Evaluation of the policies in British local transport plans with regard to the promotion of rail freight

Over the last couple of decades there has been a trend in Western Europe and North America towards making the railway industry more able to compete successfully with road for freight haulage through deregulation and/or structural change. This trend has been drive, partly, by a concern to produce more commercially viable railway industries, but also by concerns to reduce the environmental impacts of road haulage through modal shift. The latter in particular has led to the development of public policies supportive of rail freight, particularly at the national or international levels. This paper reports on qualitative research that analysed public policy aimed at promoting rail freight in Britain but, unusually, the focus was on local rather than national policy. The research was an investigation of the approach of local authorities to the encouragement of rail freight as evidenced through their Local Transport Plans. The paper concludes that in Britain there has been a significant amount of local policymaking for rail freight and that although national policy matters are of overriding importance, the role of local policy is significant and can be developed further.     

A decision analysis framework for intermodal transport: Comparing fuel price increases and the internalisation of external costs

This paper presents the impact of fuel price increases on the market area of intermodal transport terminals. Aim of this research is to determine whether an increase in fuel prices is sufficient enough to raise the market area of intermodal transport to the same degree that would be accomplished by stimulating intermodal transport through policy instruments. Therefore, several fuel price scenarios are analysed in order to verify the impact of different fuel price evolutions on the market area of unimodal road transport compared to intermodal transport in Belgium. The LAMBIT-model (Location Analysis for Belgian Intermodal Terminals), which is a GIS-based model (Macharis and Pekin, 2008), is used to analyse the different fuel price increases and enables a visualisation of the impact on the market area. The LAMBIT model incorporates the different network layers for each transport mode by setting up a GIS network that includes four different layers: the road network, the rail network, the inland waterways network and the final haulage network. The geographic locations of the intermodal terminals and the port of Antwerp are added as nodes in the network and the Belgian municipality centres are defined and connected to the different network layers. Based on the different fuel price scenarios representing respectively a fuel price increase with 10% (low price case), 50% (business as usual case) and 90% (high price case), the results of the LAMBIT model show that the market areas rise in favour of intermodal barge/road and intermodal rail/road. Depending on the scenario, the degree of modal shift however differs. Additionally, in order to compare policy measures with the effect of a fuel price increase, the internalisation of the external costs is analysed with the LAMBIT model. For some years, the European Commission is supporting the idea that transportation costs should reflect the true impacts on environment and society, and is relentlessly pushing towards the so called ‘internalisation of external costs’ as a policy instrument in order to establish fair and efficient pricing of different transport modes. This requires monetarizing the external effects of transport and adding them to the already internalized costs in order to give the correct price signals. Results of this comparative analysis performed with the LAMBIT model are also presented in this paper.     

Short Sea Shipping’s Green Label at Risk

Abstract

Shifting cargo from land‐based modes to maritime transport has been a prioritized policy in many policy papers to make transport more environmental friendly. Traditional calculations of emissions per transport capacity unit have supported this. However, maritime transport may stand to loose its good environmental reputation in comparison to road transport due to (1) the sluggish processes in maritime environmental policies and the low ambition level of current regulations, (2) the much higher focus on improving the environmental efficiency of the road haulage industry, (3) the much longer economic life of vessels compared to trucks, and (4) focus on faster vessels that increase the average fuel consumption of the sea transport alternative. Through a realistic case study, the energy efficiency and emissions of alternative multimodal transport chains is presented to illustrate these points.     

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.     

Environmental rail charges in Europe: a review

European legislation implies the use of marginal social cost pricing in rail access charges levied on rail operators. Thus, they may include specific environmental charges to internalise the impacts of rail transport. However, when applying these principles in practice, several difficulties call for second-best settings adapted to the particularities of the rail market. In this context, few European railway administrations are already implementing rail access charges with an environmental dimension. This paper reviews the literature on the issue and assesses the current European experience in noise and air pollution rail charges. For this purpose, an analytical framework is built on the definition of four basic dimensions: charging approach, allocation of abatement efforts, degree of differentiation and intermodal approach. The qualitative examination of the existing systems suggests that the level of environmental surcharges can be generally increased given the low substitutability between rail and road and that the range of abatement possibilities should be enlarged by further differentiating charges. It is also found that the pricing scope should be adapted to achieve particular cost-efficient allocations of abatement efforts among rail operators and upstream agents. Finally, further research requirements for a quantitative assessment are defined.     

