Rail-Road Hinterland Intermodal Terminal Location in West Africa Region—Case Study of Corridor Port of Abidjan to Ouagadougou-Bamako

摘要

Efficient and effective movement of goods is very critical in today’s competitive environment especially for developing countries suffering from crippling logistics costs which limit their competitive ability in the global economy. Putting in place an optimal logistics network design offers great potential for logistics cost reduction and service quality improvement [1] . Therefore , this paper presents a model for effective integration of inland intermodal terminal into logistics network. The model simultaneously determines the number and location of inland terminals in network that minimize the total cost of freight flow to hinterland. The model uses Abidjan port in Cote d’Ivoire as the case study for solving numeric examples. The problem will be formulated in the case of a rail-road network where post-routing is done by road and rail link between terminal. We present a linear optimization model which is implemented using LINGO Mathematical Modeling Language.