External costs from vessel emissions at port: a review of the methodological and empirical state of the art†

The accurate calculation of external costs from vessel emissions and shipping (as it happens with transport) strongly depends on parameters such as location, the time of the day and vessel operative. Thus, the use of a full bottom-up approach and granular traffic details is suggested. The latter may represent a substantial improvement in the resolution of shipping activity, energy demand, emissions and cost data being the latter essential for better regulations. The revised work identifies the Impact Pathway Approach (IPA) as the best-practice bottom-up methodology for calculating site-specific external costs derived from shipping air emissions. It has been widely adopted, among others, over major European studies (CAFE, BeTa, NEEDS and HEATCO). Also, it shows that due to costly and complex requirements of creating a shipping and harbour-specific bottom-up approach, external cost calculation based on tonne per euro factors obtained from European Studies (top-down approach) has been widely accepted. Moreover, methodological improvements and the possible achievement of refined estimations (IPA) dedicated to ports and shipping are strongly suggested, as these may improve information quality used for environmental policy and measures that contribute to the internalisation of externality costs.     

Inland waterways—their role and significance in European transport

Summary

1) Western Europe has a navigable waterways‐network of about 19,000 kms. For the coming decades, however, about 40 percent of the length of these waterways has a very limited relevance, because of the small capacity of the barges that can pass along them.

2) Of the different types of barges the majority are the self‐propelled type. The importance of the pull‐towed barges is declining quickly, whereas the push‐towed barges are on the upswing.

3) The relative importance of inland shipping in comparison with rail transport is far from uniform. In The Netherlands inland shipping is dominant. On the other hand, in France, this mode of transport has only 30 percent of the total number of tons transported by inland shipping and railways together.

4) May the relative importance defer, there is a strong resemblance between the types of goods that are transported via the waterways with crude and manufactured minerals as well as building materials ranking high. In general, inland shipping is primarily involved in the transport of basic products and is of vital importance to the functioning of the West‐European economy.

5) The rather complicated legal regime of the waterways in Western Europe is certainly not the only reason why the integration in the transportation sector of the European Communities hardly moves on.

A fundamental discussion about the basic conceptions of the transport policy in the Common Market is unavoidable before real progress can be made. The entrance of the United Kingdom into the European Community may give an opening on this point.

6) Life goes on, with or without transport‐integration. Inland shipping moves forward too, paying for the use of infrastructure or not.

The general trends in transport support the expectation that the relative importance of inland shipping will increase in the coming decades. The increase in size of shipments and transport distances works in favour of this mode of transport. Besides this, inland shipping still has many possibilities to improve its productivity.

7) The future of inland shipping will be found in bulk transport and the transport of general cargo that has a volume per destination that goes far beyond the quantities for which the container or comparable types of transport units are better suited.     

Real-time schedule recovery in liner shipping service with regular uncertainties and disruption events

This paper studies real-time schedule recovery policies for liner shipping under various regular uncertainties and the emerging disruption event that may delay a vessel from its planned schedule. The aim is to recover the affected schedule in the most efficient way. One important contribution of this work is to explicitly distinguish two types of uncertainties in liner shipping, and propose different strategies to handle them. The problem can be formulated as a multi-stage stochastic control problem that minimizes the total expected fuel cost and delay penalty. For regular uncertainties that can be characterized by appropriate probabilistic models, we develop the properties of the optimal control policy; then we show how an emerging disruption may change the control policies. Numerical studies demonstrate the advantages of real-time schedule recovery policies against some typical alternatives.     

Capabilities and Radicalism: Engineering Accessibility in the 21st century

Abstract

Engineering bridges the gap between, on the one hand, that mix of philosophy and politics that we call policy and, on the other, the physical implementation of the means to put policy into practice. Starting with a brief outline of the nature of accessibility, why it is important and how in some cases a person might be disabled by a lack of accessibility, this article – based on the author's Inaugural Lecture given at University College London in February 2005 – turns to consider how a person's needs challenge their capabilities (i.e. what they can do) and considers a radical approach to understanding people's capabilities in the implementation process. Next, the formation of policy intentions in order to permit, encourage and implement the engineering of appropriate solutions is discussed and conclusions drawn about how this affects work in the transport domain. Perhaps we need to look at the world in a different way before we can make it a better place.     

