Road accounts for approximately 90 percent of the tonnes transported domestically in Finland and around 70 percent of the tonne-kilometres, according to Traficom’s overview updated in 2024. Rail and waterborne freight generally produce lower greenhouse gas emissions per tonne-kilometre, but their suitability also depends on how easily they fit into the supply chain.
Why Road Becomes the Default
Our LOBRA findings suggest that ease of organisation plays an important role in transport choices. Road can become the default before alternatives are compared: the service is familiar, the contact is established, and booking another shipment requires little additional work.
A truck can be one phone call. Arranging a multimodal movement may require securing rail capacity, organising collection and delivery, meeting terminal cut-off times and agreeing responsibilities at each handover. When a connection is missed, someone must reorganise the shipment and keep the customer informed.
Understanding Coordination Cost
Booking, information exchange, managing handovers and resolving disruptions all require staff time. Together, these activities form what we can call coordination cost.
This cost may be absorbed into internal overhead or included in a logistics provider’s fee, making it difficult to identify separately. Where several services must be arranged independently, the additional effort can erode the financial advantage of a multimodal option.
An integrated service can reduce the customer’s burden by providing a single point of contact and responsibility. The coordination still takes place, but the customer no longer has to manage every connection.
Implications for Transportation Modelling
Comparing routes, distances and transport prices provides only part of the information needed to assess a transport solution. A model should also account for the conditions under which services can actually be used: booking lead times, departure frequency, terminal cut-offs and the consequences of missed connections.
These operational factors help identify where coordination is required. Estimating its cost also requires understanding how much work is involved, who performs it and how often disruptions demand intervention.
This would allow modelling to examine practical questions. Could aligned schedules reduce manual intervention? Would shared shipment information simplify handovers? Could a single booking service make a multimodal chain easier to use?
Relevance to LOBRA
Much of the necessary information is distributed across operators’ systems, and sharing it involves commercial considerations. Our interviews have highlighted the tension between interest in open data and willingness to contribute operational information.
For LOBRA, a key next step is to establish what can realistically be measured and shared, and how it can support transportation modelling. Making coordination cost visible would help explain why a seemingly attractive transport option remains unused and identify changes that could make it practical.
Project number: 404191
