Strategic Plan for Promoting Rail and Water Freight in the European Union

The European Union (EU) wants rail and water to have a greater share of freight transport in the future than they currently have. As a consultant with expertise in logistics, you have been commissioned to produce a strategic plan which aims to promote rail and water freight, to achieve the overall objective of achieving a reduction in road’s share of EU freight transport activity. You must produce a report which has brief introduction and conclusion sections and meets the following requirements:

Requirement % of marks

1. A clear overview of the key trends in EU freight transport activity since 2010. This should be based on published statistics and must focus only on the most important information which demonstrates the trends both in overall EU freight activity and in the use of the different freight transport modes.
2. A concise review of the key characteristics of the three freight transport modes under consideration for this study (i.e. road, rail and water), ending with the identification of the main challenges for increasing the freight modal share of rail and water in the EU.
3. An original action plan containing specific actions for the short-term  (i.e. within 5 years) and long-term (i.e. more than 5 years) to increase the share of rail and water in overall EU freight transport activity. You are not required to give equal attention to rail and water in your action plan; instead, you should focus on the main objective of reducing road’s share of EU freight transport through greater use of rail and/or water. Your action plan should take account of the characteristics of the different modes, and you must explain the reason(s) for each action’s inclusion in the plan and assess the opportunities and barriers relating to its implementation. When selecting actions, you should prioritise those that you believe will provide maximum benefit in each time period.
4. A well-structured, well-written and well-referenced report. You should use Harvard referencing to refer to all source material.

You should make use of relevant and reliable published information but, as this is a strategic assessment, you should not go into lots of detail about individual routes, freight flows or commodity types. However, you may wish to support your assessment with some examples of freight activity which could be moved by rail and water instead of by road. Your report must be your own work and should be 2,500 words in length (+/-10%).

Your coursework will be assessed based on how well you address the coursework requirement set out above, using the weighting of marks shown.