; motor vehicles and other roll-on/roll-off (RO/RO) cargo; breakbulk cargo; dry bulk commodities such as coal, grain, ore, and sand and gravel; and liquid bulk commodities such chemicals, petroleum products, and vegetable oils. A variety of intermodal facilities exist for exchanging freight between the highway and rail modes. These include TOFC/COFC terminals; motor vehicle loading and unloading ramps; liquid and dry bulk transloading facilities; grain storage and transfer facilities; lumber, steel, and paper reload centers; and cross-dock or direct transfer facilities at certain public warehouses and distribution centers. Like intermodal port facilities, each truck-rail terminal tends to be geared towards a specific type or category of freight.
There is clearly some overlap between the three kinds of freight terminals. Major freight traffic generators and attractors, for example, sometimes have intermodal transfer capabilities. Flour mills and corn and soybean processing plants are examples. These establishments receive wheat, corn, and soybeans for conversion into flour, corn syrup or sweeteners, and soybean meal and oil. The incoming grains are generally stored in an elevator, storage bins, or cluster of silos, which are used to feed the processing plant. However, in some cases, the grain is also shipped out by some other mode of transportation. We might classify the grain elevator in these cases as an intermodal facility and the mill or plant as a major freight traffic attractor. A few oil refineries also have intermodal transfer facilities. In addition to receiving crude oil for conversion to fuel oil, gasoline, and various other refined products, a refinery may also store petroleum products received by pipeline, ocean tanker, or rail tank car, and ship it out by pipeline, inland barge, or tank truck along with the refinery's own output. Note that this last example shows how a terminal can have both intramodal and intermodal capabilities. Liquid bulk terminals, grain elevators, warehouses, and other terminals where cargo is accumulated, consolidated, mixed, or stored often have this characteristic. Liquid bulk tank farms, for example, may receive part of their supply by ocean tanker and ship by inland barge as well as other modes of transportation. A warehouse may receive freight by truck from local sources and send the goods out by long-distance motor carrier and by rail. Conversely, a major distribution center may receive cargo by long-distance motor carrier and by rail and distribute it locally by truck.
To be considered a candidate for inclusion in the intermodal freight terminals database, a freight terminal must be capable of receiving a commodity by one principal mode of transportation and shipping the same commodity out by a different principal mode. Intermodal transfer does not necessarily have to be the primary function of the terminal, but it has to be one of the functions. Freight traffic generators and attractors that have no intermodal transfer capability and freight terminals served by a single mode of transportation were therefore excluded from consideration.
Intermodal freight terminals include a wide variety of facilities. They differ considerably in size, complexity, and functionality. Some terminals are complex facilities covering many acres of land with multiple buildings, storage areas, gates, and internal channels of freight flow. Other terminals are quite simple, sometimes even ad hoc in nature, with very little infrastructure or sophisticated equipment. As an aid to understanding what an intermodal freight terminal is and to recognizing the many kinds of intermodal terminals in operation, it is useful to consider the characteristics or features that most distinguish one type of terminal from another. Of the many characteristics that might be considered, the following five are especially suitable for classifying intermodal facilities: the pairs of modes that the facility connects, the types of cargo handled, the types of transfers that can take place, private or public ownership, and availability for public use.
Mode Pairs
Freight terminals are often classified by mode. Thus, we see various references to truck, rail, waterway, air, and pipeline terminals. This can sometimes lead to problems in multimodal analysis because it ignores the fact that, by definition, intermodal terminals involve more than one mode of transportation. For example, is a facility that sends and receives freight by truck, rail, and barge a truck terminal, a rail terminal, or a waterway terminal? It may be all three, but that does not tell us which pairs of modes are involved in cargo transfers. Does this terminal, for example, exchange freight between all possible pairs of these three modes or is it designed to transfer freight between truck and barge and rail and barge but not between truck and rail? This is important to know, because if the facility does not provide for transfers between truck and rail, then we would not want to connect the highway and railroad networks at this terminal when constructing a network for multimodal analysis. Thus, it is better to classify intermodal terminals by the pairs of modes which they connect rather than by the individual modes which serve them.
