Market area of intermodal rail-road container terminals embedded in a hub-and-spoke network

This paper presents a methodology able to compare road and rail-road intermodal market areas that takes the network structures, the operation costs and the location of the rail-road terminals into account. A particular way to model rail-road transport on hub-and-spoke networks is outlined and illustrated on the trans-European networks. The market area of an optimal eight hubs network configuration is presented both for the "p"-hub median and the "p"-hub centre problem. This is followed by a discussion about the evolution of the market area according to the number and locations of the implemented hubs. Copyright (c) 2009 the author(s). Journal compilation (c) 2009 RSAI.