Comparison of road freight transport trends in Europe. Coupling and decoupling factors from an Input–Output structural decomposition analysis

Decoupling road freight transport from economic growth has been acknowledged by the European Union as a key means to improving sustainability. It is therefore important to identify both the coupling and decoupling drivers of road freight transport demand in order to determine possible factors that may contribute to reduce road transport in the future without curbing economic development. This research proposes an Input–Output (IO) structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to explain road freight transport in terms of a set of key factors that have strongly influenced road freight demand in recent decades in European countries—such as economic growth, economic structure and the evolution of road transport intensity (including improvements in both supply and transport systems). This methodological approach allows us to quantify and compare their contribution in different European countries to either increase or decrease road freight transport demand. The empirical basis for this analysis is a dataset of nine European countries which have IO tables and road transport data available from 2000 to 2007, comprising data on domestic production, imports and exports as well as tonne-kms for 11 types of commodity classes. The results show that, as a whole, aggregate road transport demand has grown—driven mainly by economic activity—but this growth has been strongly curbed in some countries by changes in road freight transport intensity and moderately by the dematerialization of the economy. International transport has been also proven to be a key factor driving road freight transport volumes. Moreover, the increased penetration of foreign operators in national haulage markets appears to have reinforced the final decoupling levels observed in some cases.     

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.     

Longer and heavier vehicles in Belgium: A threat for the intermodal sector?

To achieve transport cost reductions and to reduce the environmental impact of road transport, different European countries are allowing or testing longer and heavier vehicles on their road network. In Belgium, the Flanders region started a trial in 2015 allowing a limited number of longer and heavier vehicles on a selection of approved routes. A concern among intermodal operators is however that an allowance of longer and heavier vehicles could trigger a reverse modal shift away from rail and inland waterways container transport. Starting from experiences in other European countries, this paper discusses the potential spatial impact of allowing longer and heavier vehicles on the market areas of intermodal transhipment terminals using a geographic information systems-based location analysis model. In a second step, external transport costs are incorporated in this model, to quantify the spatially diversified societal costs of a potential reverse modal shift.     

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.     

Modal split in offshore supply network under the objective of emissions minimization

We study modal split under the objective of emissions minimization in the transportation of cargo from centralized vendors in the oil and gas industry to decentralized supply bases on the Norwegian coast. The supply network includes direct road transport and a sea route along the coast. To gain insight into modal split decisions between road and sea transport from the shipper’s perspective multi-period mixed integer optimization models are formulated. Particularly the models give possibilities to examine how weekly demand patterns at supply bases, cargo commitments to sea transport, storage possibilities at supply bases, and shipper’s responsibility for a certain share of vessel capacity may effect the emissions and the modal split. Experiments on real data from an oil and gas company operating offshore show that the size of the share of vessel capacity and the possibility for storage at supply bases are the major determinants for a larger shift to environmentally friendly sea transport. The models can be used as means for making decisions regarding how a shipper can commit to sea transport to achieve less emissions.     

Evaluation of road-rail interaction in Thailand

The main line of the State Railway of Thailand to serve the Northeastern region of the Kingdom was built in 1900 to the town of Korat and subsequently extended to its northern extremity at the Laos border. The Friendship Highway, a modern highway parallel to the railway and serving the same transportation corridor, was completed in 1958 as far as Korat. In 1965 the northern extension of the Friendship Highway was opened to Nong Khai, the northern terminus of the railway.The effect of the nearby and parallel highway on freight traffic - for upland crops, vegetables, rice, kenaf, and forest products - is shown in terms of tonnages dispatched by the railway and in relation to the production of those commodities. Passenger traffic originating on the Northeastern railway line is analysed. Statistics indicating the shift in modal split between road and rail, for both freight and passengers in the Kingdom, are presented for a six-year period. An estimate of the loss in revenue for the Korat-Nong Khai segment of the railway has been made for both originating passengers and certain classes of freight traffic. Clearly demonstrated is the unceasing trend toward road haulage of freight and the use of highway buses by intercity passengers. This paper is intended to draw attention to the magnitude of the problem rather than to suggest definitive solutions.     

Evaluating choice of traction option for a sustainable Indian Railways

The transport sector is a major contributor of carbon emissions in India. As railways are the most environment-friendly mode of transport we look at the spearheading role of Indian Railway (IR) in bringing about the modal shift from road and airways to rail with a holistic perspective considering India’s development stage and resource situation. India being an emerging economy, faces many other social and developmental challenges, which have to be incorporated in assessing the viability of the solutions. In order to assess the total impact of the transportation sector a ‘wells to wheels’ approach needs to be adopted to quantify the emissions from the production to distribution and final usages alongside its impact to the competing societal goals utilizing the same resources. This study focuses on evaluating IR’s critical policy decision towards providing efficient transport i.e. the choice of traction. It is inferred that until such time the fuel mix of power production in India remains the same, i.e. coal dominated and there is a shortage of electricity in the country, the accumulated carbon footprints of running electric locos will be higher. There should be a judicious mix of both the tractions to achieve a balance in environmental efficacy, sustainability and equity.     