Type of Cargo
One of the most differentiating properties of an intermodal freight terminal is the kind of cargo it is designed and equipped to handle. This attribute, together with the pairs of modes involved, largely defines the purpose or function of the facility and influences the kinds of transfer equipment and storage space needed as well as the layout or configuration of the terminal. Although many intermodal terminals can and do accommodate a variety of commodities, most are designed to handle a specific type of cargo, and many only handle a specific kind of commodity.
The literature suggests several ways of classifying freight (see, for example, [MULL95], p. 3, and [STOPH94], pp. 337-338). For purposes of describing intermodal terminals, the freight typology depicted hierarchically in Figure 2-1 is helpful. At the highest level, all cargo can be classified as either containerized or non-containerized. The latter can be further subdivided into breakbulk and bulk cargo. Bulk cargo can be further categorized as either dry or liquid. The following defines each of the four basic cargo types in more detail:
These four basic types of cargo generally require different kinds of mechanical handling equipment and storage facilities for maximum efficiency. For example, although cranes designed to lift breakbulk cargo can be fitted with grab buckets to handle dry bulk materials, some type of conveyor system is usually required to transfer large volumes of dry bulk cargo between modes either directly or through intermediate storage. Intermodal terminals therefore tend to specialize on one or two of the four basic types of cargo. Some marine terminals will handle both containerized and breakbulk cargo, and others will handle a combination of breakbulk cargo such as steel and one or more kinds of dry bulk commodities. Truck-rail bulk transfer facilities often exchange both dry and liquid bulk commodities. Rarely, however, will a terminal handle more than two basic types of cargo.
The degree of cargo specialization at an intermodal facility usually goes well beyond the four basic cargo types. Many intermodal terminals for non-containerized freight are created to handle one or a few particular kinds of commodities within one of the basic cargo groups. Figure 2-1 gives some examples. Under the breakbulk category can be found terminals dedicated to the intermodal transfer of automobiles and other finished vehicles, lumber, steel, or paper products. Specialized dry bulk facilities include grain elevators, rail-to-barge and rail-to-vessel coal transloading terminals, ore docks on the Great Lakes, cement terminals, and wood chip facilities.
Examples of liquid bulk terminals are tank farms specializing in petroleum products, chemicals, molasses or vegetable oils, or some combination of these commodities.
Type of Transfer
Freight often does not get transferred directly from one mode of transportation to another at an intermodal terminal. Even containers are sometimes stacked on the ground before being hauled away. Certain kinds of intermodal terminals, in fact, operate primarily as intermediate storage facilities. Examples include grain elevators, warehouses and distribution centers, tank farms, and cement terminals. Some intermodal terminals provide equipment for direct transfer as well as facilities for storage.
Stopher et al. [STOPH94] identify three types of transfer at intermodal facilities. The first type is the direct transfer. Examples include containers lifted off a ship and placed directly on double-stack railcars, automobiles unloaded from multi-level railcars and loaded directly into auto carriers, trucks dumping sand or gravel directly into a barge, and rail hopper cars dumping coal into a conveyor system that carries it directly to a shiploading spout. The second type of transfer is the short-term storage transfer. In this case, cargo arrives on the incoming mode, is unloaded and stored for a relatively short period of time on a platform or loading dock or in a transit shed, and is subsequently loaded into and hauled away by the outgoing mode. This situation often occurs when the incoming cargo arrives at the terminal in advance of equipment for the outgoing mode. The third type of intermodal transfer involves long-term storage. This type includes two cases. In the consolidation case, the incoming cargo arrives by a mode whose cargo-carrying capacity is lower than that of the outgoing mode. For example, a large number of trucks bring paper to a warehouse where it is stored until enough product is available for loading into rail boxcars. In another example, several unit trains unload coal at an export terminal until enough is on-hand to load an ocean-going vessel. The opposite occurs in the distribution case in which the arriving mode is of relatively higher capacity than the departing mode or modes. The cargo is unloaded into a warehouse, storage tank, silo, or other storage facility and gradually distributed within the locality or larger region.
