An Approach to Analyze the Intermodal Rail Transport Market in Germany

Summary. This study aims to provide a complete overview of intermodal rail connections in Germany and identify the market players involved in their operation. The lack of a comprehensive overview is attributed to the difficulty of summarizing empirical data of intermodal rail transport, combined with the many rapid changes in the dynamic open market. The study uses a dataset compiled through online research and interviews with market players. The identified market players include intermodal operators, railway carriers, terminals, and ports.


Introduction
This paper provides an analysis of the complete market overview of intermodal connections in Germany.To our knowledge there is a lack of a complete and correct overview of intermodal rail connections in Germany.There is a gap between the macro data, provided by statistical offices, and the micro data of individual connections.We only found the study by de Langen et al. (2017) who made an analysis of intermodal connections in Europe.The lack of a complete overview may be due to the difficulty of summarizing the empiricism of intermodal rail transport in combination with the many rapid changes in a dynamic market.The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of intermodal rail connections with starting and/or terminating points in Germany.Included in the dataset are geographical characteristics of the connections at NUTS-2 and NUTS-3 level and an identification on the operating market players involved in the operations of individual all connections.The purpose of the analysis and provided data is to support future research.The data is a snapshot of April 2022 that can serve as a reference point to buildup time series in the future that can be used for comparisons over time.The provided data can be verified with data from DB Netz.The study bases on own (online) research and experiences that have been confirmed in interviews with various acting players in the field of intermodal rail transport.This article primarily focuses on the research process, a more detailed description and evaluation of the results will follow at the BVL International Scientific Symposium on Logistics 2023 International Scientific Symposium on Logistics and in the full paper.First, a short introduction is given to collaborations in intermodal rail transport.In this way, the context is outlined that is necessary to be able to interpret the data.Subsequently, the research process is discussed in which the emphasis is placed on how everyone can compile such a dataset.This is followed by a brief section highlighting the main results.Finally, we give a short reflection on the applied research process.This applied study is part of the HEGEL research project funded by the mFUND of the German Federal Ministry of Digital Infrastructure and Transport (BMDV), see acknowledgments for more information.

Collaboration in Intermodal Rail Transport
There are many different market players in different roles to operate an intermodal rail connection in Europe.Buck et al. (2022) identified the market players and described their roles to operate a maritime intermodal rail connection.There are more market players and assigned roles to operate an intermodal rail connection compared to other forms of transport.This applies in particular to the role of rail operator who operates the rail connection and thus bears the operational and financial risk.The operator sells capacity on an intermodal connection and purchases services for this from third parties such as terminal slots, rail haulage, wagon lease and in some cases also first/last-mile trucking service between the shipper, the hinterland terminal, and the empty depot.In other transport markets, such as the parcel market, the role of connection operator is not assigned to a separate market player.The paper uses the defined market players and their assigned roles in the analysis and dataset.Not all actors are actively described, the analysis focuses on the supplying market players.This is partly prompted by the availability of information, parties that offer services have an interest in being open to customers and therefore share information about intermodal rail connections.The analysis and the dataset provide a description of the following market players (a) intermodal operator, (b) railway carrier (c) terminals and (d) ports.This short paper only discusses the research process to compile a database for intermodal rail transport.This study goes beyond a summary of the intermodal rail connections.The roles and collaboration between rail operator, rail carriers, terminals and ports are also extensively discussed.

Research Process
The research process consists of several steps to first build the dataset on which the analysis is then based.The first step was to identify all intermodal rail connections and to assign the roles to market players.The second step was to examine all identified intermodal rail connections to self-defined criteria.The third step was to convert all intermodal rail connections into comparable data.Subsequently, the data is used for the market analysis.In addition, interviews were conducted with various market players in the context of the HEGEL research project.The interviews gave market insights that would not have been obtained with a pure survey and were used to verify the data.The first two steps of the research are described in detail in the sections below.This is followed up by a short explanation section about the dataset.

Identification Process
The research started with an online search for information on intermodal rail connections in Germany.Rail operators and intermodal terminals were first identified through online search.Based on information provided online by rail operators, a list has been compiled of all available intermodal rail connections.The list contained, where possible, the weekly number of round trips and (geographical) information about the terminals that function as start, intermediate, or end station.Subsequently, an attempt was made to verify the connection against a secondary source.For this, different online source types were consulted for each connection.The verification took place via online slot information from various intermodal terminals, via press releases and via DB Netz verified passing lists of freight trains on main railway lines that have been published on rail forums.If no online information about an intermodal rail connection was provided by the operator, in some cases the intermodal rail connection was still found via secondary sources.In these cases, an attempt was made to verify the intermodal rail connection via another secondary source.After a list of all connections was created, an online search was started to identify the railway carriers of all intermodal rail connections.The identified railway carrier is defined as the main contractor for the entire connection (in Germany).Multiple sources were used for this purpose.This includes the passing lists in which Railway carriers are mentioned, press releases and information from train photo websites (e.g., Flickr and Drehscheibe Online).In most cases, the identified Railway carriers have been verified through the interviews.In several cases, the rail operator has outsourced parts of the transport, these subcontractors are not included in this study.