Transport bottlenecks and Tanzania's economic problems

Abstract

The paper discusses Tanzania's transport problems in the context of the prevailing acute economic crisis. It looks at the development of the transport system, especially the rail and road network, from the German days to the new Chinese‐built Tanzania‐Zambia Railway. The East‐West orientation of the major parallel rail lines and roads reflects the dependency of the economy on export‐import trade. A major challenge to the transport system is the haulage of agricultural products, mainly for export but also for the internal market, not to mention the haulage of imported commodities.

The provision and utilization of transport services is discussed in the context of the historical, and institutional setting of the road haulage industry, particularly its public and private sector configurations. Due to scarcity of foreign exchange, both sectors, especially the private, are starved of vehicles and spare parts.

The operation of ocean and lake shipping services and Air Tanzania are discussed. It is recommended that the latter should concentrate on essential domestic services plus some limited regional services. External financing of transport projects and its implications are also considered.

It is concluded that despite the break‐up of the East African transport system, the Tanzanian transport system, although shaky, has avoided major breakdowns and in some cases, especially in trade, has provided the foundation for at least medium‐term improvements. More attention is recommended to organizational problems of track use by freight and passenger carriers and to making the best use of existing facilities.     

Decoupling of Road Freight Transport and Economic Growth Trends in the UK: An Exploratory Analysis

Abstract

Between 1997 and 2004, gross domestic product increased in real terms in the UK by one‐fifth, while the volume of road freight movement remained stable. This suggests that the long‐awaited decoupling of economic and freight transport growth has begun, possibly leading to a new era of sustainable logistics. This paper reviews previous research on the decoupling issue and recent trends in gross domestic product/freight tonne‐km elasticities in Europe and the USA. It then examines 12 possible causes of the observed decoupling in the UK using published statistics from a wide range of British and European sources. This analysis indicates that around two‐thirds of the decoupling is due to three factors whose impact can be quantified: the increased penetration of the British road haulage market by foreign operators, a decline in road transport’s share of the freight market, and real increases in road freight rates. Several other factors, most notably the relative growth of the service sector, the diminishing rate of centralization, and the off‐shoring of manufacturing, appear to be having a significant effect, though this finding cannot be measured on the basis of available statistics. The paper concludes that, while the decoupling is in the right direction from a public policy standpoint, the net environmental benefits are likely to be quite modest.     

Harmonizing heavy goods vehicle taxes in Europe: a British view

One of the biggest unresolved problems regarding the completion of the free internal transport market within the European community is the problem of harmonization of taxation on the road haulage industry. As the highest tax country, Britain might be expected to have to reduce its level of taxes as part of any harmonization.

This paper considers the current methodology of the British Department of Transport regarding the allocation of the track and external costs of road transport, in the light of developments in methodology and experience elsewhere in Western Europe and North America. We find a number of reasons for believing that, far from overstating the marginal social cost of use of roads by the road haulage industry, the current British approach actually understates it. Thus any move towards harmonizing tax levels may reduce taxes in Britain at a time when they should be increasing.     

An assessment of the performance of the European long intermodal freight trains (LIFTS)

Intermodal rail/road freight transport has always been considered as a competitive alternative to its road freight counterpart in the European medium- to long-distance corridors (markets). Such consideration has been based on the increasing competitiveness of some innovative rail services and the existing and prospective performance of both modes in terms of the full social – internal or operational and external – costs. The most recent innovation of rail technologies and related services launched by some European railway companies, still at the conceptual level, is the Long Intermodal Freight Train (LIFT). This is supposed to be a block train operating in long-distance corridors (markets) with a substantial and regular freight demand.This paper develops analytical models for assessing the performance of the LIFTs, the already-operating Conventional Intermodal Freight Trains (CIFTs), and their road counterpart as well. The performance consists of the full – internal (private) and external – costs of the door-to-door delivery of loading units – containers, swap-bodies, and semi-trailers. The internal costs embrace the operational costs of the transport (rail and road) and intermodal terminal operators. The external costs include the costs of the impacts of door-to-door delivery of loading units on society and the environment. These negative externalities include noise, air pollution, traffic accidents, and congestion.The models are applied to a simplified version of intermodal and road transport system using inputs from the European freight transport sector. The aims are to compare the full costs of particular modalities in order to investigate the potential of the LIFTs as compared with the CIFTs in improving the internal efficiency of the rail freight sector and its competitiveness with respect to its road counterpart. In addition, the paper attempts to assess some effects on the potential modal shift of EU (European Union) transport policies on internalizing transport externalities.     