The types of transfer allowed at an intermodal terminal are somewhat related to the types of cargo handled. In general, container terminals and breakbulk facilities such as warehouses and distribution centers for general merchandise either provide for direct transfer or else strive for quick turnaround or fast throughput by means of short-term storage transfers. Truck-rail bulk transfer facilities are established specifically for direct transfers between modal equipment, although it is interesting to note that the railcars are sometimes used as a storage medium in this case. Grain-handling facilities, cement terminals, and liquid bulk tank farms, on the other hand, are usually designed for long-term storage transfers, although some of them do operate equipment for direct transfers.
Ownership and Availability
Intermodal freight terminals may be either privately owned or publicly owned. Private owners include various carriers such as motor carriers, railroads, barge companies, steamship lines, and pipeline operators; various third-party entities such as shippers' associations, farmers' cooperatives, intermodal marketing companies, warehousing companies, and independent terminal operators; and various businesses including companies engaged in coal mining, sand and gravel quarrying, petroleum refining, grain handling and processing, and steel, paper, or cement manufacturing. Public owners include municipalities; local, regional, or statewide port authorities; and federal agencies. Privately owned terminals cover virtually the entire spectrum of intermodal freight facilities, while publicly owned terminals tend to involve airports, seaports, and inland waterway facilities.
Regardless of whether a terminal is privately owned or publicly owned, it may be available for the general public to use or it may be reserved for the exclusive use of either its owner or a specific customer. Facilities owned by a carrier or a third-party entity are usually available to any shipper, but many exceptions can be found. Some TOFC/COFC facilities, for example, have been established to serve a specific customer. The serving railroad rarely advertises the existence of these facilities. Likewise, some truck-rail bulk transloading facilities serve only a single motor carrier and prohibit other motor carriers from using the facility. Intermodal terminals owned by mining, manufacturing, and refining companies are generally operated for the owning company's own use. Cement manufacturers, for example, have built their own terminals to receive large quantities of bulk cement by barge, vessel, or rail and distribute it locally or regionally by rail or truck. Once again, however, exceptions do exist. Many petroleum companies, for example, make their storage tanks available for public use to fill up excess capacity. Most publicly owned terminals are provided for public use. Often, however, the terminal may be leased to a single carrier for its exclusive use. Many publicly owned marine container terminals, for example, are leased to a particular containership company or its terminal operating subsidiary. Of course, any business can ship its freight through such a terminal by simply choosing the carrier having exclusive use of the facility. Thus, restrictions on the use of an intermodal terminal may apply to carriers, shippers, or both.
Intermodal freight terminals can be grouped according to the five dimensions or properties discussed above. Because many terminals are highly specialized, particularly in the types of cargo or kinds of commodities which they handle, the number of possible groupings is quite large. Fortunately, several common or well-recognized kinds of intermodal terminals can be identified which exemplify the diversity of intermodal facilities. In fact, most sources of information on intermodal terminals deal with one of these conventional types.
Several common types of intermodal terminals are briefly described in the following subsections. Each description indicates the pairs of modes with which the terminal type is usually associated, the types of cargo or specific kinds of commodities involved, the types of transfer typically allowed, forms of ownership, and public availability. The purpose of these descriptions is to convey a sense of the diversity of intermodal terminals and to illustrate the many ways in which intermodalism can occur.
TOFC/COFC Facilities
Trailer-on-flatcar/container-on-flatcar (TOFC/COFC) terminals are places where either containers or highway trailers or both are transferred between motor carriers and railroads. The containers and trailers may be directly transferred between modal equipment or they may be set on the ground for a short period before being loaded onto and hauled away by the departing mode. Perhaps no other type of terminal outside of a port facility is more closely associated with the notion of intermodalism.
