Railway load capacity analysis in logistics centers

Today, the importance of logistics activities is increasing day by day. Therefore, Turkey has aimed to establish twenty-five logistics centers. Considering the transportation networks and freight potential in logistics location selection, the construction of the Kars logistics center started in 2017. Considering the transportation mode of Kars Logistics center, Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway draws attention, in terms of freight potential, the cargoes to be transferred from China and Turkic Republics to Europe. Logistics centers must be able to meet their load capacity values in order to fulfill their missions. Capacity is an important parameter for logistics centers with large commercial flows. Insufficiency or excess of capacity can cause big problems in terms of both cost and space usage. In this study, the load capacity assessment of the Kars logistics center has been made and a three- stage model that maximizes the capacity utilization according to this assessment is proposed. In the first stage of the proposed model, the load ratio for the next years is estimated according to the amount of load carried in the past at the Kars logistics center with the Exponential Adjustment method. The ratio here is decisive in capacity analysis. In the second stage, alternative load carrying scenarios that maximize the load capacity utilization rate with the help of the mathematical model are obtained and capacity analysis has been made. In the last stage, the most suitable one of these alternative scenarios was decided by TOPSIS method, taking into account the annual number of trips, ramp costs, outgoing cargo amount and container holding criteria. The proposed model is intended to be a reference for all logistics centers.