Terminals as part of the Swedish transport system – an overview

TERMINALS AS PART OF THE SWEDISH TRANSPORT SYSTEM – AN OVERVIEW JOHAN WOXENIUS ROBERT SOMMAR VIOLETA ROSO FREDRIK BÄRTHEL KENTH LUMSDEN

Meddelande Meddelande119 119 Department DepartmentofofLogistics Logisticsand andTransportation Transportation CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OFTECHNOLOGY TECHNOLOGY Göteborg, Göteborg,Sweden Sweden2003 2003

Författare/Author Johan Woxenius, Robert Sommar, Violeta Roso, Fredrik Bärthel, Kenth Lumsden

Serie/Series Meddelande

Titel/Title Terminals as part of the Swedish Transport System -an overview

ISBN ISSN 0283-4421

Nr/No 119

Publiceringsdatum/Date of publishing December 2003 Uppdragsgivare/Commissioned by Näringsdepartementet genom Godstransportdelegationen och Järnvägsutredningen

Utgivare/Publisher Chalmers University of Technology Department of Logistics and Transportation SE 412 96 Göteborg

Referat (bakgrund, syfte, metod, resultat) Rapporten behandlar godsterminaler med betoning på sådana som har järnvägsanslutning utifrån aspekter som ägande och ansvar, former för drift och organisation, former för upplåtelse och terminalens tillgänglighet. Kartläggningen har genomförts med hjälp av information från Internet, frågeformulär och direktkontakter med berörda företag, operatörer och myndigheter. Delar av rapporten är bearbetade delar från tidigare egna skrifter varför områdena är olika väl täckta. En kategorisering har gjorts av inlandsterminaler som har järnvägsanslutning i frilastsspår, vagnslastterminaler, lättkombiterminaler och kombiterminaler. Terminaler inom dessa kategorier tillhör oftast i någon form de operatörer som har hand om trafiken medan marken, spåren och byggnaderna kan ha andra ägare. Där flera terminaler, både intermodala och unimodala, har lokaliserats inom ett begränsat område benämns intermodala transportcentrum. I Sverige finns områden på två orter som kan klassas som intermodala transportcentrum, Årsta i Stockholm och i Göteborg dels Gullbergsvass men även Hisingens södra del. Hamnarna har delats upp i två kategorier, nämligen de 28 hamnar som har järnvägsanslutning och som hanterar någon form av enhetsberett gods diskuteras mer ingående och de resterande 14 har inte studerats närmare. De 28 hamnarna hanterar i varierande omfattning container, semi-trailer, pappersrullar, pallar, nya bilar och sågade trävaror. Både Ro-Ro och Lo-Lo används som överföringsteknik. Hamnarna sköts ofta av hamnmyndigheten eller i bolagiserad form, ofta ägda av kommunen. I Sverige finns 49 flygplatser och 19 av dessa sköts av Luftfartsverket, av vilka ingen använder järnväg för gods. Flygplatsernas godsterminaler används inte bara vid flöden mellan lastbil och flyg, utan även vid omlastning mellan lastbilar särskilt vid s.k. offairports. De unimodala terminalerna beskrivs kortfattat. De operatörer som är verksamma beskrivs genom deras organisation, produkter och strategier. Roller, fokusering och marknadsposition skiljer sig åt. Green Cargo är den överlägset största spelaren, och de andra som behandlas är Rail Combi/Cargo Net A/S, Intercontainer (Scandinavia) AB, BK Tåg och IKEA Rail. Rapporten avslutas med en diskussion kring terminaler som en del av det svenska transportsystemet, vilka barriärer terminaler kan innebära, om de ska skötas av den privata eller offentliga sektorn. Slutligen analyseras de nuvarande logistiktrenderna och deras inverkan på intermodala transporter. Nyckelord: terminaler, intermodala transporter, järnväg, kombitrafik, hamn, kombioperatörer.

Abstract (background, aim, method, results) This report maps freight terminals in Sweden with emphasise on terminals with rail connection in terms of operational conditions, ownership, responsibilities and forms of disposal and accessibility. The study has been conducted by using internet, questionnaires and direct contacts to involved companies, operators and authorities. Inland intermodal terminals have been classified as freeloading sites, wagon-load terminals, light-combi terminals and conventional intermodal terminals. When several intermodal and unimodal terminals as well as supporting services are gathered within a limited area this is designated intermodal freight centres. Ports that have rail connection and handle unitised goods are treated; there are 28 ports of this kind. Operators active in Swedish intermodal transport are described, i.e. Green Cargo, Rail Combi/Cargo Net A/S, Intercontainer (Scandinavia) AB, BK Tåg och IKEA Rail. Conclusively, a discussion about the role of terminals in the Swedish transport systems and some comments on what type of barriers are raised by an inefficient terminal structure and whether the public or private sector is best suited to operate terminals. In addition, an analysis of current logistics trends and their implications for intermodal transport is presented. Keywords: Terminals, Intermodal transport, Rail transport, Ports, Intermodal operators.

