A comparison of intermodal transportation service network design models

Intermodal transportation has known a great development during last decades as consequence to the development of container transportation services and supply chain stakes. This development had required efforts and researches to optimize the design and the configuration of transportation network infrastructure and their service. The design, configuration and the service network design of a system performing intermodal transportation, obeys to the same objectives as for a transportation and distribution network but could differ because of either its specific structure, cost function and/or specific constraints related to the actors points of view. The purpose of this article is to compare and assess the existing models for service network design in term of completeness of imbedded constraints, objective functions costing structure and in term of compliance to upcoming schemas of distributions and freight transportation networks.