From its beginnings in the mid-1920s until the early 1980s, TOFC/COFC service primarily involved trailers riding "piggyback" on rail flatcars. Because the easiest and cheapest way of getting a trailer on and off a flatcar was by way of a ramp in the same manner as circus wagons used to be loaded and unloaded, early TOFC/COFC facilities were just "circus" ramps, usually earthen, placed or built at the end of a track. Multiple trailers were loaded in series on a string of cars through the use of fold down plates on the ends of the flatcars. This was a slow and laborious process, suitable only for low volumes of trailers. With the development of overhead cranes capable of lifting a trailer onto a flatcar and the side-loading "piggypacker" as well as the increasing use of containers instead of trailers, railroads began closing the circus ramps and concentrating their TOFC/COFC operations at a smaller number of larger intermodal hubs. The actual number of circus ramps in use during the 1970s is in dispute. One source [BLAS96] indicates that there were as many as 2100 TOFC facilities, mostly circus-loading ramps, while another source [ARMS93] cites a figure of 1500. Regardless, by the end of the 1980s, most of the one-track circus ramps were closed, following the caboose, rural freight station, and four- and five-man train crew into oblivion. The 1997 Rail Intermodal Terminal Directory produced by the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) lists four TOFC/COFC terminals in the United States that had only circus-loading capabilities as of December 1996 [IANA97].
The number of TOFC/COFC facilities in the United States has dwindled from 1500-2100 in the 1970s to around 235 in December 1996. The smallest covered only one or two acres and had less than 25 parking spots, while the largest spanned over 250 acres and provided over 1000 parking spots. About half of the TOFC/COFC terminals covered less than 25 to 30 acres and had less than 400 parking spots. The average size of a TOFC/COFC facility was about 40 to 45 acres with approximately 700 parking spots. All but four facilities operated some type of lift equipment, including 95 terminals with at least one overhead crane. At least 90 TOFC/COFC terminals had an annual lift capacity of at least 100,000, and 28 had the capability of handling at least 250,000 trailers and containers annually. The four largest TOFC/COFC facilities in the United States had annual lift capacities of over half a million trailers and containers:
Except for the few remaining circus ramps which can only accommodate trailers, most TOFC/COFC facilities can handle either trailers or containers. A few, however, are limited to containers only. Examples include:
Two relatively recent innovations in truck-rail intermodal equipment have led to the appearance of two new types of TOFC/COFC terminal. One is RoadRailer technology, and the other is the Iron Highway.
A RoadRailer is a specially designed semi-trailer that can ride on either standard tires or on flanged railroad wheels. The idea for such a vehicle can be traced back to the mid-1950s, but it did not receive much attention until 1977 when Robert Reebie acquired the rights to RoadRailer technology and began redeveloping it. In its earlier versions, the RoadRailer carried both types of wheel. The heavy steel railroad wheels, of course, added to the tare weight of the truck-trailer combination and reduced the amount of payload that could be hauled over the highways. The RoadRailer was therefore redesigned so that it could be attached to a free standing two axle rail truck or bogie. The major advantage of RoadRailer technology is that it completely eliminates the need for any kind of railcar to haul the highway trailer, thereby greatly reducing the tare weight of a train. Moreover, RoadRailer terminals do not need cranes, lifts, or other expensive loading and unloading equipment. RoadRailers, on the other hand, are so light they cannot be operated in combination with regular rail equipment and, therefore, must move in special RoadRailer-only trains. Several railroads experimented with RoadRailer service, but all except Norfolk Southern (NS) eventually discontinued it. NS began to establish a RoadRailer network in 1986 and created a subsidiary, Triple Crown Services (TCS), to market and operate the trains. The service was highly successful and by December 1996 the TCS RoadRailer network included 12 terminals in the United States and one in Ontario, Canada. In August 1997, TCS extended its reach into Fort Worth, TX, by establishing a terminal at Saginaw Yard and entering into an agreement with BNSF to pull RoadRailer trains between there and a connection with NS at Kansas City, MO [MULL95, KEEFE89, JOC97].
