So, we know that railway and terminal infrastructure in Germany are finite – there is only so much space to work with. Terminals are the central hubs that keep Combined Transport running, but they’re also shouldering the pressure of steadily increasing freight flows.

Together, Prof. Ralf Elbert and Samira Ghaneian set out to investigate inland combined transport terminal layouts. The main challenge? Data availability. From nearly 400 combined transport terminals all over Europe, we defined suitable criteria and narrowed our sample to 119. For the first run, we analyzed 30 bimodal and trimodal terminals across 12 European countries, focusing on aspects such as total terminal area, perimeter, transshipment areas, storage capacity, and the equipment used in each terminal layout.

And what did we find? We were excited to present our results at the 2025 Logistics Management Conference at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy. We learnt that inland combined transport terminals in Europe exhibit high structural diversity in their layouts. Based on this sample of 30 inland terminals, we derived a first version of a “template”, a basic standard terminal layout based on the average and standard deviation, which can serve as a starting point for a standardization approach – supporting planning, benchmarking, and future capacity assessments.

There is much more to explore in this field, and we are only at the beginning. Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn to stay up to date with our ongoing research and to learn more about how we can make freight transport infrastructure more resilient and efficient!