Market analysis for shifting of goods from road to rail by means of combined transport in Germany

The current discussion about the necessity of worldwide CO2 reduction awakens interest of a growing number of companies to check the train as alternative to the truck transport. Additionally a broad public interest and programmes of the governments support the shift from road to rail. There are a lot of general discussions about the need and the advantages of the train transport. But it isn´t said, how much shiftable potential there exist. One point is, that most of the companies do not have an own railway access and have to use special terminals. This transport of containerised goods to the special terminals by truck and then by train to another terminal is called combined transport (CT). Another point is that some goods and production concepts have economical and technical requirements, the combined transport cannot fulfil. Thus, this paper first analyses and identifies which kinds of goods can be shifted from a tech-nical point of view and which kinds of transports are realistic and attractive to shift from an economical point of view. The goods are categorised in primary, secondary and tertiary potential to shift. Secondly, this paper elaborates on this basis, how much maximum potential that means for the market, and illustrates it in the case of Germany. The analysis concludes, that in the case of Germany the maximum shifting potential results in 10% of the current truck transports.