Search Results (4)

The China Railway Express (CR Express) is an important component of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The sustainable development of CR Express provides critical support for regional economic integration and promotes a balanced development of the supply chain. Infrastructure reliability and trade facilitation greatly impact the operation of CR Express and are crucial for improving the competitiveness of transnational trade and cross-border efficiency. Inconsistent transportation infrastructure standards and low-efficient transportation service procedures affect the cross-border movement of cargo among countries. This paper integrates quantified metrics of infrastructure reliability and trade facilitation into a spatial friction model based on the electrical resistance theory, estimating the impact of these factors on the transportation flow of CR Express. Additionally, three scenarios of infrastructure reliability and trade facilitation are established for the four trade routes from Zhengzhou to Hamburg. Numerical experiments show that compared with inland river routes and traditional ocean routes, infrastructure reliability and trade facilitation significantly influence the transport flow of CR Express. These research results can provide a reference for the improvements of CR Express transportation efficiency and the simplification of customs clearance processes, potentially promoting the sustainable development of the CR Express supply chain to some extent. Full article

The Russia–Ukraine conflict has had a significant shock to the global political and economic stable and sustainable order. The various sanctions it has triggered are accelerating changes in the world’s power structure. This paper is a conference report regarding the seminar titled “The One-Year of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict and Global Shipping Safety,” which was held on 25 February 2023 at Dalian Maritime University, China. The seminar made creative discussion surrounding the following topics: the impact of the Russia–Ukraine conflict on the safety and sustainability of shipping, the predictions and impact assessment of geopolitical relations, and sustainable economic development changing under the Russia–Ukraine conflict. Furthermore, this seminar also mentioned the opening of the Arctic shipping route and Arctic shipping safety, the application of ship insurance sanctions, the relationship between the China Railway Express and maritime cargo transportation, the significant relationship between economic sanctions and China’s energy security, and naval and maritime safety. This conference report is relevant because it presents the full picture of the constructive discussion on the impact of the Russia–Ukraine conflict in the seminar and includes a literature review and further discussion surrounding the topic. A broader discussion on this subject matter attracted by this conference report is expected. Full article

The global express market has expanded significantly in recent years. High-speed rail express freight transportation has been implemented between multiple cities in China, significantly improving transportation efficiency and effectively meeting demand. In this paper, an optimization model for HSR (high-speed railway) express transport plan is constructed using a space-time-state network, and an improved adaptive genetic algorithm is designed to solve the model. Reasonable transport schemes could be arranged for each cargo flow with the objective of maximizing operational revenue. The numerical experiment based on the Harbin–Dalian high-speed railway in China verifies the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed model. The results show that for HSR operators, appropriate transport strategies can be planned in terms of delivery priorities and transportation mode selection to make full use of the remaining capacity of HSR trains and increase operational revenue. Full article

Service network design is fundamentally crucial for railway express cargo transportation. The main challenge is to strike a balance between two conflicting objectives: low network setup costs and high expected operational incomes. Different configurations of these objectives will have different impacts on the quality of freight transportation services. In this paper, a bi-level programming model for the railway express cargo service network design problem is proposed. The upper-level model forms the optimal decisions in terms of the service characteristics, and the low-level model selects the service arcs for each commodity. The rail express cargo is strictly subject to the service commitment, the capacity restriction, flow balance constraints, and logical relationship constraints among the decisions variables. Moreover, linearization techniques are used to convert the lower-level model to a linear one so that it can be directly solved by a standard optimization solver. Finally, a real-world case study based on the Beijing–Guangzhou Railway Line is carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed solution approach. Full article