A Bottom-Up Cost Modeling Framework for Road and Rail Freight Transport in India

ABSTRACT India's road and rail haulage sector is crucial to the country's economy, but it faces challenges due to fragmented operations, diverse regional practices, inconsistent infrastructure quality, and an unstructured nature. Hence, it results in inefficiencies and more expensive logistics, and therefore, the need for an accurate cost model specific to the Indian context is proposed. This conceptual article included the bottom-up approach to the cost estimation model to enable a more thorough evaluation of transport expenses. The cost model is linked to a variety of networks within the structured vehicular and rail transit system for freight transportation. Hence, to attain real-time coordination and monitoring within India's intermodal freight transportation system, the intelligent freight transportation system is proposed as the key theoretical foundation of web application development. The application of the cost model framework is applied for the Delhi region, where it is shown that the systematic transportation framework and the intelligent freight transportation system have the potential to lower the transit time and cost of transportation. Moreover, the comparative assessment will analyse both the total and per-unit costs of moving freight through a star network against traditional long-haul road routes that traverse multiple states. Based on the outcome from cost analysis, the company management accepts effectiveness , the least expenses and minimal time duration of transit in a star network as compared to traditional long-haul road transportation. The study concluded that the cost model has the potential for implementation in real-world scenarios, contingent on the development of the web application.