ISSN 0283-4421

CHALMERS TEKNISKA HÖGSKOLA Institutionen för logistik och transport

CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Department of Logistics and Transportation

Terminals as part of the Swedish transport system – an overview by

Johan Woxenius Robert Sommar Violeta Roso Fredrik Bärthel Kenth Lumsden

Göteborg, 2003

Preface This report is commissioned by the Swedish Freight Transport Delegation (Godstransportdelegationen) and the Swedish Railway Committee (Järnvägsutredningen) to support their analyses on the Government’s future role regarding freight transport terminals. The report comprises both theoretical aspects of terminals in freight transport systems and empirical descriptions of the particular situation regarding Swedish terminals. After the introduction chapter, two chapters give a short introduction to the roles of terminals in the Swedish transport system and a categorisation of the terminal types. Next chapter presents the intermodal operators in Sweden. Finally, a synthesis and outlook on terminals are given where they are put in a wider perspective. We wish to thank our contacts at the committees, mainly Nina Andersson and Lars Hellsvik, as well as all representatives of Swedish terminals that have supported our work with information. Göteborg, December 2003

Johan Woxenius

Robert Sommar

Violeta Roso

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Fredrik Bärthel

Kenth Lumsden

Summary This report describes the present situation of terminals in Sweden. The emphasis is on intermodal terminals serving rail and road or sea transport. The research was conducted through two empirical studies; one study for seaport terminals and the other one for inland intermodal terminals. Data collection for port terminals was conducted through questionnaires sent (either by e-mail or fax) to 42 Swedish ports that were assumed to handle unitised goods or have direct connection by rail. Data collection for inland intermodal terminals was obtained from current rail operators, Banverket, Luftfartsverket, forwarders and terminal companies. A categorisation of inland intermodal terminals was made in intermodal freight centres, freeloading sites, wagon-load terminals, light-combi terminals and conventional intermodal terminals. Freeloading sites where found to be well-spread throughout Sweden. Wagonload terminals, defined here as terminals where wagons are unloaded with fork-lift trucks, also exist, but to a much more limited extent. There are currently 15 conventional inland intermodal terminals operated in Sweden, of which 12 are in Rail Combi’s network. Seaports as well as ports on inland waterways are discussed together in one chapter. The reason for discussing them together is because the focus of the research is not on ports themselves but on ports’ terminals where transshipment of units from/to rail to/from sea or inland waterway is performed. Sweden has about 50 public ports that range from small, specialized facilities to ferry ports and large general cargo ports. The majority of these ports are still municipally owned, in most cases the municipality owns the port infrastructure, which is leased to the port on commercial terms. The Swedish ports’ income has increased by nearly 80% over the past 10 years. A total of 118 million tonnes of cargo: liquid bulk, dry bulk, trailers and trucks, containers, rail wagons, new cars, etc.; were handled in 2000. In Sweden there are 49 airports of which only 3 handles more than 10 000 tons on yearly basis. Most important infrastructure at the airport is its runway, and other infrastructure provided by Luftfartsverket is access roads and parking for aircrafts and trucks, but the airports lack rail connection. Cargo handling activities at the airport is divided between two roles; terminal operators and handling agents.

Terminals as part of the Swedish transport system The transshipment between ships and land-based traffic modes obviously has a very long history. In the public mind, ports are also a very natural phenomenon so the rendering is kept short here. The main types of goods handled in Swedish ports are petroleum products, bulk materials, vehicles and cargo unitised as containers, semi-trailers, cassettes or sawn wood products. In addition, ports and ferries substitute bridges as links in road and rail transport chains. In such chains, rail wagons and lorries are transshipped rather than the goods itself. This report focuses transshipment of unitised cargo. The Swedish terminal net for intermodal road-rail transport was established in the late 1960's when handling equipment for 40 terminals was bought. The 13 largest terminals were equipped with gantry cranes able to lift all types of ITUs weighing up to 30 tons. Smaller terminals were equipped with fork lift trucks, side loaders or smaller cranes that limited the terminals to smaller load units or load units with fork entries. Four port terminals were also built to handle semi-trailers and ISO-containers for transshipment rail-sea.

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Rail Combi AB, owned by Green Cargo (45%) and Norwegian CargoNet (55%), is principal of most Swedish intermodal terminals. In a domestic perspective the company offers service between 14 terminals, i.e. Borlänge, Gävle, Göteborg, Helsingborg, Jönköping, Luleå, Malmö, Norrköping, Sundsvall, Trelleborg, Umeå, Årsta (Stockholm), Älmhult and Hallsberg. International routes are produced in co-operation with the international intermodal operators HUPAC and Kombiverkehr. The largest terminal is Stockholm/Årsta with two gantry cranes and some counter-balance trucks handling a total of approximately 75 000 unit loads annually. As a city, however, Göteborg accounts for a larger part of Rail Combi’s flows, the two terminals in Göteborg handle approximately 105 000 units/year compared to 85 000 in Stockholm. In addition to Rail Combi’s network, some new terminals have emerged recently. Gävle, Södertälje, Norrköping (part of Rail Combi’s network) and Karlstad are examples of ports offering transshipment road-rail. Eskilstuna and Insjön are examples of new intermodal terminals. Some large intermodal transport customers operate own handling equipment for load units, especially containers. Examples of such customers are Gävle Korsnäsverken and Volvo Olofströmsverken. The wagons are shunted into private sidings and this procedure is considered as a hybrid between intermodal transport and traditional wagon load transport. This type of transport has been significantly reduced during the last ten years. Furthermore, some port authorities have counter-balance trucks, so called reach-stackers, and Port of Göteborg has two gantry cranes for handling container trains in the port. Opening hours are somewhat flexible even though every terminal has its own official service hours. Customers with perishable goods need to distribute their goods in the early morning hours and customers with general cargo need some extra hours for terminal handling prior to distribution. Consequently, these customer categories are subjects of special negotiations on terminal hours. In general, the opening hours have been extended over the years.

Services offered at the terminals The core service offered at the terminals is ITU transshipment between two modes of transport, but also related services like empty storage, inspections, cleaning and minor repairs of ITUs are offered. The inspections are made to identify damage responsibility, but even status checks at the request of shipping agencies are performed. In conjunction with the terminal services, most intermodal operators lease out ITUs and arrange local road haulage. Most customers, however, are forwarders or hauliers arranging their own local road haulage.

