Green transport practices and shifting cargo from road to rail in Finnish-Russian context

• Autores: Flavio Padilha, Olli-Pekka Hilmola, Lauri Lättilä
• Localización: Conradi Research Review, ISSN-e 1459-0980, Vol. 6, Issue 1, 2010, págs. 47-64
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper discusses the environmental impact of modal shift from road to rail in trade between Finland and Russia in the context of green transport practices. The current scenario, where rail is under utilised for transit transports originating from Finnish to Russia, while trucks are returning empty from Russia to Finland makes no economic or environmental sense. However, while our findings demonstrate the environmental advantages of rail over road transport in several trade routes, environmental gains are currently limited by the transport options available, where most train services use diesel traction and rail routes between places can be comparatively longer in relation to road transport. For this reason we have built initial simulation model to incorporate these different parameter and system structure values. This simulation model could be used to understand the special features of Finnish-Russian transports; for example, the near proximity of St. Petersburg, but long distance, varying cargo types and alternative routes of different transportation modes to Moscow and Yekaterinburg. During the simulation run map based interface eases the introduction of the main challenges for the parties of interest. Real life implementation requires that railway undertakings take benchmarks from North America to achieve efficiency and profitability requirements.