The impact of port choice on inland transportation

The Belgian government intends to shift part of its funding away from Antwerp and towards other seaports, particularly Ghent and Zeebrugge. In the long run, this policy change will undoubtedly influence the port choice and probably cause a traffic diversion at the expense of Antwerp. This will have a great influence on the structure of inland transportation.

The impact of port choice on inland transportation is the central theme of this paper. To this end a disaggregated model of the demand for freight transport is constructed.     

Placing dryports. Port regionalization as a planning challenge - The case of Hamburg, Germany, and the Süderelbe

This paper emphasizes dryports in the context of port regionalization. It specifically deals with dryports as a challenge for planning, policy and metropolitan governance in the vicinity of seaports. The starting point is the ongoing spatial shift of terminals, distribution centres and port related developments towards the hinterland of mainports and the associated planning conflicts, raising negative impacts such as congestion, land consumption, land use conflicts and neighbourhood conflicts. The paper discusses these challenges against the empirical case of the Süderelbe-region in the Southern hinterland of the port of Hamburg, Germany. It focuses on the often neglected yet highly controversial issue of land use and related traffic flows. Further it reveals how these conflicts are being managed at the regional level. The main contention of the paper is that port regionalization triggers substantial planning conflicts different from those that are known from core port areas, due to the associated demand for land and infrastructure and also as a result of the often poorly developed institutional framework to solve these problems.     

Inland container terminal—function and rationale

Increasing commercial and recreational pressures on urban waterfront lands, growing demand by seaports for back-up areas and changes in cargo-distribution concepts have caused the relocation of several port functions and the establishment of inland container terminals.     

The new governance structure of French seaports: an initial post-evaluation

France undertook a large port reform in 2008, which came into force in 2010–2011. It mostly applies a landlord port model to major French seaports, with the prediction that doing so will restore competiveness. This article presents the 2008 port reform, discusses why it was needed, notably with regard to the underperformance of container traffic, and details how new governing bodies are sharing their responsibilities amongst themselves. To this end, a textual analysis of the agenda items for the governing bodies created since 2011 of the largest French seaport, Port of Marseille, provides a means to compare the items discussed by the former management bodies. This analysis identifies a trend, in which the supervisory board focuses on global issues, the advisory board addresses local issues, and the board of directors considers internal issues. Even if ongoing, this transition creates favorable conditions to work more efficiently and may represent a step toward the better performance of French seaports.     

Inland container terminal—function and rationale

Increasing commercial and recreational pressures on urban waterfront lands, growing demand by seaports for back-up areas and changes in cargo-distribution concepts have caused the relocation of several port functions and the establishment of inland container terminals.     

Demand analysis in Angola seaports

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a demand analysis of Angola seaports from 1996 to 2013 using the Berry, Levinsohn, and Pakes (BLP) demand model. The BLP is a random coefficient Logit demand model that takes into account the endogeneity of the price in the demand equation. The model reveals that seaports on Angola is explained by the average price, the price of maritime transport services, the price of substitute imports by airports, and by the income in the port region. The price is endogenous in demand equation and the endogeneity is taken into account in demand estimation. The price of air transportation is negative, and therefore it is a complementary good. The price of container handling is positive, and therefore it is a substitution good. Policy implication is also derived.     

The Port of Baltimore: off the beaten track?

The Port of Baltimore has recently experienced alarming traffic trends. Most measures of port vitality have been going the wrong way—tonnage, ship calls, market share, steamship service. rail service. Baltimore has been squeezed by external forces and circumstances. Dergulated rail and truck rates have not favoured Baltimore, nor have railroad mergers that have led to rail traffic concentrations at rival seaports. Federal approval of dredging projects has been delaed. Crises in the labour market have created a climate of uncertainty. Global trade patterns and intermodel itineraries have shifted, again, it seems, not to Baltimore'advantage. Baltimore needs new public port policy recommendations. This paper explains some of the problems and offers preliminary suggestions.     

Dynamics of Russian dry ports

The transportation of cargos in containers has been intensively developing over the last decades. The world pace of growth in container transport is about 11% annually while in the Russian Federation from 2003 to 2007 the average growth was 21%. Container transportation is going to increase due to the construction of huge infrastructure projects for the Winter Olympics games in Sochi 2014, which implies the transportation of the required material flow. Foreign car assembly on Russian territory is developing, supplied by component parts delivered from Japan and the Republic of Korea, as well as from China that now bring 21.3% import container transport to Russia. About 60% of Russian container traffic passes through seaports Saint Petersburg, Novorossiysk and Vladivostok. The scenarios for increasing capacity to meet demands ahead are enhancing the productivity of seaports sites or leading to the creation of terminals in the hinterland. Although the phenomenon of dry ports is spread all over the world, in Russia none of the seaports has sufficient number of these facilities. The inland terminals of Russian seaports will be analysed from a dry port perspective. Despite the impediments, there are ecological and economical benefits that are discussed in the article. The advantages to the transport chain suggest that dry ports are a promising area for Russian seaports’ welfare.     