Towards improved port capacity investment decisions under uncertainty: a real options approach

ABSTRACT

Port activity plays an important role in facilitating international trade. Sufficient capacity is indispensable for a port to attract flows to a region and retain them. The capacity decision is the result of a trade-off between investment and waiting costs. Traditional methods to value expansion projects do not deal adequately with managerial flexibility in the face of uncertainty from different sources in the complex port environment. In this paper, real options (RO) models are identified as an alternative method to making project valuations and investment decisions, as they attribute the correct value to managerial flexibility under uncertainty. In order to be able to build and use such RO models for port capacity investment decisions, the sources and implications of uncertainty in the port and the different RO model specifications need to be understood. To this end, both the literature about uncertainty in the port context and the literature about real options models are reviewed in order to provide researchers who want to build their own decision-making models, with the necessary knowledge of both fields. The review makes clear that the complex interactions in and competition between the logistics chains and their actors coming together in ports have significant impacts on port capacity. Uncertainty is also caused by uncertain international trade flows and changes in legislation following new technologies and environmental impacts. An analysis of the components of some general RO models shows how the options of flexible output, investment size and timing are valued by RO models in a setting with demand uncertainty. Moreover, the review presents researchers with insights in how to deal with cooperative and competitive interactions in the chain, time to build, cyclical markets and legislation changes. It also shows how to value the expansion and the phased investment options. The new insights resulting from this review are subsequently combined in a framework that serves as a guideline to build RO models for port capacity investments. Finally, an exemplifying application of the framework is used to build an actual port capacity investment decision model.     

Comparative life-cycle assessment of conventional (double lane) and non-conventional (turbo and flower) roundabout intersections

This research studied and compared different construction techniques for the road subgrade, embankment and pavement of different types of roundabout intersections in order to assess their environmental sustainability. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was carried out on double lane, turbo- and flower roundabouts.We considered virgin materials and reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) for the pavement construction. Also the environmental effects due to in situ lime stabilization of fine-grained soils were assessed in order to reduce the use of virgin material in road subgrades.The use of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) can lead to a significant reduction in pollutant emissions and energy consumption (especially due to the lesser material transport) – though with a slightly different impact according to the different percentages employed – compared to the pavements constructed with virgin materials. The same consideration can be made for fine soils with in situ lime stabilization: on the one hand, the technique allows to improve significantly the mechanical properties of soils which would be otherwise dumped and, on the other, to provide considerable environmental benefits. The life cycle assessment of the pavement was carried out with the help of the PaLATE software (by comparing different maintenance scenarios) while emissions and energy consumption in the use phase at intersections were evaluated by means of closed-form models (to estimate vehicle delays and speeds of vehicles) and the COPERT software.Finally, the generalized costs covered in the whole life cycle of roundabouts (i.e. sum of construction, maintenance and environmental costs) were assessed and associated to the different construction options.     

Assessment of a transport policy potential for intermodal mode shift on a European scale

Policies of general nature for improving the competitive position of intermodal transport have not always been successful. On the contrary, specific policies, such as targeting the supply chain or the offered services and transport are probably more effective in identifying and subsequently shifting transport from road to intermodal. The aim of the paper is the development of a methodology with the necessary tools to assess the potential of a specific policy measure to produce a modal shift in favour of intermodal transport. In addition, for the cases of positive outcomes, the necessary elements for the policy action plan are presented. The methodology comprises of three parts: a toolbox called the macro-scan, which assesses the potential for modal shift, a sensitivity analysis and the policy action plan. Thus, an insight on the impact of a modal shift on supply chains and on the potential for modal shift is acquired. The methodology, developed within the SPIN Research Project of the European Commission, will be useful to policy makers at governmental level as well as to the private sector, especially in the European Union countries.     

Evaluation of the dry port concept from an environmental perspective: A note

This study evaluates the dry port concept from an environmental perspective using modelling and simulation. A model of a transport system, with and without a dry port, is created and the results of the simulations compared. The benefits of the dry port implementation are defined from an environmental perspective; calculated CO₂ emissions are approximately 25% lower with an implemented dry port for the chosen case, while congestion and truck waiting times at the terminal are significantly reduced.