Joint Allocation of Shared Yard Space and Internal Trucks in Sea–Rail Intermodal Container Terminals

The sea–rail intermodal container terminal serves as a key transportation hub for green logistics, where efficient resource coordination directly enhances multimodal connectivity and operational synergy. To address limited storage capacity and trans-shipment inefficiencies, this study innovatively proposes a resource-sharing strategy between the seaport and the railway container terminal, focusing on the joint allocation of yard space and internal trucks. For indirect trans-shipment operations between ships, the port, the railway container terminal, and trains, a mixed-integer programming model is formulated with the objective of minimizing the container trans-shipment cost and the weighted turnaround time of ships and trains. This model simultaneously determines yard allocation, container transfers, and truck allocation. A two-layer hybrid heuristic algorithm incorporating adaptive Particle Swarm Optimization and Greedy Rules is designed. Numerical experiments verify the model and algorithm performance, revealing that the proposed method achieves an optimality gap of only 1.82% compared to CPLEX in small-scale instances while outperforming benchmark algorithms in solution quality. And the shared yard strategy enhances ship and train turnaround efficiency by an average of 33.45% over traditional storage form. Sensitivity analysis considering multiple realistic factors further confirms the robustness and generalizability. This study provides a theoretical foundation for sustainable port–railway collaboration development.