At present, there are generally three ways to transport goods between the Yangtze River and the sea: using river boats and sea boats to transport goods in sections. The task of maritime and inland river transportation is completed by sea-going ships and inland river ships in sections, and the goods are changed between sea-going ships and inland river ships in estuaries, which is generally called river-sea combined transportation, that is, river-sea transit transportation.

When sailing at sea, it is transported by barge mother ship. The special sub-barges are stacked on the mother ship, and the cargo sub-barges are unloaded into the inland river at the estuary, and then towed by the pusher or tugboat to transport the goods to the inland river port or the unloading place designated by the shipowner. Using a river-sea dual-purpose ship, there is no need to shift gears during transportation, which is called direct transportation.

At present, there is no special article focusing on the comparative analysis of these three modes of transportation. This paper will analyze the different modes of transportation applicable to different types of goods from the perspective of goods, and compare the advantages and disadvantages of various modes of transportation from an objective perspective. For example, iron ore has the above three modes of transportation.

Compare and analyze which transportation mode has great development potential from the aspect of cost, and compare these three modes from the perspective of fuzzy analytic hierarchy process and data envelopment analysis. The conclusion is that the simple river-sea direct transportation mode should be chosen in theory, but considering the actual loading and unloading capacity of some ports and docks in China and the objective conditions of the Yangtze River waterway, the traditional transit transportation can not be completely abandoned at present. For example, Chongqing Iron and Steel, Hubei Iron and Steel and other iron and steel enterprises can't use direct transportation between rivers and seas at present. Therefore, the more reasonable development direction should be the development of coordinated transportation mode, which is mainly based on river-sea direct transportation and supplemented by transit transportation.