集装箱码头仿真和优化研究进展

当今90%的国际货物要经过海港,并且80%的海上运输货物要用集装箱运输。集装箱码头的设计者和管理者为了节省费用和快速有效地满足集装箱运输的需求,使用了缩短船舶在港停泊时间,高效利用人力、泊位、堆场和装卸设备资源等措施。为了进一步研究集装箱码头系统,通过查阅相关研究文献,总结了集装箱码头仿真和优化研究的主要问题和某些研究的局限性,展望了未来的研究趋势。     

The impact of dry port operations on container seaports competitiveness

The concepts of intermodal logistics and distribution networks have made integration of the inland freight distribution system essential for an efficient container seaport system. Inland components, such as dry ports, which exist within the seaport system, have become important in shaping the performance and competitive strategies of container seaports. Owing to the importance of interdependence between dry ports and container seaports, this paper aims to investigate the impact of dry port operations on container seaport competitiveness. It conducted an empirical study in Malaysia through 120 online surveys to key stakeholders of dry ports, including freight forwarders, shippers, seaports, rail operator, shipping lines, and haulers. The data collected were analysed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The results from EFA show that Malaysian dry port operations have impacts on seaport competitiveness. These include enhancing seaport performance, increasing service variations for seaports, improving seaport-hinterland proximity, increasing seaport trade volume, and enhancing seaport capacity.     

Maritime policy and management--30 years issue for Prof. James McConville Editorial: IMO--The economics of intimidation

Organizational Effectiveness (OE) is a rather new concept in the port business literature and not widely studied before. From the systems perspective, this concept focuses on the goals of the organization, the resources needed to achieve these goals, and the relationship between the organization and its environment. The reason behind choosing a systems approach is the significant role of seaports as open systems affected by changes and developments in world trade, supply chain and logistics trends, maritime transport, and technological developments. While seaports are multi-faceted organizations that constitute different interdependent and integrated units in their structure, they can also be regarded as the subsystems of the supply chain system. As being the social and technical systems, port organizations have unique characteristics that should be examined in detail to assess their effectiveness. To assess the effectiveness of port organizations, principally a set of effectiveness measures applicable to seaports should be determined. The main aim of this study is to assess the relative importance of the main effectiveness criteria in seaports and to determine the significance of main inputs and port subsystems which can be referred as the means to achieve effectiveness. By using the systems approach, the inputs, the processes, and the outputs of the port organizations are clearly defined with a conceptual model. Thirty-three statements have been developed under the main categories in the systems model and a two-round delphi survey is conducted, and qualitative analysis of the experts’ opinions is carried out. The results of the delphi survey show that the main port inputs are port infrastructure, equipments, technology, and port labor; the major port processes are ship and cargo operations together with the logistics services, safety and security, information technologies, and marketing; and the most important effectiveness measures for the seaports are productivity, efficiency, service quality, adaptability, information and communication management, profitability, human resource quality, and customer satisfaction.     

基于聚类分析的港口类型化研究

根据各港口集装箱运量增长的特点,通过软件SPSS,应用基于聚类分析的类型化方法将我国沿海主要集装箱港口分成三大类型,即普通增长型、加速增长型和波动增长型,并对各类型港口增长特点进行了分析.     

Influential factors in the design of port infrastructure tariffs

ABSTRACT

The main aim of this article is to examine the factors influential to the practical process of port infrastructure tariff design. The analysis is based on the survey data of 67 seaports representing the Australasian, East Asian, European, North American and South American regions. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was first carried out to identify the factors influential to the selection of the infrastructure tariff design model. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to confirm the relationship between the variables. The findings showed that demand, knowledge about pricing theories, the dynamics of port and shipping sectors (including competition and ship size), pricing objectives and port cost consideration are influential factors in infrastructure tariff design. Most ports use a mix of pricing approaches including price discrimination, cost-based pricing and market-based pricing. Ports are aware of the basic pricing approaches but have limited knowledge of their application. Based on the results of analysis, policy implications for port management in designing port infrastructure tariffs, limitations and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

The relations between dry port characteristics and regional port-hinterland settings: findings for a global sample of dry ports

This paper aims at defining generic characteristics of dry ports by carrying out an analysis using a large sample of dry ports from around the world. The dataset includes details on 107 inland terminals worldwide. All dry ports in the database have been selected from studies in the extant literature before being shortlisted to fit our research scope. Data collected include terminologies used, actors driving the development, terminal throughput, total area, services provided and the relation with the corresponding seaport(s). Using statistical analysis, the paper examines how dry port parameters are influenced by (1) a different terminal set up, like sea-driven and land-driven development, developed and developing system, dry port functions; (2) specifications of the seaport with which the dry port is connected, i.e. seaport traffic, connectivity, utilization, etc. and (3) the transport leg linking dry ports and seaports. The findings could be applied to the planning and development of inland nodes from the perspectives of different stakeholders.     

