Quality indicators and capacity calculation for RoRo terminals

Abstract

Road freight transportation has increased dramatically over recent years along with its impacts such as congestion, noise, and pollution. As a result, European and US governments have started policies to promote alternatives to road transportation, such as logistic chains containing a Short Sea Shipping (SSS) link. Road is, by definition, a more flexible means of transportation than shipping, which is usually cheaper. Therefore, to move traffic to SSS chains, it is necessary to provide fast, frequent, and reliable maritime transportation. In this sense, roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) vessels are the most convenient ships to be used, since they have smaller dwell times in port and, therefore, this is a kind of traffic likely to increase dramatically. The foreseeable increase of this kind of traffic must meet with an increase in the actual capacity by means of either improvement in performance and possible enlargements of existing terminals or the construction of new terminals. In that sense, this paper proposes a simple methodology to calculate the capacity of a RoRo terminal, whether already in operation or during its design process, and relate it to some quality standards by means of quality indicators, which should lead to the definition of Levels of Service similar to those already used in roads and airports. The paper ends by applying the methodology to a real terminal in Barcelona, Spain.