Capacity utilisation Capacity utilisation is a crucial question for transport operators. The resources must be analysed as a part of a larger system and there is no meaning in discussing the utilisation of a single resource. If only one intermodal transport terminal is considered as satisfactorily used, the other terminals cannot be shut down and thereby closing all traffic. Furthermore, counter-balance trucks are sometimes used as backup for the gantry crane. To demand a high utilisation of this truck is therefore wrong. The intermodal transport terminals are supposed to make quick transshipments to enhance good utilisation of surrounding resources, e.g. rail wagons, lorries and general cargo terminals. A levelled resource utilisation is therefore not possible, nor wanted, in the intermodal transport terminal of today. In general they are busy in the early morning hours and in the iv

late afternoon. However, resource utilisation is interesting once a terminal is closing in on the capacity ceiling and hence affecting the customer service. In recent years, Rail Combi has expanded some terminals for handling full trains of 650 metres thus avoiding shunting. Jönköping remains as an example of an over-crowded terminal that limits expansion of intermodal transport. Key words: intermodality, inland terminals, seaport terminals, rail network, intermodal transport unit

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Content PREFACE...............................................................................................................................................................I SUMMARY .........................................................................................................................................................III TERMINALS AS PART OF THE SWEDISH TRANSPORT SYSTEM .............................................................................. III SERVICES OFFERED AT THE TERMINALS ............................................................................................................. IV CAPACITY UTILISATION ..................................................................................................................................... IV 1

INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.5.1

2

BACKGROUND ...................................................................................................................................... 1 PURPOSE ............................................................................................................................................... 1 SCOPE ................................................................................................................................................... 1 METHOD ............................................................................................................................................... 2 DEFINITIONS ......................................................................................................................................... 2 Types of units................................................................................................................................... 3

CATEGORISATION OF TERMINALS................................................................................................... 5 2.1 TERMINAL FUNCTIONS AND ACTIVITIES ................................................................................................ 5 2.1.1 Transshipment ................................................................................................................................. 5 2.1.2 Consolidation .................................................................................................................................. 5 2.1.3 Coordination ................................................................................................................................... 5 2.1.4 Sorting............................................................................................................................................. 5 2.1.5 Storing............................................................................................................................................. 5 2.1.6 Other functions................................................................................................................................ 5 2.2 CONVENTIONAL DIVISION OF INTERMODAL TERMINAL TYPES............................................................... 6 2.2.1 Intermodal freight centres............................................................................................................... 6 2.2.2 Freeloading sites............................................................................................................................. 6 2.2.3 Wagon-load terminals ..................................................................................................................... 7 2.2.4 Light-combi terminals ..................................................................................................................... 8 2.2.5 Conventional intermodal terminals................................................................................................. 9 2.2.6 Ports .............................................................................................................................................. 10 2.3 TERMINAL ROLES IN TRANSPORT NETWORKS ...................................................................................... 11 2.3.1 Terminals for direct connections................................................................................................... 12 2.3.2 Terminals for corridors................................................................................................................. 13 2.3.3 Terminals for hub-and-spoke designs ........................................................................................... 14 2.3.4 Terminals for fixed routes ............................................................................................................. 14 2.3.5 Terminals for allocated routes ...................................................................................................... 14

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INVENTORY OF SWEDISH TERMINALS.......................................................................................... 15 3.1 3.1.1 3.1.2 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.5.1 3.6 3.6.1 3.6.2 3.6.3 3.6.4 3.6.5 3.7 3.8 3.8.1 3.8.2 3.8.3

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INTERMODAL FREIGHT CENTRES ......................................................................................................... 15 Stockholm ...................................................................................................................................... 15 Göteborg ....................................................................................................................................... 16 FREELOADING SITES ........................................................................................................................... 16 WAGON-LOAD TERMINALS ................................................................................................................. 17 LIGHT-COMBI TERMINALS ................................................................................................................... 18 CONVENTIONAL INTERMODAL TERMINALS ......................................................................................... 19 Terminal costs ............................................................................................................................... 21 PORTS ................................................................................................................................................. 22 The port survey.............................................................................................................................. 23 Distribution of new cars................................................................................................................ 26 Port of Göteborg ........................................................................................................................... 26 Port of Trelleborg ......................................................................................................................... 28 Port of Gävle ................................................................................................................................. 29 AIRPORTS ........................................................................................................................................... 30 UNIMODAL TERMINALS....................................................................................................................... 31 Sea-sea terminals .......................................................................................................................... 31 Road-road terminals ..................................................................................................................... 32 Rail-Rail terminals ........................................................................................................................ 33

THE SWEDISH INTERMODAL OPERATORS................................................................................... 35

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4.1 4.1.1 4.1.2 4.1.3 4.1.4 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.4.1 4.5 4.6 5

GREEN CARGO .................................................................................................................................... 35 Light-combi ................................................................................................................................... 36 Green Cargo Recycling................................................................................................................. 36 Green Cargo Intermodal Shuttles ................................................................................................. 36 TGOJ Trafik .................................................................................................................................. 37 RAIL COMBI/CARGO NET A/S ............................................................................................................ 37 INTERCONTAINER (SCANDINAVIA) AB ............................................................................................... 39 BK TÅG............................................................................................................................................. 40 Vänerexpressen ............................................................................................................................. 41 IKEA RAIL........................................................................................................................................ 41 PORT NETWORKS ................................................................................................................................ 42

SYNTHESIS AND OUTLOOK ............................................................................................................... 43 5.1 5.2 5.2.1 5.2.2 5.3 5.3.1 5.3.2 5.3.3 5.4 5.4.1 5.4.2 5.4.3 5.5 5.5.1 5.5.2 5.5.3 5.5.4

