Problems of safety & reliability analysis of combined road-rail transportation system

The total international traffic performances in combined rail-road transport rose in 2000 by 2 billion tonne-kilometres. The national traffic of the combined transport in Poland is still close to zero. The problem of national traffic concerns the effectiveness of less than 500 - 600 km distance transportation. The paper presents the simplified methodology for combined transport effectiveness comparison. It seems to be sensible to supplement the engineer economic analysis by reliability and safety models. The possibilities of costs analysis of transportation task realisation are discussed. The simplified model of comparison of road and combined transport is shown. The problems of uncertainty of available data acquisition are mentioned and some examples of reliability and safety data are shown.