Sustainable Development of Intermodal Freight Transportation—Through the Integration of Logistics Flows in Ukraine and Poland

Abstract

Nowadays, sustainable development is becoming a model for significant improvements in the modern world. Taking into consideration possible future challenges, transport must have sustainable features. Today, such a type of transportation as intermodal transport (transport that uses more than one mode of transportation) is gaining relevance. It is one of the most promising types of transport from an economic and environmental point of view. In this paper, the importance of sustainable development of intermodal freight transport is analyzed; the state of foreign trade and the trade balance in Ukraine and Poland are examined; and the sustainable development trends and prospects of trade relations between two countries are determined, taking into account the existing product structure. It is noted that the post-war recovery of Ukraine will require the activation of logistical flows with EU countries. The analysis of the state of freight transport by various modes of transport allowed for theoretically justifying the insufficient attention given to the development of intermodal freight transport between Ukraine and Poland for logistics optimization in international trade. From a methodological perspective, it is proposed to describe the subject area in terms of graph theory. The practical contribution involved the testing of the proposed model of intermodal freight transport to optimize logistics flows in international trade between Ukraine and Poland, considering the minimization of transport service costs and time. This required refining the mathematical apparatus based on the method of successive moves and linking their development to specific supply chains.