Freight on Public Transportation: Assessing the Role of Inter-modality

Freight on public transportation offers promising solutions for transporting goods in cities. It utilizes existing infrastructure such as stations and stops, light rails, metro, or other modes like Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). Another method is to utilize the space within vehicles, known as shared passenger and parcel solutions. A well organized and implemented shared passenger and parcel solution can lead to more efficient and environmentally friendly transportation of goods and parcels within cities. The objective of this paper is to attempt to gauge the potential of inter-modal containers in urban freight transportation, a literature review was chosen as the means to achieve the stated objective, and so three research questions were formulated and 24 papers on freight using public transportation published between 2013 and 2023, were chosen, the review process involved the creation of a classification table, enabling the systematic organization and analysis of the selected papers. Our findings reveal that freight on public transportation research is a rich and diverse research field, multiple problem classes are solved including vehicle routing, transshipment between transportation modes has been considered repeatedly and inter-modal container is recognized as main field for future research.