THE SWEDISH INDUSTRIAL ORGANISATION ......................................................................................... 43 TERMINALS AS PART OF THE SWEDISH TRANSPORT SYSTEM ............................................................... 44 Services offered at the terminals ................................................................................................... 45 Capacity utilisation ....................................................................................................................... 45 TERMINALS AS BARRIERS.................................................................................................................... 46 Intermodal road-rail terminals ..................................................................................................... 46 Ports .............................................................................................................................................. 46 Intermodal freight centres............................................................................................................. 47 TERMINALS – PUBLIC OR PRIVATE ASSETS? ........................................................................................ 47 Intermodal road-rail terminals ..................................................................................................... 47 Ports .............................................................................................................................................. 49 Intermodal freight centres............................................................................................................. 49 A CHANGING LOGISTICS ENVIRONMENT FOR INTERMODAL TRANSPORT.............................................. 50 Goods: larger flows but smaller consignments ............................................................................. 51 Vehicles and vessels: larger units for the high-density routes ...................................................... 51 Ways and terminals: more consolidation and more rigid systems ................................................ 52 Impact on intermodal transport: transport services and traffic .................................................... 52

REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................................... 55 APPENDIX 1......................................................................................................................................................... 1

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1 Introduction Here follows a short description of the background to this report, its purpose and scope and some definitions of important terms used.

1.1 Background Terminals are undisputedly an integral and crucial part of freight transport systems. In some respects they are treated as infrastructure and as such a concern for the authorities, but in other respects as part of the freight transport operators’ individual assets. This report is written for the Swedish Freight Transport Delegation1 and the Swedish Railway Committee2 to support their analyses on the Government’s role regarding transport terminals. The terminal issue is part of the instructions to the Freight Transport Delegation (freely translated): “…in particular, the transshipment options at strategic nodes shall be surveyed, as shall the division of responsibilities regarding such facilities. The Delegation shall propose ways for the Government to participate in a development, in which terminals are sustainably available with prospects for development. Here, a terminal denotes both land-based facilities and ports. The Delegation shall inform how the responsibility for terminals ought to be distributed and what principles for charging and competition that need to be in place to promote the co-operation between traffic modes.”

The Railway Committee has wider instructions but one part is to report which of Jernhusen AB’s terminals that are of strategic importance to the Swedish transport system. The main part of this report regards an inventory of Swedish terminals in a wide perspective although rather substantial parts are devoted to more qualitative issues.

1.2 Purpose The purpose of the study is to categorise and make an inventory of freight transport terminals in Sweden with emphasis on intermodal terminals including seaports. Other types of terminals are briefly described.

1.3 Scope The terminal inventory includes: •

ownership and responsibility

•

infrastructure conditions, e.g. whether there are rail connections

•

principles for: o o o o

operation and organisation accessibility pricing added value services and how they are charged

1 Godstransportdelegationen, www.sou.gov.se/gtd/index.htm 2 Järnvägsutredningen, www.sou.gov.se/jarnvagsutr/index.htm

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In addition, the different types of terminals are analysed regarding importance for intermodal development. In particular, conditions for other actors’ accessibility to the terminals operated by Rail Combi AB are analysed. The prospects for adding a rail connection to terminals lacking such facilities is briefly analysed and so is the role of existing infrastructure when new terminals are established. The main focus regarding intermodal terminals is put on terminals transhipping intermodal transport units (ITUs) between rail, road and sea for several actors. In terms of cargo this excludes bulk cargo such as ore, oil and, to a certain extent, forest products. Unimodal terminals run by, for example, forwarders as well as ferry terminals handling accompanied Ro-Ro traffic solely are just briefly mapped. The demand for terminal services is derived and, hence, the roles played by the terminals are put in a wider context, e.g., by presenting the industry structure regarding intermodal road-rail transport and outlining logistics trends and their importance for intermodality.

1.4 Method Data collection for inland intermodal terminals was made from rail operators, Banverket and terminal companies. Some information was retrieved from the Internet but since this was insufficient, further contacts by phone were required and a questionnaire was sent by e-mail to give the respondents time to gather the needed information. Data collection for port terminals was conducted through a questionnaire sent, either by email or fax, to 42 Swedish ports that were assumed to handle unitised goods or have direct connection by rail. 31 out of 42 surveyed ports replied to the questionnaire meaning the responsiveness was 74%, which is quite good. Data for those ports who didn’t reply to the questionnaire were taken from the Internet or trade journals. All collected data for terminals is either presented in tables throughout the report or arranged in tables in the appendix of this report.

1.5 Definitions By definition, an intermodal transport is a physical transport where (Jensen, 1987): ”The goods are loaded onto a load carrier at the sender and follow the load carrier to the receiver, where it is unloaded. The load carrier is transferred at least once from one means of transportation to another between the sender and the receiver.”

In the particular case of intermodal road-rail transport, the goods are stuffed in an ITU at the consignor. From there it is hauled by road to a terminal situated near by, where it is transshipped to rail, often in the form of block- or full trains. It is then transported by rail to a terminal near the consignee, where it is once again transshipped to road for haulage to the consignee. The ITU is not broken until the goods arrive at the consignee. Of particular interests to this study are terminals with a rail connection. According to UN Economic commission for Europe: Terminal is a place equipped for the transhipment and storage of Intermodal transport units (ITUs). (UN Economic Commission for Europe, 2001, p. 58)

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Transshipment between traffic modes are generally divided between Lift-on Lift-off (LoLo) and Roll-on Roll-off (RoRo) where LoLo is defined as: Loading and unloading of intermodal transport units using lifting equipment. (UN Economic Commission for Europe, 2001, p. 24)

…and RoRo as: Loading and unloading of a road vehicle, a wagon or an ITU on or off a ship on its own wheels or wheels attached to it for that purpose. In the case of rolling road, only road vehicles are driven on and off a train. (UN Economic Commission for Europe, 2001, p. 24)

A division in connection to railways can be made between track owner and track holder. Track owner is the legal owner of the railway, i.e. rail, sleeper and other railway material. The responsible for the management of the railway is denominated as track holder. In most cases track owner and track holder is one and the same, but the track owner can transfer the management to a track holder possessing the competence.