International emission regulation in sea transport: Economic feasibility and impact

Emissions from shipping due to the burning of the sulphur content of marine fuels conduce to air pollution in the form of sulphur dioxide and particulate matter. Various international organisations and institutions impose environmental standards on their member states to limit the emission of greenhouse gases. This paper examines both the potential effects of the emerging international maritime emission regulations on the competition between seaports and the potential underlying economic motivations fostering the discussion of introducing Emission Control Areas. It focuses on deepsea shipping. Another novelty is that the environmental issues are addressed from a policy, an economic and a legislative viewpoint. For the policy-related part, it is found that the political theory of public choice suggests that not the green lobby but rather the petrochemical lobby is the major driving factor behind the very strict emission caps. A potential port shift from Northern Europe to Mediterranean ports seems unlikely due to logistics disadvantages and service problems in Southern European ports. Finally, no convincing proof was found that the main liner companies would be unprepared for this legislation and should be persuaded to change their routes in favour of Mediterranean ports solely on account of the various emission regulations. The legal analysis, however, showed that the current enforcement regime of MARPOL Annex VI should be improved in order to rule out the possibility of a low degree of compliance and to protect the competiveness of complying ships.     

The Greening of Ports: A Comparison of Port Management Tools Used by Leading Ports in Asia and Europe

Abstract

From the policy and management perspective, this study aims to investigate the port management tools that port/public authorities have at their disposal and then to analyse to what extent the tools are used to enforce or encourage green port development at functional activities of port operations and development. We conduct an exploratory and comparative review based on two axes: on the one hand, the range of tools available to port authorities (pricing, monitoring and measuring, market access control and environmental standard regulation) and on the other hand, the functional activities in ports (shipping traffic, cargo handling and storage operations, intermodal connection, industrial activities, and port expansion). The situations in the leading ports in Asia and Europe, namely Singapore, Shanghai, Antwerp and Rotterdam are studied and compared, whereby the policies' effectiveness is discussed accordingly. Findings show that the ports are particularly mature in exercising environmental standard regulations which reveals that the enforcement approach is more prevalent. The most focused functional activity is shipping traffic which reflects that the ports are driven by the International Maritime Organisation. The respective port authorities in Antwerp and Rotterdam have a higher level of influence on devising green port policy in comparison to the two Asian ports.     

Bunker levy schemes for greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction in international shipping

A fuel levy is one of the market-based measures (MBMs) currently under consideration at the International Maritime Organization. MBMs have been proposed to improve the energy efficiency of the shipping sector and reduce its emissions. This paper analyses the economic and environmental implications of two types of levy on shipping bunker fuels by means of an analytical model built on the cobweb theorem. A unit-tax per ton of fuel and an ad-valorem tax, enforced as a percentage of fuel prices, are examined. In both cases, a speed and fuel-consumption reduction equivalent to an improvement in the energy efficiency of the sector would be expected as a result of the regulation enforcement. The speed reduction in the unit-tax case depends on fuel prices and the tax amount, whereas in the ad-valorem case it relies upon the enforced tax percentage.Both schemes lead to industry profit decline, the extent of which depend on the structure of the levy and market conditions. Since there is concern that the costs resulting from the policy will be passed from shipping companies to their customers along the supply chain, the paper dwells on how the costs arising from the enforcement of the levy will be actually allocated between ship-owners and operators, and cargo-owners. In a market characterised by high freight rates and with no or limited excess capacity, a higher percentage of the total tax amount is transferred from ship-owners to shippers. In case of a recession the opposite happens.     

