Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
Globalization has drastically increased the amount of trade between different nations and this has lead to an exponential growth in shipping activities around the world. As a result, many container terminals are struggling to cope with this new surge of containers moving through their yards. Numerous container terminals are looking at the possibility of automating their container terminal so as…
The globalization of trade has lead to an enormous growth in sea transportation over the last years. A great majority of general cargo is containerized and handled in container terminals, which are essential hubs in sea transportation systems. The potential of cost saving in a container terminal is large and the workflow of a container terminal has to be very efficient. The focus of this book l…
The purpose of this paper is to look into the fate of a troubled initiative in Hong Kong that was developed in the midst of discussions between Beijing and London leading towards the 1997 handover. It sets out to shred new light on the “forecasting gap”: the gap between the anticipated level of traffic and the real volume of traffic in the years following the opening of a new infrastructure
Container terminals are essential intermodal interfaces in the global transportation network. Efficient container handling at terminals is important in reducing transportation costs and keeping shipping schedules. In this paper, we study the storage space allocation problem in the storage yards of terminals. This problem is related to all the resources in terminal operations, including quay …
Despite an increasing number of studies on the efficiency of container terminals, their focus has mostly been on advanced and emerging markets. There are limited studies on container terminals in developing countries such as those of the Middle Eastern region, which are located in a critical geographic position in the international maritime route between the East and the West. Information on th…
International containerized freight movement is a vital part of the supply chain for many companies, anda critical element of moving consumer goods to points of retail sale within the U.S. Containerized imports also present a clear security concern (e.g., terrorists attempting to ship “dirty bombs,” chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons, into the U.S. in a shipping container). The go…
Who would have foreseen 40 years ago the launching of an 18 000 TEU container ship? The unprecedented growth of such ships presents an increasing challenge for port infrastructure planners. The paper concludes that during the next 20 years, the growth of container ships will depend on factors related to supply and demand, and to external factors. These factors will be defined as the constraints…
We show in this paper that the throughput data for the top 300 container ports reported each year by the various authorities follows a simple truncated lognormal distribution. This surprising phenomenon repeats itself every year from 1982 to 2006, despite many tumultuous changes in the container shipping world. The empirical data suggests that Gibrat’s Law of proportionate growth indeed holds…
Studying the traffic rankings of the world's busiest seaports and airports geographers are inclined to look for certain locational qualities or attributes that might help explain the rankings [I]. In this paper the 1995 ranking of the world's top 25 container load centres will be put in simple geographical context. No claim is made that this is the only useful context! It is obvious that the ph…
Income from leasing container terminals and terminal facilities over the last 15 years has risen from miniscule levels to a point where it now represents a majority of the total income at some us ports [l]. This paper reviews the methods used to lease container terminals and terminal facilities, examines the leasing methodologies and pricing approaches used by us public port authorities, and di…
The resilience of US container ports is increasingly challenged by disruptive and stressful events such as regulatory change, adverse weather, larger container ship sizes, changing patterns of trade and sea routes, and the still to be quantified effects of enlarging the capabilities and capacity of the Panama Canal. Port sustainability requires the port managers to be resilient in their practic…
In this study, we empirically investigate the impacts of urban road congestion and road capacity expansion on the competition between major container ports in the US. We find that more delays on urban roads may cause shippers to switch to competing rival ports: a 1% increase in road congestion delays around the port is associated with a 0.90–2.48% decrease in the port’s container throughput…
Over the last few years, the progressive scarcity of land for greenfield projects in ports and the enormous financial resources required to realize new terminal facilities have induced international terminal operators (ITOs) to enter in various types of agreements. In particular, ITOs have growingly resorted to equity joint-ventures (EJVs) to develop new infrastructures and share project risks.…
This study examines the relationship between the size of a port, its efficiency increase and the performance growth in the transshipment market. The hypothesis tested is that the bigger size of a port would increase the market share of the port in container transshipment; only when the size effect guarantees better ‘relative’ container handling efficiency in competing port system where the …
The summer minimum extent of Arctic sea ice shrank drastically in these years, and the opportunity on Arctic international shipping emerged. The Northern Sea Route (NSR), formerly blocked by permanent ice, was completely ice-free in September in the past 3 years. Because this route is much shorter than conventional Asia–Europe shipping lane, many maritime countries have paid attention to expl…
It is now over 25 years since the widespread concessioning of container terminals began. This article examines the impact of concessioning on the balance between public and private sector control, the use of competitive tendering to assign concessions, the structure of the Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) to which concessions were originally awarded, and the way in which the ownership of these S…
