CHAPTER 3

MODAL CHARACTERISTICS
Traffic characteristics
Passenger traffic
 Physical characteristics of passengers
 The passenger is a standard unit. Load and unloads themselves unless disable
people that need some assistance.
 They have right to a service which will bring them to their destination as they
comfort and safety.
 Also assumed they can follow instructions, read timetable/schedule and self
consolidating.
 Economic characteristics of passengers
 Economic status of people may dictate the demand for movement, the choice
of various forms of movement and the amount of movements take place.
 Ability to pay depends on the standard of living of people which varies
enormously and the price of service.
 Willingness to pay depending on the journey purpose, if an essential trips
people may be willing to pay at any cost. This is where the situation of inelastic
demand towards transport occurs.
Cont’d
 Journey purpose
 People may have various reasons in making trips, this has a marked effect on the
type of services people demand.
 Journey purposes can be categorized into;
 Essential journey (e.g. Trips to work, school, etc)

 Non-essential journey (e.g Leisure, shopping, recreational, etc)

 Businessman require fast and comfortable service as they values their time highly
whilst a tourist may not be interested in speed at all but may consider.
 Location
 The activities which make up the purpose of the journey made by people may be
located anywhere, at any time and various types of services could be demanded:
 Urban , inter-urban, rural and international services
Traffic characteristics
 Goods/Freight traffic
 Physical characteristics freight
 Goods may have various properties and qualities which are very important to be identified before planning for its
transportation. This includes:
 Liquid, solid or gas
 Animate or inanimate – livestock
 Fragile or non-fragile
 Hazardous or non-hazardous ,etc
 It can be in variety of sizes, shapes and weights and this will influence the packaging and material handling
equipment to be used for it.
 Economic characteristics
 Demand for transport is derived demand.
 Goods can be classified as valuable and non-valuable, and the value of freight is an indicator of the economic
ability to bear the cost of transport.
 e.g. coal is low value goods, so it cannot bear high cost of transport. Gold is high value, so it can bear high cost of
transport which secured, less transit, etc.
Cont’d
 Stages in processing
 The value and bulk weight ratio of goods is different at each stage and has a great
implication for transport.
 Three stages concern in transport:
 Raw materials
 Semi processed Goods
 Finished Goods
 Method of handling
 The inherent properties of commodities influence the methods of packing to
avoid loss and damage.
 Packaging serves to consolidate goods into convenient sizes for handling and
marketing and also to protect the goods from damage or contamination.
 Size and divisibility
 The size of individual pieces or packages – dimensions, volumes or weights will
influence the capacity and the type of equipment to be used
 CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFICIENT
TRANSPORT SERVICE
SAFE
SAFE PUNCTUALITY
PUNCTUALITY
ARRIVAL
ARRIVAL &&RELIABILITY
RELIABILITY

COMFORT
COMFORT
SPEED
SPEED

REGULARITY
REGULARITY CAPACITY
CAPACITY

FREQUENCY
FREQUENCY ACCEPTABLE
ACCEPTABLE
COST
COST
COMPREHENSIVENESS
COMPREHENSIVENESS
Chapter 4: Concept and
Definition
SYSTEM CONCEPT - PASSENGER
• For passengers, factors needed:
1. Interchange/station/terminal
2. Ease of fare collection/integrated ticketing scheme
3. Parking bays
4. Application of Kiss and Ride, & Park and Ride

PARK AND RIDE

• A P&R concept is a simple ‘at grade’ car park with good connectivity
with bus/rail public tpt
• Basically the idea is that drivers will travel by car to the P&R area,
park the car and complete the journey by public tpt, usually rail tpt
• A variant of P&R is Kiss and Ride. Hence travelers are dropped off
in the morning and potentially picked up again later in the day
• Essential features of P&R:
1. Location Criteria
• Should be close to a major urban corridor
• Should be adjacent to an existing public tpt line
• Sufficient all day parking spaces for genuine P&R travelers
• Dropping off and waiting space for Kiss and Ride users
• Away from road bottleneck
• Should be readily visible from the road in the urban corridor
• Access to the site by road should be good
• Not too close to any existing P&R facilities
• Parking security
• Ensure no on-street parking is P&R parking capacity is
exceeded
• Site expansion potential
• Adequate lighting for personal safety
PARK AND RIDE
Freight Concept and
Definition
 INTERMODAL TRANSPORT SYSTEM

 The term ‘inter-modal is defined as:

‘The use of two or more modes of transportation in moving a shipment from origin to
destination’.

(Bardi, Coyle & Novack, 2006)

 WHAT IS INTERMODAL TRANSPORT?

 Intermodalism is not something new

 The use of more than one mode of transport has often been practiced

before for both passenger and freight movement

 However, the term intermodal transport is largely applied to freight

transportation
 In the freight transport sector, the growth of intermodal transport is

largely fueled by the development of the ‘container’