Applied Conditions
In order to obtain a comparable list of all intermodal connections, various criteria have been applied that the connection must meet.The criteria prevent double counting which mainly arise because one connection can be booked with several operators or because different connections are known under different terminals and place names.First, a criterion must be formulated that an intermodal connection must meet in order to be included in the overview.Under the list of established criteria, insight is given into how the criteria have been applied in the dataset and it is indicated which exceptions there are in the data.The formulated criteria are: • Only craneable units are allowed to be transported on the intermodal connection.
• The list only includes unaccompanied transport.This means that, for example, Rollende Landstraße connections are not included.• An intermodal connection must have a fixed circulation between a fixed loading and unloading terminal.• The intermodal connection has at least one roundtrip per week according to a fixed schedule.• The intermodal connection must be a block train, the operator books a train with the railway carrier.This condition applied to the train form, not to the loading characteristics.
The intermodal connection must be loaded and unloaded at intermodal terminals on both sides.An intermodal terminal must meet the following three requirements, (a) there must be a rail connection, (b) there must be a transshipment vehicle and (c) the core activity of the terminal must be the transshipment of intermodal units.This means that industrial sites from a factory site that do not have a specific rail terminal are not included in the overview.
Some intermodal connection consists of two parts, which run in combination on the main route, but call at different terminals in the hinterland or in a port.In these cases, the total number of rounds is taken and divided by the number of weekly connections in the intermodal connection.For example, a train Bamberg -Maschen runs four times a week.From Maschen the train is divided into two wagon groups to the ports of Hamburg and Bremerhaven.Then the overview includes two weekly roundtrips Bamberg -Bremerhaven and Bamberg -Hamburg in the analysis.Because this also includes shuttle connections between seaports, they are not included separately in the dataset.Some intermodal rail connections can be booked with multiple operators.To avoid double counting, these connections have been divided into the various operators with whom the connection can be booked.In the specific case of railway carrier Boxxpress, the total number of connections is divided according to the share of the various operators in Boxxpress and then rounded in the operator data.Due to the lack of transparency and the complexity of loading and unloading at different seaport terminals in one port, it was decided to designate the German Northseaport as the start or end point of a connection.In the case of non-seaports, the terminal is also named.

Dataset
A dataset has been built up based on these steps, which contains information per connection about the loading and unloading terminal(s), the rail operator, and the rail carrier.Added to the dataset are the NUTS-1 to NUTS-3 codes of all loading and unloading points of an intermodal connection and information about the infrastructure on and around the terminals.This information can be used for a geographical analysis, (network) infrastructure analysis and a collaboration analysis.The dataset has been made available in the Mcloud as "Data on intermodal rail connections in Germany"12 .

Market Analysis Highlights
The market analysis is based on the published dataset.First, it will be explained how the data is grouped, then some main characteristics of the intermodal connections will be briefly discussed.

Description of Dataset and Classification
Based on the interviews with market parties, the data has been divided into two separate market categories, (a) intermodal maritime transport and (b) intermodal land transport.The markets have some similarities and some differences.The main similarity is that for railway carriers there is no difference as to what kind of train they provide traction.The main differences are a difference in loading units used, a difference in geographical characteristics, different operators, different user groups, and a difference in the organization of first-/last-mile truck transport.Maritime intermodal transport mainly uses 20-and 40-foot ISO containers that are loaded on flat wagons, with land intermodal transport mainly trailers, swap bodies 45-and 30-foot (tank) containers are mainly transported on trailer wagons.Intermodal maritime transport involves a connection between a deep-sea port and the hinterland, a so-called hinterland connection.
Intermodal land transport involves transport between two points on the land side.The operators operating the connections are different.Only 10% of the operators offer both forms of transport.
Finally, the organization of the first-/last-mile truck transport is different.With intermodal maritime transport, a third party is almost always deployed at the hinterland terminal, with intermodal land transport the shipper or operator has its own assets.

Main Characteristics of the Data
The research shows that in April 2022 there were a total of 333 connections in Germany with 1243 confirmed round trips.A total of 106 intermodal terminals in Germany are used by one or more intermodal rail connections.There are 71 rail operators operating an intermodal rail connection, using 33 railway carriers.

Conclusion
The study shows that it is possible to generate an overview with the characteristics of all intermodal rail connections in Germany based on the identified roles.The study shows a snapshot of April 2022.To keep the situation up to date, an overview can be generated by means of the approach described.The supplied dataset can be used to get an idea of the actors who remain largely the same in the field.With the current measurement method, it is possible to generate a total overview of all intermodal connections in Germany.In recent years, various new innovations have been applied to the railway material used.New operators such as CargoBeamer and HELROM are investing in new loading technologies.This will ensure that terminals will be created in the future without transfer vehicles, so that the conditions used may change in the future.

mFUND.
As part of the mFUND funding program, the German Federal Ministry of Digital Infrastructure and Transport (BMDV) has been supporting research and development projects related to data-based digital innovations for Mobility 4.0 since 2016.The project funding is complemented by active professional networking between stakeholders from politics, economy, administration, and research, as well as the provision of open data on the Mobility Data Marketplace.For more information, please visit www.mfund.de.
There are 168 maritime connections with 529 roundtrips and 165 land connections with 714 roundtrips.The data shows that there are more intermodal maritime connections, but that the weekly frequency is lower compared to intermodal land transport.51 of the 71 operators operate only one or two connections with a total of 237 roundtrips.In contrast, the biggest four operators exploit 143 connections with 546 roundtrips.The German terminals (excluding the seaports of Hamburg, Bremerhaven and Wilhelmshaven) handled a total of 1455 weekly round trips.The hinterland terminals have 405 transshipment tracks in total, corresponding to 4.1 tracks average.Only 18 terminals can be reached without diesel shunting locomotive.Of the 33 railway carriers, only 5 railway carriers have a market share of more than 5%, measured by the number of weekly rounds.DB Cargo (including subsidiaries) is by far the largest with more than 35% market share.25 railway carriers have a market share below less than 2%.