The Design of a New Freight Distribution System in Venice

This paper examines the reorganization of freight transportation in the city of Venice, Italy. Most of the freight arrives from the mainland by trucks, but must be carried to the final customers by boats, through a network of small canals. The existence of constraints, related to the widths and clearances of the canals, makes it necessary to use boats of different sizes and capacities. In this paper, we analyze the transshipment operations from trucks to boats, and the organization of the boat distribution.