Developing a Multimodal Transportation Model for China to Minimize Travel Time and Cost under Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract

China exports several goods to other countries or cities and to shift these goods has to use different ways such as road, air, and water for their shipment irrespective of air pollution. Recently China invests in Pakistan Gwadar port to transport goods in a multimodal transport system under Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI). As a partner of BRI, Bangladesh offers port facilities for China to transport its goods to reach destinations in the multimodal transportation system. This study offers three alternatives way Kashgar-Gwadar, Kunming- Chittagong, and Shanghai as sources to shift goods from China and other countries as a destination. This research measures the effective travel time in the roadway as well as seaway and then finds the total travel time from each source to each destination. We develop a transportation model using travel time that helps china to make decisions to shift goods from each source to each country to minimize travel time that helps to minimize transportation cost. This model also is effective to take transportation costs instead of travel time and then it will provide direct minimum transportation cost. © 2023 IEEE.