Given the push for the relocation of production lines ( nearshoring ) and the modal imbalance of land transportation in Mexico, it is necessary to promote other alternatives for the movement of cargo, with intermodal being an option to face this challenge, said the Mexican Institute of Transportation (IMT) .
He specified that in Mexico an unbalanced freight transport system has predominated for decades, particularly in the field of land transport, where motor transport predominates with respect to rail transport (75% of the ton-kilometers correspond to the former and 25% to the railway), which limits the sustainability and long-term competitiveness of distribution and transportation networks.
While the load to be transported increases year after year and, with it, the conflicts derived from the country’s current transportation model .
This trend in itself, noted the IMT, requires attention, but even more so, in the face of the geographical reconfiguration of a good part of global production and its supply chains, where Mexico is one of the attractive spaces for the location of manufacture process.
“In the case of intermodal, which is one of the complementary alternatives to land transport and the one that is seen as most feasible to face the challenge of transferring cargo from road to rail,” according to the IMT in the document “The option of intermodal in the face of the imbalance of land freight transportation in Mexico.”
He explained that the advantages of intermodal transport are less rate variation , savings in logistics costs, more stable transit times, less handling of goods and greater cargo tracking capabilities, reasons to consider that “its development should be a pillar of the strategy aimed at increasing the participation of the railway in the movement of cargo in the country and, consequently, reducing the volume of motor transportation to some extent.”
Meanwhile, in socio-environmental issues, the impact focused on accidents registers greater social consequences on the side of motor transportation, while in rail transport, energy efficiency is greater and the emission of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) is lower.
However, he maintained that when considering intermodal transportation as one of the complementary alternatives to land transportation, “it is difficult to estimate its proportion in the national context, since there is no data on the intermodal cargo that circulates on the federal highway network.” .
However, he explained that from the ports of Manzanillo, Lázaro Cárdenas , Altamira and Veracruz , the imbalance between the volumes of intermodal cargo mobilized by motor transport and rail is high .
Based on the average of the railroad shares in cargo movements in each port, with the exception of Altamira, which reports clear consistency, in the other three ports, rail transport has decreased its participation percentages in the intermodal cargo movement.
Lázaro Cárdenas is the one who registers the greatest reduction, but Veracruz, although less strong, is far from what was observed in 2010, a case similar to that of Manzanillo, which despite maintaining a stable proportion from 2018 to 2021, its percentage in recent years is seven percentage points lower than 2010.
“There is no doubt that a sustainable transportation model involves intermodalism with the aim of reducing a series of costs, such as those caused by road accidents, those caused by frequent delays related to high road congestion, those that affect economic competitiveness and those linked to environmental damage,” he stated.
Therefore, he highlighted that a national transportation system, formed on the basis of detailed planning work, would contribute to raising the competitiveness of the country’s economy, by reducing, on the one hand, a series of costs and increasing, on the other hand, On the other hand, savings related to the increase in cargo capture by the railway and the sustained increase in intermodal transport.
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