1.5.1 Types of units Intermodal transport unit (ITU) is a term for different types of load carriers used for intermodal transportation of goods as well as in transportation in general. ITUs are: container, swap body and semi-trailer. In this study cassettes, paper rolls and sawn timber will also be referred as intermodal units although normally not included in the definition of intermodal transport units.

Unit loads Container Swap body Semi-trailer Roll-on frame

Figure 1

ITUs. (Woxenius, 1998).

Containers Container is differentiated with swap body by the fact that every container can be top-lifted and stacked one on the other. Two main standards exist in terms of length: 20 and 40 feet (6.10 and 12.20 meters). “Generic term for a box to carry freight, strong enough for repeated use, usually stackable and fitted with devices for transfer between modes.”

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(UN Economic Commission for Europe, 2001, p. 44)

Swap Bodies Swap bodies are used by European countries for intermodal/multimodal transportation purpose. Different sizes exist for best possible fit with the truck that carries it. Usual swap bodies are 7.15; 7.45 or 7.82 meters long but it is possible to find other sizes in some companies. A definition for swap bodies is: “A freight carrying unit optimised to road vehicle dimensions and fitted with handling devices for transfer between modes, usually road/rail. Originally, such units were not capable of being stacked when full or top-lifted. But many units can now be stacked and top-lifted and the main feature distinguishing them from containers is that they are optimised to vehicle dimensions. Such units would need a UIC approval to be used on rail. Some swap bodies are equipped with folding legs on which the unit stands when not on the vehicle.” (UN Economic Commission for Europe, 2001, p. 49)

Semi-trailers Semi-trailers are very common units that are largely used by road transportation companies. A Semi-trailer length is usually 13.6 meters. Its definition can be: “A non-powered vehicle for the carriage of goods, intended to be coupled to a motor vehicle in such a way that a substantial part of its weight and of its load is borne by the motor vehicle. Semi-trailers may have to be specially adapted for use in intermodal transport.” (UN Economic Commission for Europe, 2001, p. 37)

Pallets or cassettes The most common way to build transport units from single goods is to place the goods on loading pallets. Since the goods are placed on some kind of loading pallet, they can easily be handled with a forklift truck because the pallets are designed for forklift trucks. The purpose of using pallets is to enable mechanical handling of larger units. The most common pallet is the Europe pallet with dimensions 800 x 1200 mm (Lumsden, 2003). Paper rolls There is no standard dimension for paper rolls but it can weigh about 5 tons with diameter up to 1800 mm and width up to 3000 mm (World Cargo News, 2002). Sawn wood Sawn wood, packaged in bundles, is also without standard but an example of measure is 2500 mm long x 1250 mm wide. These measures can fit into a new type of 45 feet container presented by the company Container Leasing (World Cargo News, 2003).

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2 Categorisation of terminals In this chapter, some different ways of categorising terminals are presented.

2.1 Terminal functions and activities One rather theoretical, yet practically useful, way of categorising terminals is to start out from functions and activities. This text is taken from Lumsden (2003).

2.1.1 Transshipment In the terminal the goods are transshipped from one traffic mode to another. This should be done during a short period of time and often between two means of transportation with very different characteristics, for example from long-distance vehicles to distribution vehicles or from ships to road traffic modes. This demands a design of the terminal that varies with the existing type of transshipment.

2.1.2 Consolidation Goods are collected into a terminal from a relatively small surrounding where the goods are consolidated and possibly unified, after which the transport is loaded in larger units and by traffic modes that are generally specially suited for these longer transports. The goods are unloaded at the arrival at a second terminal and spread out in smaller units to the receiver.

2.1.3 Coordination Different types of traffic modes arrive at the terminal, and they arrive at different points of time. In order for the terminal to become an efficient node in the transportation network, some kind of coordination of the vehicles must be made. This coordination should primarily mean an adjustment of the times of arrival and departure for different means of transport. This can be made either by the help of highly controlling time tables or in such a way that the goods is stopped at the terminal. It is also of vital importance that the capacities of the different traffic modes are coordinated in order to avoid problems such as delay in the terminal, a large incoming flow of goods with a small capacity for outgoing deliveries or a small incoming flow of goods with a large capacity for outgoing deliveries.

2.1.4 Sorting For several different reasons, the flow of goods in the terminal can consequently be stopped. When this happens, it is suitable to perform such value-adding operations that are possible to perform in other places than at the consignor’s. The goods can for example be sorted, on the basis of many different criteria.

2.1.5 Storing The storing of goods can have a various time extension. The goods passing through the terminal from one traffic mode to another must normally be stopped for a shorter period of time, short-time storing, in order for the arrival and departure times for the means of transportation to be given a certain amount of freedom. Other types of goods use the terminal as a long-time storing, from where the goods are delivered at customers´ requests.

2.1.6 Other functions •

Maintenance of ITUs

•

Empty depot-storage of ITUs 5

•

Handling of dangerous goods

•

Custom clearance

•

Forwarding

2.2 Conventional division of intermodal terminal types A traditional division of terminals can be made between intermodal freight centres, freeloading sites, wagonload terminals, light-combi terminals, conventional combi terminals and ports. Characteristics for these categories are given below. Notable is that one and the same terminal can fulfil the characteristics for several types.

2.2.1 Intermodal freight centres The most ambitious type of terminal is often referred to as intermodal freight transport centre or GVZ for Güterverkehrzentrum in German. In general it is a variety of terminal functions and related services assembled in one area. Typically an intermodal road-rail terminal is surrounded by forwarder’s general cargo terminals, conventional rail terminals, petrol stations, lorry repair shops and other supporting facilities. Intermodal freight centres have the largest impacts on local traffic patterns. Since consolidation terminals for general cargo constitute central parts of the centres, the traffic connecting them with the intermodal terminal is obsolete and local pick-up and delivery can be coordinated. Moreover, the concentration to one point also brings about concentrated interurban flows suitable for intermodal transport.

