Eco-Friendly Piggyback System
Carbon dioxide accounts for more than 80% of all greenhouse gases among greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Freight transport focused on road transport is the main culprit in greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide.
In the above situation, instead of road transport, it is necessary to improve the competitiveness of rail transport, an eco-friendly transport that emits very little carbon. In line with these demands, advanced countries such as the UK, France, and Germany have already established/implemented policies to support sustainable transportation services by reducing carbon emissions through railway transport modal shifts.
In order to revitalize rail transport, which is an essential means of transportation in an eco-friendly green logistics system, due to its high energy efficiency and low carbon emissions compared to road transport, it is necessary to increase competitiveness compared to road transport. However, unlike rail transportation, the reality is that railroad transportation is less competitive due to additional transshipment time and cost.
Accordingly, the competitiveness of rail transportation means is improved by reducing the transshipment time and cost required for rail transportation. Through this, I would like to introduce the necessity of introducing a Piggyback system that can convert road transport-oriented logistics transport into railroad transport and the operation status of each country.
Introduction of the Piggyback system
The piggyback transfer system is one of the methods of complex transportation in which cargo loaded with containers, trucks, and ships are loaded into railway freight cars. Through the Piggy-back system, trucks loaded with cargo can be immediately loaded and transported in a freight car, allowing them to carry long-distance sections of the cargo truck on the railroad.
In addition, the Piggy-back system simplifies the transshipment process, reducing the cost of transshipment, and enables door to door and immediate delivery (JIT) after a truck arrives at the railway station near the final destination gets off at the railway station. Piggyback truck systems enter a type of dual mode trailer system (DMT) transport system. The types of DMT transport systems are classified into Piggyback, Bimodal, a rotary type of wacha, and a parallel transfer type.
In particular, there are two types of Piggyback transportation methods for cargo transportation in the iron transport situation: container on flat car method and trailer on flat car method. The container on flat car method has the advantage of improving the utilization of sash and enabling double stack by loading and transporting only containers separated from sesh on railway vehicles.
However, loading and unloading devices such as over head crane side loader and piggy backer are required for up and down of the container, and sash or trailer preparation is required at the starting and ending points, respectively. On the other hand, the trailer on flat car method is a method of loading and transporting on flat car with sesh attached to a container, which is called the Piggyback method.
The trailer on flat car method is a transportation system that adds economic feasibility to trucks and mobility to enhance the economic feasibility of rail transportation since the 1920s, when the economy of rail cargo began to lag behind public transportation. The trailer on flat car method requires less facility investment from the railway than the container-on-flat car method because the tractor can directly pull up and down without the help of shipping equipment.
It is divided into a Horizontal loading method and a Vertical loading method according to the loading method. The Horizontal loading method does not require unloading equipment, but has the disadvantage of requiring a dedicated crane for the Vertical loading method. The advantage of the Piggyback system is that it can perform work without significantly renovating the existing Horizontal loading method, and reduces traffic congestion and air pollution by lowering the road transport ratio by expanding the market share of railroad transportation.
Trends and policies in the operation of the Piggyback System in Korea
When looking at the share of cargo transport by means of transportation in Korea, road transport accounted for 90.9% of domestic cargo transport as of 2010, so rail transportation is not playing its role sufficiently.
As a solution, it is necessary to improve the competitiveness of railroad transportation by solving the problem of transshipment and applying the Piggy-back system, in which trucks disembarked from railway stations near the destination are in charge of door-to-door transport.
The Republic of Korea is partially using the Piggyback system at Gunsan Port. Gunsan Port is saturated with about 3,000 vehicles a day, and most of them use the same road, so the Piggy-back system was applied to Gunsan Station near Gunsan Port to solve the congestion of road traffic.
Meanwhile, the Korean government stipulated the basic direction of sustainable traffic logistics policies in response to changes in traffic logistics conditions, such as climate change, energy crisis, and environmental treasure requests, and its establishment and implementation.
The Traffic Logistics Development Act, a law enforced on December 10, 2009, induces the promotion of the conversion of transportation by providing legal grounds for subsidies and price incentives for the conversion of the transportation logistics system.
Trends and policies in the operation of the Piggyback System in Switzerland
BLSAG, a Swiss railway company, also operates a rolling highway Piggyback system on the railroad line between Cologne and Milan. The Rolling Highway Piggyback System, also known as the Ro-la train, is a Piggyback truck system developed to overcome technical limitations that occur when entering a tunnel in the European region, where the tunnel is low, unlike North America, where the tunnel is high.
Switzerland is applying strict regulations on freight cars to protect the Alps’ environment due to frequent traffic from neighboring countries and aims to convert road-oriented freight transport into railroads. Starting with the approval of the New Railway Alpine Transversal (NEAT) program in 1992, Switzerland has been supporting railway projects related to the Alpine clause in 1994 and performance in 1998.
The Alpine Protection Clause stipulates that freight transport across the Alps across the Swiss border should not be carried out by rail and increased road transport for environmental protection, and aims to traverse up to 650,000 trucks annually. Although 941,000 trucks traveled to the Swiss Alps in 2018, the goal of policy cattle seemed to have been achieved as the number of crossings using trucks continued to decrease.
The Swiss Parliament further tightened regulations on truck crossing by specifying the requirements of the Freight Transport Act and stipulating that 250,000 trucks can cross the Swiss Alps from up to 650,000 available trucks per year in the Gotthard Base Tunne fchleo bill revised in 2018.
When comparing roads and railroads with the efforts of the Swiss government, 29.5% of roads and 70.5% of railroads 27.9 million tons, the share of railroad transportation is far higher than that of other countries.
Trends and policies in the operation of the Piggyback System in Germany
The German Federal Railway is similar to the French kangaroo method, which co-developed an ultra-low-common truck with a surface height of 450 mm on the rail surface, enabling Piggyback transport by a large full trailer truck weighing 38 tons and 4 m high.
The method adopted by Germany is called the Moving National Road and operates from 10 dedicated terminals in Germany to international transport routes such as Italy, Austria, and Switzerland. The German government is taking tax preferential measures for road operators by using the reduction of highway traffic and the reduction of traffic for environmental conservation.
Conclusion
In this report, I presented the definition of Piggyback technology, domestic and foreign operational trends, and transition transportation support policies to improve the competitiveness of railroad transportation methods by reducing transshipment time and cost.
In conclusion, the necessity of introducing Piggy Baggy Tea technology was suggested by presenting the definition of Piggy Baggy technology, domestic and foreign operational trends, and conversion transportation support policies of advanced countries abroad.
References
Korea Construction and Transportation Technology Evaluation Agency (2007). Transportation System Efficiency Project-Rail Logistics Activation DMT Transportation System-Planning Report
UPS, (2020). [online] Available at: https://www.ups.com/kr/ko/Home.page
Jeon Seong-chan. “Drawing promising technologies for piggyback trucks for transporting cargo trucks using GTM-based patent maps.” Graduate School of Korea University, a master’s thesis in Korea, 2021. Seoul
Chiffres clés du transport – Édition 2019 SDES, CCTN 2018
Minister of Transport (France), (2020). [online] Available at: https://www.gouvernement.fr/en/composition-of-the-government
Minister of Transport (Germany), (2020). [online] Available at: https://www.bmvi.de/EN/Home/home.html