The Iron Highway concept is a much more recent invention. Developed and extensively tested by CSX Intermodal, the Iron Highway is a 1200-foot continuous deck that can hold between 20 and 40 highway trailers. It can split in the middle, providing two ramps for loading and unloading. A train up to 6000-feet long, capable of hauling up to 200 trailers, can be assembled by attaching five of these platforms together. Like RoadRailer terminals, Iron Highway terminals do not require any lift equipment and can be established at virtually any track location. The concept was developed as an attempt to provide medium-haul truck-rail intermodal service in traffic lanes 300 to 700 miles long [STEPH95]. CSX Intermodal created an Iron Highway terminal on a four-acre site at Middlebelt Yard in Livonia, MI, near Detroit and another terminal on a nine-acre site in East Chicago, IN. After many delays due to technical problems, it began test-marketing Iron Highway service between Detroit and Chicago in August 1996. The service was short-lived, however. Canadian Pacific, on the other hand, continues to provide Iron Highway service between Montreal and Toronto. If the Iron Highway concept were to gain widespread acceptance, it would greatly increase the number of places where truck-rail intermodalism could swiftly and easily take place.
When a railroad operates more than one TOFC/COFC terminal in a large metropolitan area, each terminal may be dedicated to certain kinds of traffic or to specific traffic lanes. One facility, for example, may be devoted to landbridge services for containership companies, another may be dedicated to domestic container services, while a third may focus primarily on LTL traffic. Freight that is highly time-sensitive may be directed to a terminal with high-speed overhead cranes and sufficient track space for building whole trains, while less time-sensitive traffic may be sent to a smaller facility. Certain terminals may be dedicated wholly or in large part to serving major intermodal customers such as UPS, the U.S. Postal Service, J. B. Hunt, or APL. Canadian Pacific Railway's Schiller Park East terminal in the Chicago area is restricted to containerized freight moving to and from eastern Canada, while its Schiller Park West terminal handles containerized traffic moving to and from western Canada and the U.S. west coast. The primary customer for BNSF's TOFC/COFC terminal in the Chicago suburb of Willow Springs, IL, is UPS, which has a new regional sorting facility next door. CSX Intermodal operates two terminals in Memphis, one of which is for the exclusive use of Mitsui O.S.K. Lines.
The nature of TOFC/COFC freight greatly influences the location of TOFC/COFC facilities. TOFC/COFC freight is usually more time-sensitive than other kinds of rail freight. It often moves on dedicated "intermodal" trains rather than on manifest freight trains. Intermodal trains usually have the highest priority and are generally among the fastest trains on a railroad's system. Consequently, TOFC/COFC facilities tend to be located adjacent to mainlines rather than on secondary branchlines or industrial spurs. In fact, TOFC/COFC loading tracks are usually directly connected to the mainline in order to expedite the movement of intermodal trains [ARMS93]. TOFC/COFC facilities also tend to be located at major rail yards or very close to their main source of traffic. In some instances, former classification yards have been converted or expanded for either exclusive or primary use of TOFC/COFC service. Examples include BNSF's Cicero Yard near Chicago, Norfolk Southern's Landers Yard in Chicago, and Conrail's Rose Lake Yard in East St. Louis, IL. The location of BNSF's terminal at Willow Springs, IL, was dictated by UPS's plans to build a major sorting facility at that location. Because railroads are heavily involved in the movement of containerized imports and exports, it is not surprising that another prime location of TOFC/COFC terminals is next to a port container facility or in the vicinity of a port complex. Almost every major seaport in the United States either has an intermodal container transfer facility on the premises or an intermodal rail yard nearby.