2.2.2 Freeloading sites Characteristic for this category of transshipment terminal is its simplicity. Basically it has an incoming track that is not electrified, a surface capable of sustaining the weight from the load and loading equipment and connection to road infrastructure. Occasionally terminals of this kind have a loading platform. Main track Terminal area

Operating surface for loading equipment and lorries

Terminal track Figure 2

Connecting road

Simplified outline of a freeloading site.

There is no stationery lifting equipment or high capacity truck available; this can sometimes be borrowed from a nearby terminal if needed. Normally the ordinary ITUs like container, swap bodies or semi-trailer cannot be handled on regular basis unless investments is done in a truck with enough capacity or if a lorry with lifting equipment is used. Cargo handled at these sites is generally of low value, e.g. round timber. Two images from the freeloading terminal in Jönköping are shown below.

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Figure 3

Freeloading terminal in Jönköping. (Source: Johan Woxenius 031009).

Figure 4

Freeloading terminal in Jönköping. (Source: Johan Woxenius 031009).

2.2.3 Wagon-load terminals This type of terminal has the features of the freeloading sites but is always equipped with a loading platform enabling loading and unloading from rail wagons with fork-lift trucks. Some of these terminals have weather sheltered platforms. General palletised cargo is handled as well as sawn wood and paper rolls, depending on the needs of the local industry. In connection there is a storage facility which is similar to ordinary lorry terminals with roof, walls and gates. The terminal area is sometimes fenced for higher security. Traditional terminal services are also provided, such as forwarding, stuffing, storing and stripping. Main track Terminal track

Loading platform with storage facility

Terminal area

Lorry operating area Connecting road

Figure 5

Simplified outline of a wagon-load terminal.

A real-world example of a wagon-load terminal is shown in the figure below.

7

Figure 6

Loading of conventional rail wagons at Schenker’s terminal in Jönköping. (Source: Johan Woxenius 031009).

2.2.4 Light-combi terminals Light-combi terminals are situated next to the main track with track connection at both ends of the terminal track and the train is shifted in to the terminal by signal controlled switches. This is the case of the other types too, but in light-combi terminals this is done directly to the main track. The terminal track is electrified but like the freeloading sites it has a surface capable of sustaining the weight from the load and loading equipment and connection to road infrastructure. Further, there is a fence surrounding the terminal area. Main track Signal to main track

Terminal track (electrified)

Operating surface for loading equipment and lorries

Terminal area Figure 7

Connecting road

Simplified outline of a light-combi terminal.

At the unmanned terminals Light-combi used in Green Cargo’s commercial trial for DAGAB 1999-2001, the rail engine driver walked to the forklift truck wagon (1), where he removed the low fence at the wagon side (2). He entered the forklift truck, drove it off the wagon over the ramp (3) and transshipped the appropriate ITUs between the train and the intermediate storage racks (4). The transshipment process ended with an inspection (5), whereupon the driver drove the forklift truck back onto the train (6). Finally he was ready to take the train to the next terminal (7). The rail engine driver was equipped with a cellular telephone for calling lorry drivers to arrange for direct transshipment if the train was late. Terminals could be called at any hour.

8

3

4

2 and 6

1 and 7

5 Lorry

Figure 8

Activities carried out by the rail engine driver at the Light-combi terminal.

The forklift truck carried by the train was of standard model with a price tag in the range of 1,5 MSEK, weighing 34.5 tons and capable of lifting 25 tons. To increase the safety during the transshipment process it was equipped with a locking device to prevent crossing the height limit of 4.7 meters above the edge of the rail and the overhead contact line was heightened by 15 cm. A transshipment at the Light-combi terminal in Mölndal is shown below.

Figure 9

Transshipment at the Light-combi terminal in Mölndal. (Source: Fredrik Bärthel, 010321).

The requirements of capacity was initially settled to six transshipments during a 20 minutes stop, but interviews and own studies at terminals in March 2001 revealed a stop time of at least 25 minutes to transship six swap bodies, divided into two almost equivalent set-up times of around five minutes each (activity 1, 2, 3 and 5, 6, 7 in figure 3) and an average transshipment time of almost 2½ minutes each. Anyway, the forklift truck solution was sufficient for the customer pilot with transshipments of seven to eight swap bodies at each terminal.

2.2.5 Conventional intermodal terminals This category comprises conventional intermodal terminals capable of handling all ITUs. These terminals are designed to handle relatively large flows of ITUs in a cost and resource efficient way to lower the handling cost per ITU but have the basic characteristics as freeloading sites. To achieve this terminals are well structured and have investments in facilities and lifting equipment. Lifting equipment can either be a gantry crane reaching over some railway tracks and lorry driving lanes or counter-balanced trucks. A trend can be noticed towards replacing old cranes with counter-balanced trucks, and if necessary more than one lifting resource exist at each terminal. Most of them have more than one track for loading trains and

9

also areas where units can be stored and dangerous goods be handled. As operations are regular at these terminals there is an office and staff space in the terminal. Regular operations demands large flows for low unit cost, at least in the case of terminals dedicated intermodal transshipment. This implies that they are situated where the flows are considerable and the terminal is part of a network. In a European perspective, though, the terminals are small or medium sized. Main track Terminal tracks

Crane

Transhipment area

Terminal area

DG

Dangerous goods area Storage area

Office

Connecting road

Figure 10

Simplified outline of a conventional intermodal terminal

All standardised units, such as containers, swap bodies and semi-trailers, can be handled at these terminals. Exceptions exist where, for example, only containers are handled; this depends on policy or limitations of the lifting equipment. Another characteristic is that a number of additional services related to ITUs are provided by the terminal. Examples of services are storing of both full and empty ITUs and dangerous goods handling. Opening hours of the terminals varies, but most common is that the terminal is opened at extended office hours. An image from Rail Combi’s intermodal terminal in Göteborg is shown below.

