Assessment of Inland Multimodal Freight Transport Through Djibouti Port
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Date
2017-02-24
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The purpose of multimodal transport is to minimize transportation time and transportation cost.
Modern transport and freight distribution system all over the world are tending towards the adoption
of best practices those are reliable, timely and cost effective. Multi-modal transportation is a logistics
problem in which a set of goods have to be transported to different places, with the combination of at
least two modes of transport, without a change of container for the goods.
Ethiopia has been implementing the "multimodal'' transport system, through Djibouti port using
water and inland transport system, but the inland transportation is unimodal for long period of time.
But due to the construction of new Addis-Djibouti railway line the transportation system will change
to multimodal inland transportation system. Hence, this study focuses on model development of
freight transportation cost and synchronization of railway with road transport service and also
analyse the potentials of coordinated rail & road for freight transportation from Djibouti port to
different parts of Ethiopia.
The findings of this research reveal that synchronizing rail & road for hinterland bound goods would
be potentially save 19.39% and 42.56% of freight transportation cost for the year 2016 & 2022
respectively and the time of transportation will be reduced when compared with current unimodal
transportation. The implications of this finding indicate integrated road and rail modes of transport
for port-hinterland freight distribution would make the nation‟s transportation system to be faster &
more cost-effective. This research also presents an effective mathematical procedure for maximal
synchronization to be employed as a useful tool for the scheduler in the process of creating
timetables. It attempts to maximize the number of simultaneous freight vehicle arrivals at the
connection (transfer) nodes of the network. Transit schedulers, taking into account the satisfaction
and convenience of the system's users, appreciate the importance of creating a timetable with
maximal synchronization, which enables the transfer of freight from one route to another with
minimum waiting time at the transfer node. The finding of this research also shows the optimum
number of wagons and trains for the next five years by forecasting the amount of freight which can
be imported to Ethiopia through Djibouti port.
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Keywords
Freight Transport, Djibouti Port, Inland Multimodal Freight Transport