A comprehensive model for short-haul and long-haul transportation

In networked production environments and globalized economy an efficient, high quality and sustainable freight transport represents a crucial challenge nowadays. In this context, intermodality can reduce the environmental and social impacts of transportation operations. The paper faces the problem of freight transportation planning of logistics platforms in a multimodal network. Generally, these complex problems are approached in the literature through their decomposition into sub-problems that are individually solved. The paper presents a comprehensive model and a solution method based on Lagrangian relaxation in order to consider simultaneously the features and constraints related to short-haul and long-haul transportation. In the proposed approach a decision maker coordinates logistics platforms and aims at optimizing the transportation plans on a determined time horizon.