Deploying containerships with increasing carrying capacities in achieving better capacity utilization has been well-documented. However, ship operators often face the problem in deploying containerships with the right size, especially given the capital-intensive nature of container liner shipping, which would lead to substantial implications if inappropriate ships were used. While studies on op…
This paper aims to provide a hierarchical configuration of the container port industry. It attempts to do so by determining a port hierarchy and then, utilising this, deriving the nature of the spatial interactions between sample ports in East Asia. The former is determined by assessing the relative importance of a port within the given network, and the latter is mainly based on the significanc…
Despite the rapid economic growth in the Yangtze River Delta area, the Yangtze River itself is lagging behind as measured by the ratio of container volume to total freight volume. According to the Ministry of Communications’ statistics, more than 70% of cargoes generated in the Yangtze Valley are suitable for containerized transport, but, at this time, only a fraction of these cargoes are act…
The terminal and stevedoring industry has expanded substantially in recent years with the emergence of global container terminal operators controlling large multinational portfolios of terminal assets. This paper deals with the emerging corporate geography in the container terminal industry with issues related to the similarities or differences among terminal locations, the processes leading to…
Ports are the next candidates for radical change. A jumbo containership can move boxes at sea for less than one cent per ton mile, and fast double-stack trains move them overland for less than three cents. A container can cross the Atlantic for $300, but the terminals consume $500 and too much time. The port of 1999 will work 24 hours and seven days a week. It will be manned by a few well-paid …
Over the past 30 years, technological developments have not only aOEected the design and operation of the port function, but also the organizational and institutional relationships within the port community. Two inter-organizational interaction models are presented, drawing on the ® ndings of over 200 in-depth interviews with senior managers representing terminal operators, shipping lines, fee…
Positioned strategically between major east–west and north–south trading routes, the Caribbean basin has become a locus of new service configurations in container shipping. Over the last decade global shipping lines have been restructuring their service networks in the region in order to integrate local services with the newly rationalized intercontinental connections. By comparing service …
This paper addresses two practical problems from a liner shipping company, i.e. the container flow management problem and the ship deployment problem, at the tactical planning level. A sequential model and a joint optimisation model are formulated to solve the problems. Our results show that the company should implement the joint optimisation model at the tactical planning level to improve the …
This article considers thc perennial topic of how to achieve an equilibrium balance between stability and competition in intermodal shipping. It argues that competition is becoming destructive, but that the imbalance is difficult to correct in a climate where competitive pressures are strong everywhere and restraints on competition are unfashionable. In this context, pricing of intermodal servi…
The job satisfaction level (JSL) of self-employed container truck drivers (SCTDs) is vital to the container trucking industry’s (CTI) stability in China. An anonymous field survey of 645 SCTDs was conducted at Shanghai Port. Three ordered probit models were, respectively, developed to analyze the drivers’ JSLs, their attitudes, and reactions to a CTI downturn. This study contributes to the …
Trucks are the most popular transport equipment in most mega-terminals, and scheduling them to minimize makespan is a challenge that this article addresses and attempts to resolve. Specifically, the problem of scheduling a fleet of trucks to perform a set of transportation jobs with sequence dependent processing times and different ready times is investigated, and the use of a genetic algorithm…
This article addresses the problem of scheduling container transfer operations in rail terminals. The overall problem can be divided into three smaller problems: constructing a dual-cycle delivery task by matching inbound and outbound containers; determining parking positions for trucks; and sequencing the delivery tasks for transfer by the rail crane. This article provides a mathematical model…
Increasing global trade has created the need for efficient container ports. The goal of the port is to move containers as quickly as possible and at the least possible cost. Goods that are delayed at the port are inevitably tardy when delivered to the customer, and thus sanctioned by late charges. Two key activities in the port are (i) unloading of containers from truck and then storage in the …
Returns to scale are important in container shipping; service operators are continuing to increase the size of their vessels. Mr Seok-Min Lim's article 'Economies of container ship size' (Maritime Policy and Management, 21 (2) pages 149-160.1994) uses a sample of transpacific voyages to evaluate the effect of vessel scale on revenue and cost. Although the results are inconclusive, his study is…
The problem of scheduling identical quay cranes moving along a common linear rail to handle containers for a ship is studied. The ship has a number of container-stacking compartments called bays, and only one quay crane can work on a bay at the same time. The objective of the scheduling problem is to find the work schedule for each quay crane which minimizes the ship’s stay time in port. Find…
In 1969 the first of Sydney's purpose-built container facilities in Port Jackson, the Seatainer terminal, became operational. Later, in 1973, the second terminal at Glebe Island, a common-user facility, shared the task of handling the container traffic for much of eastern Australia until the development of the new facilities in Botany Bay. The two terminals differed in almost every respect exce…
