Intermodal Service Traffic – State of the Practice or Scientific Demand?

Kurzfassung

The most developed economies have gone through a significant structural change during the last decades. Today most of the economic activities clearly concentrate on the service sector and the concept of the service society emerged. However, this major economic role of services is up to now not reflected in transportation science. Up to now there has never been an approach for a comprehensive reflection on service traffic. But to know requirements and restrictions will enable new user group specific traffic strategies, especially for intermodal and sustainable products. The paper therefore applies representative data of the German research project “Service Traffic”. By using data of a survey among almost 1250 companies the article investigates the importance of different transport modes for several services in single economic sections, analyses existing barriers, examines how decisions for transport modes are made and identifies therefore starting points to promote intermodal traffic solutions.