Since 2018, the Chinese government has carried out actions to promote the adjustment of transportation structure. The “Road to Rail Policy” of transferring inland road transportation of maritime containers to rail transportation has become an important action. Measuring the economic distance of inland transportation of maritime containers is of great significance, which can not only promote the realization of the “Road to Rail Policy”, but also promote the “Transportation Development for Belt and Road Areas”. Based on the shipper's choice behavior data of the inland transportation of maritime containers, the value of time is estimated by multinomial logit (MNL) model, which is converted into cost of time (COT), and the relationship between the generalized cost and the transportation distance is estimated. The results show that the rail economic distance range without incorporating COT is larger. The MNL model verifies the significant effect of time, cost and reliability indicators on the choice behavior. The Preferential Price Policy of Rail can effectively expand the rail economic transportation distance range. In addition, different values of arc elasticity of the economic distance to the proportion of preferential price of rail indicate that the influence of drayage cost is great. For the rail express, the focus of service improvement is to reduce the operation time and waiting time of departure and arrival stations.

CICTP;Value of time;Economic distance;Generalized cost;Discrete choice model;Freight