This is an empirical analysis of the performance of the five major container ports of the East Coast of the United States: Boston, New York-New Jersey, Philadelphia. Baltimore and Hampton Roads. The data through 1978 indicate wide disparities in the productivity of these facilities. They also suggest that container ports exhibit signilicant returns to scale throughout the range of observation, …
This paper deals with the importance of port choice and container terminal selection for deep-sea container carriers. The paper focuses on the research question: on what basis do deep-sea container operators select container ports (strategy) and container terminals (financial reasons) in the Hamburg–Le Havre range over others? In answering this research question, three dimensions are addresse…
Container terminal performance is largely determined by its design decisions, which include the number and type of quay cranes, stack cranes, transport vehicles, vehicle travel path and stack layout.We investigate the orientation of the stack layout (parallel or perpendicular to the quayside) on the throughput time performance of the terminals. Previous studies in this area typically use deter…
If international container ports are to gain a proper appreciation of their various advantages, disadvantages and potential opportunities in a globally competitive environment, it is essential that they conduct effective evaluation of their operational performance. The present study applies five models of data envelopment analysis (DEA) to acquire a variety of complementary information about th…
More than a century ago far-sighted railroad builders and steamship operators were seeking the shortest intermodal itineraries between the eastern United States and the Orient. A combination of locational fact and the factual outcomes of 19thcentury railroad building left Chicago roughly equidistant in railway mileage from what became the four great us West-Coast port complexes in the Los Angel…
This paper presents a simple formulation in the form of a pipe network for modelling the global container-shipping network. The cost-efficiency and movement-patterns of the current container-shipping network have been investigated using heuristic methods. The model is able to reproduce the overall incomes, costs, and container movement patterns for the industry as well as for the individual shi…
This paper proposes an integrated set of 4Cs indices, namely, centrality index, competition index, congestion index and concentration index to examine network effects in the East Asia container port industry. Empirical analysis confirms that larger ports enjoy greater direct network effects related to economies of scale, whereas, smaller ports leverage on indirect network effects to widen their…
This paper seeks to develop a multi-commodity network model to analyse the flow of containers within the Asia Pacific context. The model is used to evaluate the impact of container throughput in Asia’s port by varying terminal handling charges and turnaround time. The three main regions analysed are north-east Asia, east Asia (Chinese port region) and south east Asia. Using the model, it coul…
Yard planning is essential for efficient operations in container terminals, especially for ports with limited storage space. To improve the utilisation of space and the efficiency of container handling in a terminal, operators require flexible yard space planning strategies to manage job workloads and yard-to-berth transportation costs. In previous studies, the inter-related decision making pro…
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.
Major changes are occurring in the logistics of container shipping including growth in demands, increased ship size and development of new ports and routes to serve the US market. The Panama Canal is in the process of being expanded and potential exists for shipping through the Northwest Passage in addition to new ports being developed on the West Coasts of Canada and Mexico. All these alternat…
This paper evaluates the impact of risk factors from the container security initiative on Taiwan’s shipping industry by employing a risk management matrix to identify the severity and frequency of CSI risk factors, and discovers some appropriate risk management alternatives. This paper’s findings are as follows: (1) The majority of risk factors have a moderate-risk level, and possible alte…
We witnessed significant technological changes in shipping, including the development of jet aircraft engines and the use of containerization in ocean shipping. In the maritime industry, more than 90 percent of international cargo moves through seaports, and 80 percent of seaborne cargo moves in containers. This shows that the importance of seaborne trade, in particular, trade by containers. Th…
In recent years, an increase in the size of the container ships could be observed. The question is how these larger ships will influence the total generalised costs from a port of loading to a destination in the European hinterland. The second question is whether a scale increase of the container ships on other loops, such as a loop from the United States to Europe, has the same impact on the g…
The competitiveness of a container terminal is highly conditioned by the time that container vessels spend on it. The proper scheduling of the quay cranes can reduce this time and allows a container terminal to be more attractive to shipping companies. The goal of the Quay Crane Scheduling Problem (QCSP) is to minimize the handling time of the available quay cranes when performing the tasks of …
This paper addresses a highly researched area, the reshuffling problem in ports, using a newparadigm-modified containership service order in light of credit risk assessment. Container stacking and reshuffling operations can cause ship delays and additional risk. In deep-sea terminals, outbound containers are tightly stacked according to the retrieval sequence. Due to lack of space, terminals st…
The hatchcoverless container ship is an innovative design which improves cargo handling productivity. The paper develops a methodology for measuring the gains. the value which will accrue to the company over the life of the vessel.