Multimodal transport concept has been put forward in China for many years, the goal is to achieve seamless integration of various modes of freight transport public railway, water and aviation, but in fact it is slow to promote. Multimodal core lies in the container turnover, although the railroad box cargo more than 10% of the transport volume, but the real box into the container transportation accounted for only 2-3% or so, the container turnover accounted for the proportion of the total turnover of railroad freight is not more than 5%; and the number of containers sea-rail intermodal transport accounted for only about 1.5% of the national port throughput, the first ranked port of Dalian accounted for the total container throughput of 3.75%, followed by the port of Qingdao only 1.77%, and the number of containers, the container throughput is only 1.77%. 3.75%, followed by Qingdao Port only 1.77%.

It's not that the government, the General Administration of Railways and the ports don't see the problems, and it's not that they don't know that multimodal transportation can bring about efficiency gains and lower logistics costs. National Development and Reform Commission issued on March 3 this year, "on strengthening the construction of logistics short boards to promote effective investment and consumption of a number of opinions," pointed out that the construction of multimodal transit facilities to enhance the efficiency of cargo transit; National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Transportation on June 6 this year jointly issued the "on the implementation of the program to promote the quality of transportation to enhance efficiency and improve the ability to provide services," but also emphasized that vigorously promote intermodal transport, to achieve It also emphasizes the promotion of intermodal transport, the realization of seamless connection in transport organization, and giving full play to the advantages of the combination of different modes of transport, so as to improve transport efficiency and reduce the cost of social logistics. Cheng Xiandong, Director of the Bureau of Transportation of the General Administration of Railways, published a signed article at the beginning of the year to similarly emphasize the development of containerized transport to make new breakthroughs in the development of containerized transport, and within three to five years, the container volume to reach 20% of the total amount of freight transport.

It seems that the policy has, determination is also very big, but the implementation is not easy, because the short-term return on investment of the independent investors is not obvious, and may even lose money. Railroads, ports and even aviation for multimodal transport will be very strong, because they lack the "door to door" of the road transportation docking; and multimodal transportation of another main body - road transport is not active. According to statistics, in 2015. the whole society completed 45.02 billion tons of freight, an increase of 4.4%, while the highway completed freight growth of 6.4%, more than the 4.4% increase in the whole society freight, but also more than the aviation of 5.2%, 3.7% of water transport and railroads -13.7% increment. Even without the support of multimodal transportation, highway logistics is not lacking in competitiveness and revenue. And to implement the landing of multimodal transportation system, the efficiency of the increasingly slippery railroad should be the first to lead the industry.

Node efficiency is not high is currently one of the key problems of multimodal transport, even if the total railroad to achieve the goal of 20% of the total volume of freight transported by the container freight, it is difficult to solve the "door-to-door" logistics full chain of service capabilities. Because from the railroad freight containers to road trucks to achieve rapid loading and unloading is relatively easy, but transferred to the city with the "door to door" special vehicles, in the sorting, unboxing and loading on the existence of operational complexity, inefficiency and so on; and from the trucks, ships carrying containers to the railroad body, there is a single box counterweight balance standard unified Problems, a serious impact on the safety of railroad operations; of course, there is also a business-owned boxes due to recycling difficulties, difficult to circulate in the road network.

To crack this problem, you need to start from the advantages and disadvantages of railroad freight, to avoid the shortcomings. The author has summarized the advantages of railroad freight is the railroad operating network, huge assets and history of the credibility of the all-weather operation of the security; and the disadvantage lies in the backwardness of the hardware and software, the information is not connected with the community, the transport time is random and unprotected, grass-roots enterprise service consciousness is seriously inadequate. The advantages of the railroad's huge operating network makes it possible to promote rapid intermodal transit facilities and equipment technical standards, equipment standardization and green recyclable weekly transformation.

During the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, the railroad will invest 2.8 trillion yuan to expand the railroad infrastructure network, build a comprehensive transportation system that is organically connected with highways, waterways and airways, and expand the distribution network of cargoes such as container centers and end-of-line distribution. It is conceivable that the railroad can build its own system to railroad freight logistics as the leading, attracting all parties to invest in the whole logistics industry chain ecosystem, but also make the railroad take the lead in investing in the planning and design of multimodal transport equipment standards as the landmark results of the reform of railroad freight transport and competitive advantage.

Railroads can rely on local governments and enterprises to build a public-rail intermodal logistics park covering the entire road network, with the most market high profit and high yield express, cold chain and white bulk cargo as the main competitive gap market, development and research of suitable for the turnover of the container railroad special combination of container and supporting vehicles, the establishment of automated and efficient sorting system, to achieve the railroad-led logistics specialization and distribution services.

Railroad freight revenue in 2015 was only 231.21 billion yuan, and -10% rate of decline, while the express delivery market revenue in 2015 amounted to 276.96 billion yuan, of which 70% for the off-site express delivery, and maintain a high growth rate of 40% development. But the railroad freight must establish a breakthrough advantage of the core technology in order to quickly intervene in the express market and gain a competitive advantage.

Express industry "door-to-door" terminal transportation vehicles are currently three-wheeled vehicles and even motorcycles, electric bicycles, and from the Shenzhen City began to gradually popularize the "motorcycle power" policy may squeeze out the new four-wheeled new energy distribution vehicles, the General Administration of Postal Service is also regulating The corresponding end of the distribution vehicle standards; from the node city logistics park to the urban collection point also due to urban transportation policy restrictions and mainly use small distribution trucks, and air containers, road containers, the same demand for disassembly and sorting; and courier packaging waste is amazing, 2105 years a total of 8.26 billion plastic bags consumed, 9.9 billion boxes, 16.95 billion meters of tape, of which the length of the tape can be around the Earth's 425 laps around the equator, the express delivery industry urgently need green packaging and packaging recyclable, but are unable to form a turnover network and stop at the high cost of recyclable packaging threshold.

Railroad's huge network coverage and self-circulation system precisely has the advantage of green turnover, railway-led logistics industry chain ecosystem can make the railway-led development of special combination of intra-container box, seamless connection between public-railway intermodal logistics parks and urban collection points, collection points and the end of the customer can be combined with the combination of split, splicing and turnover of the sub-division of warehousing and distribution units, and the development of the corresponding standard warehousing and distribution trucks, end of the distribution standard vehicles, as well as applicable to the standard warehousing and distribution vehicles. Distribution of standard vehicles, as well as automated sorting systems and comprehensive information service platforms applicable to multimodal transportation special combination of boxes.

Specialized combination of container is the unit division of the container, which can also be called a smaller container. Container is one of the greatest ten inventions of the 20th century, it is a truck driver invented a connection between the public railway water navigation of the common standard, its unit is called TEU, that is, 20 feet unit, refers to the cabinet body outer diameter size of 20X8X8 feet 6 inches. Dedicated combination split containers, on the other hand, use a smaller size, suitable for the smallest end distribution vehicle transportation of the bloom standard, and have the ability to be quickly linked with each other, split.

But if the bloomers can not turnover, recycling, the cost will rise sharply; and once the formation can be recycled turnover carrier, is not only to improve the dressing efficiency, to ensure the safety of built-in items, reduce logistics time, and more importantly, can greatly reduce the cost of logistics and packaging, so that the railroad freight transport in the express delivery industry and even the cold chain, the competitive advantage of the gap market for white bulk goods immediately obvious, but also led to the whole society multimodal Intermodal transportation is booming.

(Source: Economic Reference News)