Effects of regulation-driven green innovations on short sea shipping's environmental and economic performance

Despite its pivotal role in European trade, today’s short sea shipping (SSS) industry faces the dual challenge of lessening its environmental footprint while improving its economic performance. To reduce the pollution caused by their operations, SSS companies are required to comply with increasingly stringent environmental regulations enacted by global and regional authorities such as the European Union and the International Maritime Organization. However, the companies tend to regard those regulations as imposing an additional burden of cost that compromises their capacity to enhance their economic performance. This paper examines the impact of external institutional driver namely regulatory pressure on the adoption of green innovations in SSS and in turn, the impact of those innovations on the environmental and economic performance of SSS companies. To investigate the hypothesised relationships of those constructs, a structural equation model was developed and tested with data from a survey conducted amongst 101 short sea shipping companies headquartered in Europe. As detailed in the paper, the analysis revealed that regulatory pressure has generated green innovations that have enhanced the environmental and economic performance of European SSS companies and, as a result, led to a win–win situation for all parties involved. The paper discusses what those findings imply for SSS firm managers and policymakers who seek to improve the environmental or economic performance of Europe’s SSS industry.     

Accompanied versus Unaccompanied Transport in Short Sea Shipping between Spain and Italy: An Analysis from Transport Road Firms Perspective

Short sea shipping (SSS) is called to play a key role in ensuring sustainable mobility in the European context. In the past years several studies tried to define the SSS requirements and also to identify the SSS lines that were economically viable. However, no studies approach the profile of their users—the road transport firms—and the organizational patterns adopted by them, in order to gain a better understanding of this transport modality. This research, on the basis of a sample of 81 international road transport firms that use SSS between Spain and Italy, analyses the profile of these firms and certain elements inherent to their relationship with the shipping firms, according to the two modalities of organizing their SSS transport operations: accompanied versus unaccompanied.     

Centralized resource allocation with emission resistance in a two-stage production system: Evidence from a Taiwan’s container shipping company

This paper proposes a centralized network data envelopment analysis model that combines the centralized data envelopment analysis model and network data envelopment analysis to allocate resources among sub-units. In the proposed model, this paper also considers the situations in which undesirable outputs are jointly produced with desirable outputs, the reduction of undesirable outputs is associated with the reduction of energy inputs, and some inputs are dedicated to the specific sub-unit while some inputs are shared among sub-units. To comprehensively investigate this issue, two cases are discussed. One case explores the situation in which common inputs are shared among the first process of sub-units, while the other case explores the situation in which common inputs are also shared among two processes of sub-units. The proposed model is illustrated in an empirical example of 14 Asian shipping routes operated by a Taiwanese container shipping company. In order to avoid organizational resistance, minor and major adjustment policies are demonstrated. The minor adjustment policy transfers inputs among routes but maintains the original levels of input resources, whereas the major adjustment policy reduces the total amount of input resources. The results provide valuable information for the centralized decision-maker on how to reallocate resources among the sub-units.     

A decision support system for port selection

Abstract

A number of studies have been carried out on the factors determining port choice, derived from the perspectives of shippers, carriers or both. Recently, some studies using multi-criteria analysis, more specifically Saaty's analytical hierarchy process (AHP), have been undertaken to address port competitiveness and port selection by shipping lines. Based on a review of the literature on port selection, this article proposes a decision support system (DSS) for port selection using AHP methodology. The proposed DSS is web-based and thus it can be accessed by more decision makers and data collection can be carried out faster. Moreover, AHP addresses the issue of how to structure a complex decision problem, identify its criteria, measure the interaction among them and finally synthesise all the information to arrive at priorities, which depict preferences. AHP is able to assist port managers in obtaining a detailed understanding of the criteria and address the port selection problem utilising multi-criteria analysis. This article presents the architecture and the port selection procedure of the web-based DSS, and then illustrates three different cases. It shows how technology advancement can bring positive effects of strategic planning to shipping firms.     