BENEFITS OF INTERMODAL TRANSPORT
 Combines the advantages of each mode
 Intermodal service benefits from the advantage of each mode
 Consider the combination of air-road consignment
 For example, the shipment will have a higher overall speed than an all road service and
door-to-door accessibility as compared to all air service
 Provides greater service coverage
 Intermodal transport allows shipment to be none dependent on the inherent modal
weaknesses
 For example, intermodal shipment allows a container to be moved from a rail terminal
to areas without rail service through the use of lorries (road transport)
SYSTEM CONCEPT – FREIGHT
Containerization
• The system concept for freight mainly focuses on containerization
• “a steel-framed box, with a strong floor and parallel sides, end and
roof”
• the doors at the open end can be secured and sealed giving good
protection against the pilferage
• the steel frame must be strong enough to support other containers
stacked above it (up to seven stacks high)
• containerization has led to the dev of integrated tpt system, offering
depot to depot services on worldwide routes for all types of goods
- its intermodal nature of the transit, where containers move easily from one mode of
tpt to another
CONTAINERIZATION
Dimension of Container:
• Most of it are standard configuration (ISO Standard) with majority
having measurement of:
Length: 20ft, 40ft, 45ft and 60ft
Width: 8ft
Height: 8ft to 9ft 6inc
• A 40ft container is equivalent to 2 TEU’s
In Malaysia, the era of containerization starts in 1973,when the first
vessel carrying containers depart from Port Klang to Tokyo Bay.
However, the preparation has been done by government & LPK since
1970 which includes roads & railways improvement, wharves
expansion, deepening of wharves and channels, yards, reefer points,
inland clearance depot, etc
CONTAINERIZATION
• There are variety types of containers
• General cargo
• Refrigerated
• Top loading
• Half height
• Open sided
• Flat rack
• Dry bulk
• Tanker
• igloo
CONTAINERIZATION
Advantages of using containers
• It consolidates cargo
• Can be handled more quickly & more easily
• Less packaging is needed
• Less labour in handling
• Economic utilization of cargo space volume
• Reduce pilferage
• Simpler documentation
• Facilitates transfer from one tpt modes to another
• Faster turnaround time
• Saving on storage & warehousing
CONTAINERIZATION
Disadvantages of using container:
• Technical problems
- Needs for special ship, berths, container
parks, handling facilities and vehicles
• Operational problems
- cost of operating is enormous, especially in
ports, gantry cranes, getting back empty
containers
CHAPTER 5:
UNIT LOAD CONCEPT
& MATERIAL HANDLING
(credit to Mr Faisal Sulaiman)
Unit Load concept
 The idea of a unit load for logistics was developed from the
realization of the high costs involved in the storage and
movement of products.
 It enables goods and packages to be grouped together, then
handled and moved more effectively using mechanical
equipment.
 Two typical examples are the wooden pallet and the large
shipping container – this has revolutionized physical
distribution and logistics process.
 Choosing the most appropriate type and size of unit load:
 minimizes the frequency of material movement
 enables standard storage and handling equipment to be
used with optimum equipment utilization
 minimize vehicle load/unload times
 improves product protection, security and stocktaking.
Cont’d
 The concept is that a collection of items is moved as a single unit. e.g.
 60 tins of baked beans are put into a cardboard carton-small unit load
 20 such cardboard cartons are put into a pallet in 5 rows of 4 cartons
each as a unit load, it’s total 1,200 tins.
Advantages of unit load
 Standardize handling equipment
 Standardize storage equipment
 Reduce information & control burden
 Efficient macro space utilization

Disadvantages of unit load

 Cost of assembly and disassembly
- incurred much labor costs
 Cost of container and wrapping
 Cost of empty container handling and disposal
 Inefficient micro space utilization
Types of unit load
 Work boxes
 Suitable for handling small components
 Cardboard cartons
 A protective packaging unit which can be stored on pallets or racks.
 Sacks
 Made in a variety of materials, paper, jute and plastic
 Pallet
 The most versatile of of unit load system.
Palletization

 A pallet is a flat transport structure made of wood or plastic

(and in a few cases metal and paper) which can support a
variety of goods in a stable fashion while being lifted by any
mobile forklift or other jacking device.
 The goods are placed on top of the pallet, and can be
secured to it by straps or stretch-wrapped plastic film. A pallet
is sometimes colloquially called a skid, by back-formation
from skid loader.
Cont’d
Cont’d
 A Standard pallet measures 100x120x12 cm (slightly less than 40 inches by 48 inches by 5
inches).
 It weighs 15 to 21 kilograms empty. Most pallets can easily carry a load of 1,000 kg (about
2,000 lb).
 The gradual advent of containers for the transport of nearly all goods has spurred the use of
pallets because the containers always offer the clean, level surfaces needed to make pallet
movement economical.
 The common ISO standard pallets also fit neatly into common ISO containers, which in
turn fit neatly on container ships, trains and trucks.
 EFFECT OF PALLETISATION
 Advantages:
1. A reduction in time and labor
2. Improved utilization of warehouse space
3. Individual packages can be assembled on the plant onto a
pallet
4. Hand operated pallet truck –cheap, can be used by unskilled
labour
5. Damage in transit –reduced
6. Reduction in delivery cost
Cont’d
 Disadvantages:
1. Lack of uniformity & standardization
2. High costs eg Plastic based pallets
3. Non durable eg Wooden pallets
Material handling
 Handling in the warehouse or DC will have a major impact on how
effectively materials flow through the system, and on the cost,
resource and time taken to get orders out to the customer.
 Various methods of handling goods are used in warehousing or DC,
from manual through automated or robotic systems,
 Manually operated trucks and trolleys
 Powered trucks and trolleys
 Crane systems
 Conveyors
 Holding aids
Automated systems
 Advantages
 Operating cost savings
 Labor cost reduction, reduction in material handling,
etc.
 Improved service levels
 Service availability, increase output rate, consistency of
service, speed of service, etc.
 Increased control through more and better
information.
 Accuracy level, etc.
Cont’d
 Disadvantages
 Initial capital cost
 Downtime or unreliability of equipment/maintenance
interruptions.
 Software related problem
 Capacity problems
 Lack of flexibility to respond to changing environment
 Maintenance costs
 User interface and training
 Worker acceptance
 Obsolescence