This can be solved by more cooperation between inland terminals
to attain economies of scale and to reduce maximum waiting times
for inland barges at sea terminals.
In SND problems, the individual role of the stakeholders is usually
ignored and it is assumed that the whole transportation system
is managed by a central party (namely multimodal
operator). While in practice, each company has its own goal and
policies, and shares limited data with others. Furthermore, these
companies are competing with each other, keeping the market dynamic
and vibrant. Inclusion of cooperation and competition in
tactical planning problems merit more research.
Multimodal transportation service network design is in practice
a complex problem with thousands of variables and constraints.
With better study of the problem structure and design of smarter
solution algorithms, it should be possible to derive more accurate
solutions in less computational time.