In this section, strategic planning issues encountered in multimodal
freight transportation and the future development directions
are presented. Strategic planning problems relate to
investment decisions on the present infrastructures (networks).
Table 1 and Fig. 1 provide a structured view of the recent literature.
In order to maximize the utilization of multimodal transportation,
consolidation is essential. In a consolidation system, instead
of direct shipment of every cargo, low volume cargo is moved to
a consolidation center and bundled into larger flows, transported
by high-frequency and high-capacity multimodal services. These
services have lower prices, expressed by discount factors per load
unit, compared to other links.