国际航运业船舶碳减排措施与行动

随着世界经济的发展,世界海运货物周转量随之增加,国际海运业的碳排放量持续增长,航运业减排的任务十分艰巨。本文结合航运业碳排放的特点,研究分析了国际海事组织(IMO)、欧盟及航运企业采取的一系列减排措施和采取的行动,为我国航运业减少碳排放提供了借鉴和参考依据。     

Reflections on Travel Time Savings: Comments to David Metz

Shipping companies frequently outsource the management of their vessels. In this paper, we use data from Lloyd's Register Fairplay [(2009) IHS Fairplay World shipping encyclopaedia. Available at http://www.ihs.com/products/maritime-information/ships/world-shipping-encyclopedia.aspx?pu=1&;rd=ihsfairplay_com] on 45 456 vessels belonging to 9580 different ship-owners to investigate the extent of outsourcing in shipping and to identify the key factors affecting the likelihood of outsourcing. The results of our econometric analysis indicate that ship-owners' decisions to outsource are explained by the characteristics of the vessels in question (age, type and size) and the characteristics of the ship-owner (country of domiciliation and number of vessels). In addition, a specific country effect is identified for Greek ship-owners, which is in line with the findings of previous studies.     

Uncertain socioeconomic projections used in travel demand and emissions models: could plausible errors result in air quality nonconformity?

A sensitivity analysis of plausible errors in population, employment, fuel price, and income projections is conducted using the travel demand and emissions models of the Sacramento, CA, USA, region for their transportation plan. The results of the analyses indicate that plausible error ranges for household income and fuel prices are not a significant source of uncertainty with respect to the region's travel demand and emissions projections. However, plausible errors in population and employment projections (within approximately one standard deviation) may result in the region's transportation plan not meeting the conformity test for nitrogens of oxides (NO_x) in the year 2005 (i.e., an approximately 16% probability). This outcome is also possible in the year 2015 but less likely (within approximately two standard deviations or a 2.5% probability). Errors in socioeconomic projections are only one of many sources of error in travel demand and emissions models. These results have several policy implications. First, regions like Sacramento that meet their conformity tests by a very small margin should rethink new highway investment and consider contingency transportation plans that incorporate more aggressive emissions reduction policies. Second, regional transportation planning agencies should conduct sensitivity analyses as part of their conformity analysis to make explicit significant uncertainties in the methods and to identify the probability of their transportation plan not conforming. Third, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should clarify the interpretation of “demonstrate” conformity of transportation plans; that is, specify the level of certainty that it considers a sufficient demonstration of conformity.     

The impacts of time of day pricing on the behavior of freight carriers in a congested urban area: Implications to road pricing

This paper describes the key findings from a major research project aimed at assessing the impacts of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s time of day pricing initiative on the behavior of commercial carriers. The paper, believed by the authors to be the first comprehensive study on the subject, highlights key implications for road pricing policy.One of the most interesting findings is that carriers respond to time of day pricing by implementing multi-dimensional responses involving Productivity increases, Cost transfers, and Change in facility usage. This implies a more nuanced response than suggested by micro-economic theory, which would only predict a change in facility usage. In fact, no carrier was found to have responded by implementing only changes in facility usage, which leads to the authors to believe that this is a last resort alternative.In terms of numerical importance, three combinations of strategy groups represent almost 90% of the cases: Productivity increases (42.79%), followed by Changes in facility usage and Cost transfers (27.60%) and Productivity increases and Changes in facility usage and Cost transfers (19.32%). The fact that some of these responses impact only the carrier (i.e., Productivity increases) while others mostly impact the receivers (Changes in facility usage and Cost transfers) lead the authors to believe that the nature of the response is determined by the balance of power between carriers and receivers. If carriers dominate the relationship, then it is likely that policies that mostly impact receivers are implemented; otherwise, the carriers have no choice but implementing strategies that help them cope with the impacts of pricing without impacting their customers, i.e., productivity increases. In this context, the authors’ conjecture is that carriers consider changes in facility usage to be a very disruptive alternative that forces them—and more importantly their customers—to alter their shipping/delivery patterns. It should be pointed out that, although carriers stand to benefit from working during the off-peak hours, they could only do so if their customers are willing to work during the off-peak hours.The data indicate that 36 carriers (20.2%) changed behavior because of the time of day pricing initiative. This number includes 17 carriers (9.0%) that reacted by increasing shipping charges to receivers, which illustrates the need to find out more about how receivers reacted to the time of day pricing initiative. If the carriers that only increased shipment charges are excluded, 15.3% of carriers changed behavior because of time of day pricing.     