Figure 11

A gantry crane and a reach-stacker at Rail Combi’s terminal in Göteborg. (Source: Johan Woxenius, 031002).

2.2.6 Ports The transshipment between ships and land-based traffic modes is obviously the core business of ports. The design of ports depends heavily on the type of goods that is to be transshipped. The main types of goods handled in Swedish ports are petroleum products, bulk materials, vehicles and cargo unitised as containers, semi-trailers, cassettes or sawn wood products. In addition, ports and ferries substitute bridges as links in road and rail transport chains. In such chains, rail wagons and lorries are transshipped rather than the goods itself. This report fo10

cuses transshipment of unitised cargo. An image from the container port Skandiahamnen in Port of Göteborg is presented below.

Figure 12

Container cranes in Port of Göteborg. (Source: Johan Woxenius, 030220).

2.3 Terminal roles in transport networks The demand for freight transport in general and transshipment services in particular are derived. Hence, terminals ought to be described in relation to the networks they are part of. Here, one description model for intermodal road-rail transport developed by Woxenius (1998) is presented. The theory is based upon the assumption that a sufficient infrastructure enables direct connection between all terminals in the system. It is then up to the operator to choose which routes to use. In the application to intermodal transport, the dots and circles represent transshipment terminals. Additional road haulage is needed in all cases – the discussed traffic solutions only describe the rail-based part of the total transportation system. The dots along the route might constitute marshalling points or so called gateways where ITUs are transshipped between trains. An illustration of the different traffic patterns is presented in figure 13. In the direct connection alternative, there is a direct transport relation between A and B. The timetable is not dependent upon other transport assignments and can easily be tailor-made for the customer as long as there is spare capacity in the rail network. In this solution there is a high degree of flexibility with regard to time planning. The transport corridor is a design with frequent connections along a corridor line and short feeder services between terminals on the corridor and satellite terminals. The transport flows are grouped at the terminals on the corridor line. In this example, connection B is on the corridor line and terminal A is a satellite terminal. This means that the short-line transport from A to the nearest terminal on the corridor line is followed by a transport along the corridor.

11

Direct connection

A

Fixed routes

Hub-andspoke

Corridor

A

A

Flexible routes*

A

A

1

2 3 B

B , Terminals

B

B

Links used in transport A to B Other links in the network

B Main line Satellite line

* Only some of the possible links are shown

Figure 13

Five different traffic patterns for transport from A to B (Woxenius, 1998)

In the hub-and-spoke solution, one terminal is selected as hub and all transports pass through this terminal, even when sender and receiver are situated close to each other and far from the hub. Rational handling at the hub and good utilisation of vehicles compensate for the longer transport distances. There is a freedom in time planning as transports to and from the hub are frequent and not dependent on other transports. If there are no transport time restrictions, a high utilisation can be accomplished as goods can be stored at the hub until the capacity of a train can be fully utilised. When fixed routes are used, the operator has decided to use routes, which are operated at a fixed schedule, with connections to other routes at fixed terminals. In contrast to the hub-andspoke solution, many terminals are used as transshipment points and the haulage is organised as loops or separate links. Terminal handling is not necessary at every terminal on the route – usually only a part of the load is handled. The routes don’t have to have common terminals; the system can be organised as two pick up/delivery areas with one connection between the respective main terminals. The load plan is crucial as the loading of the vehicle, train or ship must enable handling goods of current interest at all terminals. When a train is filled, the routes can be short-circuited at any point and an additional train must back up. The maximum degree of freedom is possible in the flexible routes design. Routes are dynamically allocated in real time as a function of actual demand as reflected by bookings. Direct connections between all terminals are possible if there are sufficient goods to be transported between their end points. The operator can choose many different routes between A and B and transports are planned by heuristical methods or optimised with operational analysis tools. Information about current transport demand is crucial in this planning process along with the ability to change train timetable with short notice. In the following section terminals are classified and described according to their role in intermodal transport networks referring to figure 13 above.

2.3.1 Terminals for direct connections In a direct connection design, there is no central terminal in the system. Instead, all handling of the ITUs is performed at terminals near the consignor and the consignee. This means that 12

the goods volume passing any one terminal is limited, thus reducing the capacity requirements on the terminals. The capacity of the handling equipment is reduced when several tracks are used within the terminal. The transfer time requirements depend on how long the trains stay at the terminal. If trains stay at the terminal throughout the day, as is the custom in Europe today, this becomes a non critical parameter. Nevertheless, due to the demand from hauliers the terminal is mainly utilised in some early morning hours and some late afternoon hours, and quick transshipment is needed. Since two terminals are linked directly to each other, this design is ideally operated with fixed train sets. Traditional intermodal terminals Despite the large number of transshipment technologies developed over the last 30 years, the intermodal terminals look rather much the same throughout the world – a gantry crane overreaching some railway tracks and lorry driving lanes is complemented with large counterbalanced trucks. Large and complicated terminals are needed for handling many different types of ITUs and the costs must be distributed between a large number of transshipments. The trains remains at the terminal throughout the day and are operated as full trains between terminals in a direct connection style. Simple terminals for direct connections An alternative to the traditional transshipment technology is to equip the vehicles and ITUs for independent transshipment. The interesting feature of these systems is that the terminal requirements are virtually restricted to a track in the driving lane. Hence, the terminal investments and localisation becomes much less crucial and definite. Also simple sidings at the premises of the consignor and the consignee can be used as terminals. An example of such a solution is a rail wagon designed for lifting swap bodies or cassettes. The restriction to direct connections is due to the fact that the wagons run underneath prepositioned swap bodies or cassettes and lift them in one operation. Also bimodal systems like Wabash’s Road Railer are practically limited to direct connections. The reason is that the system requires purpose-built trailers and bogies and that the bogies cannot easily be repositioned empty.

