Temporal efficiency of cross-border railways with multiple simulation scenarios:A case study of the China-Laos Railway
Cross-border railway transportation is an important link between China and its neighboring coun-tries.The organization of cross-border railway transportation is not only restricted by the"hard connectivity"factors such as the railway track connection and the technical level of infrastructure but also affected by the"soft connectivity"factors such as customs regulations.Therefore,the study on its organization should fully consider various scenarios to better simulate the process of cross-border railway transportation and improve the accuracy of transportation duration estimation.Taking the China-Laos Railway(Kunming,China to Vientiane,Laos)as an example,this paper analyzes the socio-economic background and infrastructure development level along the China-Laos Railway and builds a calculation model of long-distance cross-border transportation time including parameters of railway operating speed,customs clearance time,rail transshipment,and multimodal transport temporal cost.The model splits the China-Laos Railway into sections according to different technical levels and borders,and transportation modes.To study the between-mode difference,the paper compares the transportation distance and time between railway and road modes.Moreover,the simulation extends the study in the Trans-Asian Railway Network.To investigate the passenger travel efficiency,we design 15 stops along the railway to simulate the China-Laos passenger train schedule so that we can study how the train improves the connectivity between cities in Laos and Southwest China.In the study of freight efficiency,we compare the general cargo mode and the international freight train mode.In addition,we design rail-sea intermodal trans-portation scenarios for Laos to compare the long-distance transportation duration at different ports in Thailand and China.In brief,this paper analyzes the distance advantage and passenger and freight transport efficiency of the China-Laos Railway.The study shows that:1)the China-Laos Railway helps to significantly reduce the cross-border transportation duration along the line.Compared with road transportation,the time advantage of passenger and freight transportation is more than 20％.2)Customs clearance time is one of the key factors af-fecting cross-border railway transportation duration.The clearance time of the China-Laos Railway transporta-tion accounts for 20％to 60％of the total transportation duration.3)Rail-sea intermodal transport is an effect-ive way to further improve the efficiency of transportation organization for the China-Laos Railway transporta-tion,which can effectively shorten the total transportation duration from Laos to Japan.The paper offers a sol-id case study for cross-border transportation study from the perspectives of multiple modes and scenario simu-lation.Still,this paper has some limitations as we have not consider the railway capacity,the monetary cost of cross-border railway transportation,and geopolitics within the Trans-Asian Railway Network.
cross-border transportationpassenger and freight organizationthe China-Laos Railwayscen-ario simulationtransportation efficiency
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