Liner container assignment model with transit-time-sensitive container shipment demand and its applications

This paper proposes a practical tactical-level liner container assignment model for liner shipping companies, in which the container shipment demand is a non-increasing function of the transit time. Given the transit-time-sensitive demand, the model aims to determine which proportion of the demand to fulfill and how to transport these containers in a liner shipping network to maximize the total profit. Although the proposed model is similar to multi-commodity network-flow (MCNF) with side constraints, unlike the MCNF with time delay constraints or reliability constraints that is NP-hard, we show that the liner container assignment model is polynomially solvable due to its weekly schedule characteristics by developing two link-based linear programing formulations. A number of practical extensions and applications are analyzed and managerial insights are discussed. The polynomially solvable liner container assignment model is then applied to address several important decision problems proposed by a global liner shipping company.     

Regulation and efficiency: the case of European railways

During the long period of regulation of the railway system in Europe (1950s–1990s) the companies notably improved their levels of productivity. However, parallel to this, the state of their financial accounts also significantly worsened. In order to explain this fact we have estimated both cost and revenue frontier functions, calculating the losses associated with both cost and revenue inefficiencies as well as inefficiencies on the cost side. The results obtained show the existence of significant potential losses of revenue, which can be explained above all by the strong policy of regulation and intervention reigning in this period. A better commercial policy and a supply adapted to market conditions seem to be two unavoidable requisites for the future of European rail policy if the companies' financial burdens are to be reduced.     

Analyzing trade-offs between transportation,inventory and production costs on freight networks

The purpose of this paper is to determine optimal shipping strategies (i.e. routes and shipment sizes) on freight networks by analyzing trade-offs between transportation, inventory, and production set-up costs. Networks involving direct shipping, shipping via a consolidation terminal, and a combination of terminal and direct shipping are considered. This paper makes three main contributions. First, an understanding is provided of the interface between transportation and production set-up costs, and of how these costs both affect inventory. Second, conditions are identified that indicate when networks involving direct shipments between many origins and destinations can be analyzed on a link-by-link basis. Finally, a simple optimization method is developed that simultaneously determines optimal routes and shipment sizes for networks with a consolidation terminal and concave cost functions. This method decomposes the network into separate sub-networks, and determines the optimum analytically without the need for mathematical programming techniques.     

The influence of bus service satisfaction on university students' mode choice

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between bus service satisfaction and the transport mode of choice among university students in Qatar. The degree of bus service satisfaction was collected directly from questionnaire surveys, in which university students were asked questions in relation to their satisfaction with the bus service they used and their transport mode of choice. These questions were categorized into three factors according to confirmatory factor analysis: service at bus stops, service of busses, and service of drivers. Furthermore, the students were asked which mode of transport they used given the choice between public and private transport. This study presents a structural equation model to determine how much bus service satisfaction affects people's decisions about their transport mode. The results from the analysis showed that three key factors—namely, service at bus stops, service of busses, and service of bus drivers—were strongly correlated to the mode of choice. In particular, the bus stop was strongly associated with ease of use, shade, cleanliness, safety, and crowdedness level, while the bus itself influenced reliability, travel time, and frequency. Complying with traffic laws and the driver's attitude were also important contributors to the level of bus service satisfaction. Ultimately, this study will be beneficial for policy/decision‐makers. It will allow them to determine what needs to be accomplished to encourage people to use public transportation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cash flow sensitivities during normal and crisis times: Evidence from shipping

Using a system of equations model, we analyze how cash flow shocks influence the investment and financing decisions of shipping firms in different economic environments. Even financially healthy shipping firms felt strong negative effects on their financing activities during the recent crisis. These firms were nevertheless able to increase long-term debt. Banks internalized the impact of foreclosure decisions on vessel prices and avoided an industry-wide collateral channel effect. Even during benign economic conditions, financially weak shipping firms underinvest because of their inability to raise sufficient external capital. The substitution between long- and short-term debt during the pre-2008 crisis periods shows that the composition of financing sources is more indicative of whether firms face financial constraints than the pure size of the financing-cash flow sensitivities. An analysis of firms’ excess cash holdings confirms the importance of financial flexibility.