The “rolling road” transport system (German: Rollende Landstrasse, abbreviated as Ro-La) is one of the intermodal transport systems that involves the carriage of complete road sets (trucks with trailers with a total length of 18.75 m or tractor units with semi-trailers with a total length of 16.50 m) on special low-floor railway wagons.
The undoubted advantages of this system are:
- the possibility of transporting entire road sets,
- no need to adapt semi-trailers for transshipment,
- relatively low investment costs associated with the construction of transshipment terminals,
- easy loading and unloading of the truck, which can be carried out directly under the overhead contact line,
- the possibility for the truck to continue its journey immediately after unloading at the terminal (there is no need for the semi-trailer to wait at the terminal for a tractor unit),
- counting the travel time of the road set on the railway platform as the driver’s rest time,
- relatively short time to assemble a train ready for departure (the shortest compared to other intermodal transport systems).
Until now, intermodal transport, including “rolling road” shipments, has been contrasted with typical road transport. In the context of current trends related to the pursuit of co-modality in freight transport, the problem of the “rolling road” should be viewed as a supplement and complement to the road transport process. Transport by heavy goods vehicles is regulated by a number of provisions. Among them are those concerning the driver’s working time. The obligation to comply with them causes the transport process to stop. The authors do not, of course, deny their validity, but point out the fact that despite the need to take breaks during transport resulting from daily or weekly driver rest periods, the cargo can still be transported using the “rolling road” technology. The article focuses particular attention on the implementation of these shipments in transit through Poland in the North-South direction.
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Source: Logistyka Magazine