China Hub-Based Railway Express Freight Shipment Network

Based on the research on the hub-and-spoke network in Europe railway freight and the features of regional economic exchange and transportation demand in China, a hub-and-spoke based network structure is proposed for China railway express freight in order to resolve the conflicts between the railway long distance and bulk transportation features and the small lot and high frequency shipment demand. In this paper, an evaluating index system and mathematical method is developed for the hub location problem. The hub-and-spoke based network would cut the collecting time of freight flows, improve the frequency of trains operation between railway express freight hubs, and solve the difficult operation situations of the "five sets" regular trains.