Study on the optimization of route selection for container multimodal transport based on the time value

In the problem of optimal-route selection for container multimodal transport, high-value and time-sensitive goods have high demand for timeliness, and the time value of goods has become a vital factor for the route selection. This paper classifies container goods according to their time-sensitive characteristics and builds a goods time value model with a capital occupation. Extra cost that is incurred over time and goods depreciation are considered. Based on the determined goods time value, this paper builds an optimal-route selection model of container multimodal transport with the minimum transport cost as the objective and solves the model with the ant colony algorithm. An empirical study compares different optimal routes of different categories of goods with different demands for timeliness as the constraint. The result shows that the goods categories and demand for timeliness can significantly affect the route selection and optimization scheme, which verifies the accuracy and validity of the model.