Increasing transport problems caused by high dependency on road transport, has brought us to investigate various policy scenarios to promote a greater use of rail and coastal transport for freight transport in New Zealand. For this, we examined how factors associated with freight transport (e.g. cost and reliability) influenced the transport decisions of shippers with various operation types. Online stated preference surveys were developed and mixed-logit models were estimated from the data provided by 233 shippers. These models were used to calculate the base mode shares, and subsequently, to test various hypothetical policy options for promoting greater use of rail and coastal transport. The results show that a substantial improvement in reliability of both the rail and coastal freight transport services will lead to a substantial decline in the share of road transport, especially for shippers with short-haul and long-haul operations, transporting either large or small shipment volume.