Each of the Class I railroads operating within the United States owns and operates a number of TOFC/COFC terminals, except for CSX Transportation (CSXT). The facilities which CSXT serves actually belong to CSX Intermodal, a unit of CSX Corporation that is separate from the railroad itself. Several regional carriers also have their own TOFC/COFC facilities. They include Alaska Railroad; Angelina & Neches River; Arizona & California; Chicago, Central & Pacific (now a subsidiary of Illinois Central); Florida East Coast; Gateway Western (now owned by Kansas City Southern); Iowa Interstate; New York & Atlantic (which provides freight service over Long Island Railroad trackage); Massachusetts Central; Missouri & Northern Arkansas; New York, Susquehanna & Western; Providence & Worcester; St. Lawrence & Atlantic; Toledo, Peoria & Western; Vermont Railway; Wheeling & Lake Erie; and Wisconsin Central [IANA97]. In a few cases, one or more railroads utilize a terminal owned by another railroad. Southern Pacific and Wisconsin Central, for example, use Illinois Central's Moyers Intermodal Terminal at Harvey, IL, south of Chicago, and Conrail trains carrying UPS freight visit BNSF's facility at Willow Springs, IL. Kansas City Southern and I&M Rail Link jointly own a TOFC/COFC terminal in Kansas City, MO. Railroads also access another railroad's facilities by entering into through-train or haulage agreements. BNSF, for example, reaches the Hoosier Lift terminal near Remington, IN, by way of the Toledo, Peoria & Western; Louisville, KY, through a service agreement with Norfolk Southern; and Moterm in Ferndale, MI, near Detroit in conjunction with Canadian National. Norfolk Southern works with Canadian Pacific and New York, Susquehanna & Western to reach TOFC/COFC facilities in Taylor, PA, and Albany, NY, and with Florida East Coast Railway to serve terminals in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and West Palm Beach, FL.
Railroads, however, are not the only owners and operators of TOFC/COFC terminals. They also serve facilities established by third-party companies and public entities. APL Stacktrain Services, for example, operates a facility in Woodhaven, MI, near Detroit and another in South Kearny, NJ. Another stacktrain operator, Rail-Bridge Corporation, a subsidiary of "K" Line (America), Inc., has a container facility in Elizabeth, NJ, known as the E-Rail Terminal and served by Conrail. As noted above, CSX Intermodal, an intermodal marketing company, has its own set of terminals and utilizes the facilities of other railroads at a number of locations outside of CSX Transportation's territory. Several TOFC/COFC terminals belong to port authorities. Conrail, Canadian Pacific, and CSXT serve the Ameriport Intermodal Transfer Yard, a Port of Philadelphia & Camden facility located next to the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal in Philadelphia. The Port of Tacoma operates two near-dock intermodal rail yards, both served by BNSF. The North Intermodal Rail Yard serves Terminal 7, the Husky Terminal, and the Maersk and Evergreen Terminals, while the South Intermodal Rail Yard is adjacent to the Sea-Land Terminal.
Auto Terminals
Auto terminals - also known as auto ramps or auto transloading facilities - are places where finished vehicles such as automobiles, light trucks, jeeps, and vans are transferred between different modes of transportation. Three types of auto terminal can be identified:
These are not mutually exclusive categories, however. Because of the complex logistics of motor vehicle manufacturing and distribution, assembly plant terminals may also function as auto distribution terminals and marine auto terminals may also serve as an auto distribution center for domestic vehicles.
Auto terminals are designed for either direct transfers or short-term storage transfers. At auto distribution centers, vehicles may be driven off a multilevel autorack and directly onto a waiting auto carrier, or if necessary they may be parked in a marshalling yard. Conrail employs an electronic inventory tracking system called Terminal Operations and Information System (TOIS) and a transloading procedure called Load Laning to improve the speed and efficiency of its auto terminal operations. As Conrail describes the process in its marketing literature [CRC92]:
"TOIS provides haulaway carriers with a list of inbound vehicles on the day's train scheduled to be unloaded in addition to those vehicles already parked in the facility. The haulaway carrier then tells us where to unload the vehicle, in which lane, by truck load.