【正文】 rds intermodal cooperation. Shipping lines in particular, began to offer integrated rail and road service to customers. The advantages of each mode could be exploited in a seamless system, which created multiplying effects. Customers could purchase the service to ship their products from door to door, without having to concern themselves of modal barriers. With one bill of lading clients can obtain one through rate, despite the transfer of goods from one mode to another.The most important feature of intermodalism is the provision of a service with one ticket (for passengers) or one bill of lading (for freight). This has necessitated a revolution in organization and information control. At the heart of modern intermodalism are data handling, processing and distribution systems that are essential to ensure the safe, reliable and cost effective control of freight and passenger movements being transported by several modes. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is an evolving technology that is helping panies and government agencies (customs documentation) cope with an increasingly plex global transport system. Multimodal Transport SystemToday, intermodal transport is transforming a growing share of the medium and longhaul freight flows across the globe. Large integrated transport carriers provide door to door services. The limits of intermodality are imposed by factors of space, time, form, pattern of the network, the number of nodes and linkages, and the type and characteristic of the vehicles and terminals.A multimodal transport system integrates different geographical scales from the global to the local. With the development of new modal and intermodal infrastructure, urban regions have a growing accessibility to the international market。 Bailey Circus used its own special train of flat railroad cars to tour cities in the United States. It took 3 to 5 hours and considerable effort to unload and load trailers, but the concept remained and piggybacking started to be adopted by railroad operators. By the 1950s piggybacking became increasingly used and a good source of ine for rail panies.Containerization however changed piggybacking to stacking and then to doublestacking where possible. Doublestacking of containers (Container on Flat Car。 l Transportation time and costs。 l The modes of transportation being used。 that is movements between modes. It also concerns movements within segments of the same mode。ADeregulationEasier contractual agreements。 Tracking shipments and managing fleetsCapital investmentsReturns on investmentsHighs costs and long amortization。s largest container shipping pany. The Ideal X carried containers until 1965, when it was scrapped.Since the 1960s major efforts have been made to integrate separate transport systems through intermodalism, which took place is several stages. What initially began as improving the productivity of shipping evolved into an integrated supply chain management system across modes. This involves the use of at least two different modes in a trip from origin to destination through an intermodal transport chain. Intermodality enhances the economic performance of a transport chain by using modes in the most productive manner. Thus, the linehaul economies of rail may be exploited for long distances, with the efficiencies of trucks providing flexible local pick up and delivery. The key is that the entire trip is seen as a whole, rather than as a series of legs, each marked by an individual operation with separate sets of documentation and rates. Integrated Transport Systems: From Fragmentation to CoordinationFactorCauseConsequenceTechnologyContainerization amp。 The Nature of IntermodalismCompetition between the modes has tended to produce a transport system that is segmented and unintegrated. Each mode has sought to exploit its own advantages in terms of cost, service, reliability and safety. Carriers try to retain business by maximizing the linehaul under their control. All the modes saw the other modes as petitors, and were viewed with suspicion and mistrust. The lack of integration between the modes was also accentuated by public policy that has frequently barred panies from owning firms in other modes (as in the United States before deregulation), or has placed a mode under direct state monopoly control (as in Europe). Modalism was also favored because of the difficulties of transferring goods from one mode to another, thereby incurring additional terminal costs and delays.Intermodalism originated in maritime transportation, with the development of the container in the late 196039。s and has since spread to integrate other modes. It is not surprising that the maritime sector should have been the first mode to pursue containerization. It was the mode most constrained by the time taken to load and unload the vessels. A conventional breakbulk cargo ship could spend as much time in a port as it did at sea. Containerization permits the mechanized handling of cargoes of diverse types and dimensions that are placed into boxes of standard sizes. In this way goods that might have taken days to be loaded or unloaded from a ship can now be handled in a matter of minutes.First Containership, IdealX, 1956On April 26th 1956, the IdealX left the Port of Newark, New Jersey to the Port Houston, Texas, which it called 5 days later. It carried 58 35feet (8 feet wide by 8 feet high) containers, along with a regular load of 15,000 tons of bulk petroleum. The 35 feet unit represented at that time the standard truck size in the United States. This first containership was converted under the initiative of Mal McLean (19142001), a trucking magnate who saw the tremendous potential of containerization, particularly in terms of loading and unloading costs. McLean calculated that in 1956 loading a mediumsized ship the conventional way was costing $ a ton. Comparatively, loading the IdealX was costing less than $ a ton. The eco