港区道路管理信号系统设计

随着港口大型化的发展,各港口的道路信号系统落后是普遍问题。本文分析了港口道路信号控制需求,提出了适用于港口的道路信号系统的系统目标和分级控制结构,并具体地界定了系统管理平台功能和信号控制机功能,最后以天津港为例介绍了港区主干路协调控制的设计方法。     

The mid-Atlantic load centre: Baltimore or Hampton Roads?

Competition between closely situated seaports in not new. The ports of Baltimore and Hampton Roads, located at either end of Cheaspeake Bay, have been locked in a fierece battle to gain dominance in the lucrtice mid-Atlantic container traffic for a number of years. The probability that ech will succeed is not great, as shipping lines, concerned with the high costs associated with idle port time, will select one,rther thatn serve both. Indeed, evidence is beginning to mount that, dispite massive expenditures by the Stte or Maryland, the Virginia ports a reemerging as the region' load centre. This paper examines recent trends in container movements through these two major ports and suggests the long-termprospects for each. among measures considered are the location of eachi in relation to other ports both North and South, sizes of the port cities and their immediately adjacent hinterlands, proximity to inland population centres (markets), connectivity between the ports and these inland centres (by both rail and truck), expenditures by port agencies and land crries, labour relations, and availabillity of space for expansion.     

Environmental sustainability in seaports: a framework for successful innovation

Environmental sustainability in the port industry is of growing concern for port authorities, policy makers, port users and local communities. Innovation can provide a solution to the main environmental issues, but often meets resistance. While certain types of technological or organisational innovation can be satisfactorily analysed using closed system theories, in the case of seaports and in particular in the area of environmental sustainability, more advanced conceptual frameworks have to be considered. These frameworks need to be able to account for the multiple stakeholder nature of the port industry and of the network and vertical interactions that environmental sustainability calls for. This article investigates successful innovations improving environmental sustainability of seaports. The proposed framework builds in part on research concepts developed in the InnoSuTra EU FP7 project. From a methodological perspective, this article develops a method for quantifying the degree of success of innovation with respect to a set of specific objectives. Several case studies are used to test the framework against real innovation examples, such as onshore power supply, or alternative fuels. In this article, we argue that only those innovations that fit dynamically port actors’ demands and the port institutional environment stand a chance to succeed.     

Economic policies and seaports: The economic functions of seaports

This paper argues that the economic functions of seaports are to benefit those whose trade passes through them, i.e. through providing increments to consumers' and producers' surpluses. Whilst recent developments in the technologies of seaports (containers, bigger ships, more rapid handling of bulk cargoes) have increased technical efficiency, they have also provided such economies of scale as to reduce some opportunities for competition and, therefore, the probability that cost reductions are actually passed on in this way. For this purpose port costs need to be considered in their entirety, i.e. as generalized transport costs per tonne, comprising money, time and the risks of loss, damage and delay. Such cost reductions will lead to expanded trade in a variety of ways.

This statement of the economic function of seaports is contrasted with views that they should try to increase employment in their locality, or that they should maximize profits.     

基于中国企业视角的越南港口投资研究

中越陆上交通基础设施领域合作日趋密切,但在越南港口投资领域,中方企业却身影难觅。针对这一现状,本文基于中国企业视角,概述越南宏观与区域经济发展形势,较为全面地研究越南港口布局规划,对其中值得中企投资重点关注的港口与港区进行总结,并具体分析中企投资越南港口注意事项,提出中企投资越南港口项目的模式和建议。     

The economics behind the awarding of terminals in seaports: Towards a research agenda

Terminal concessions in seaports have only recently gained interest in academic circles. Issues such as the allocation mechanisms (to be) used for granting those concessions, the determination of the concession term and concession fees, as well as the inclusion of special clauses aimed at assuring that the terminal operator will act in the interest of the port authority and the wider community, are increasingly relevant to both academics and the port industry. So far, insights from established economic theories have rarely been applied to terminal concessions in seaports. It, therefore, remains to be seen which kind of awarding procedure would be best for which type of terminal concession. This contribution provides a detailed overview of the different phases of the terminal awarding process, including a classification scheme for awarding procedures, and contains an extensive discussion on the economic issues that require further investigation. The paper concludes by proposing a comprehensive research agenda on the topic.