2.3.2 Terminals for corridors In a system based on the corridor design, each train passes several stations during one day. Terminal transfer times must therefore be kept at a minimum, which must be considered when choosing the terminal handling equipment to be employed. On the other hand is only a limited amount of goods handled at each station, consequently limiting the capacity requirements. Since trains are unavailable at each terminal for longer periods of time, storage space for ITUs must be provided at the terminals, and detachability between road vehicle and rail wagon must consequently be high. Demands for transshipment ability of all types of ITUs might lead to conflicts with the requirement of fast transfers, because for instance semi-trailers are unsuited for horizontal handling. Large-scale corridor terminals Germany with a huge demand for transportation along the industrial zones, e.g. along the Rhine, is the leading country when it comes to developing high-capacity corridor terminals. Immensely capital intensive concepts have been presented by Krupp (Fast Handling System), Noell (Fast Transshipment System) and, slightly cheaper, by Mannesmann Transmodal (Transterminal). 13

Small-scale corridor terminals More interesting to Scandinavian conditions are the small-scale corridor terminals suitable also for relatively small and dispersed flows. In Japan, fork-lift trucks are used at intermediate stops along terminals in JR Freight’s Multi-functional freight track system. Some horizontal transshipment technologies for corridor use have also been presented but Green Cargo chose to employ a conventional fork-lift truck travelling with the train and operated by the rail engine driver at terminals. in their Light-combi concept.

2.3.3 Terminals for hub-and-spoke designs The chief characteristic of the hub and spoke design is that all transports pass through a central terminal. Hence, this terminal has to accommodate an extensive flow of goods. It is therefore of paramount importance that the terminal has a large capacity as well as being able to offer short handling times. As is true for the corridor design, semi-trailers can only be used if transshipment times are kept short. Only rail-rail transshipment takes place at the hub terminal implying that it is actually not a true intermodal terminal. The satellite terminals are normally conventional ones with gantry cranes and fork-lift trucks. France is the archetype of a hub-and-spoke system, not only when transportation is concerned. Hence, the French are leading the development with Technicatome’s gigantic Commutor system, but they are being challenged by German Noell with the Mega Hub Concept, by Austrian Pentaplan with the High Capacity Terminal and by Swiss Tuchschmid with the Compact Terminal. The latter development schemes aim at the emerging market for gateway terminals for transshipments between trains operating in different network modules.

2.3.4 Terminals for fixed routes A fixed route design faces roughly the same requirements as a corridor one, but on a smaller scale. Short train to train transshipment times, or alternatively marshalling so that the last wagons in the train are to be decoupled at the gateway terminals, are therefore a crucial requirement. However, it is generally difficult to plan such routes that the last wagon is always the one to be decoupled. In order to make this design feasible, it is therefore necessary to restrict the types of ITU admitted or to employ a handling technique that can accommodate all types of ITUs. Serving as gateways between network modules can be a future task for the traditional intermodal terminals that today are very badly utilised during the mid-day hours.

2.3.5 Terminals for allocated routes In this design, the train sets operate routes, along which loading and unloading operations are performed on several occasions. The transshipment capacity required is limited since only a few ITUs are handled at each station. Due to the rigidity of train timetables, this is currently no option for intermodal transport. With future information systems, however, dynamic timetables are foreseen for freight trains.

14

3 Inventory of Swedish terminals Emphasise is put on intermodal terminals in this chapter following the categorisation outlined in part 2.2 but also airports is included as well as an overview of unimodal terminals.

3.1 Intermodal freight centres Despite far-reaching development plans and the theoretical attractiveness of intermodal freight centres (Höltgen, 1995 and Cardebring and Warnecke, 1995), they have not proven to be too popular among the road transport operators. One reason for their reluctance is that they fear restrictions in their flexibility once established at the intermodal freight centre. The establishment close to an intermodal terminal, implies a fear that the authorities will force them to use rail transport between the intermodal freight centres and perhaps also to co-ordinate their city distribution. The operators’ service offers will then be very similar, and thus they fear price wars. The general development in the logistics sector is rather the opposite – specialisation and deeper integration into the shippers’ operations. The limited operator interest is thus a serious barrier for the development of intermodal freight centres. There are a few transport nodes in Sweden that could be classified as intermodal freight centres. The situation in Stockholm and Göteborg are described here.

3.1.1 Stockholm At Årsta/Älvsjö/Västberga south of Stockholm, many transport companies have concentrated their Stockholm representation within an area of approximately one square kilometre. Besides the Stockholm/Årsta intermodal transport terminal there are several shipping agencies, forwarders and hauliers. Furthermore, many shippers, such as wholesalers with own warehouses, are located next to the intermodal transport terminal. Private sidings are frequent in the area giving access to wagon load rail transport. The location is well chosen with access to the highway system, local roads as well as the main railway track through Stockholm. An intersection between the local road net and E20/E4 is situated only 500 meters away from the intermodal transport-terminal. E20/E4 is the main link for through traffic and it is connected to E18 (between Stockholm and Oslo) north of Stockholm. However, since there is yet no highway circle around Stockholm and the rail capacity through the city is a bottleneck, this location is best for connections southwards. If one intermodal freight centre-location has to be chosen in Stockholm, Årsta is considered as one of the best from an infrastructural point of view. The terminal of DHL for general cargo is situated just on the other side of the railway tracks at Västberga Allé. Even Schenker have terminals and offices at Västberga, about one kilometre from the intermodal transport-terminal. The biggest wholesalers in Sweden are all represented; ICA, Coop and Dagab have warehouses in Årsta. The area developed into a transport hub in the 1970's, though not as a result of a common policy but because of its advantegous location. It is considered as a mature intermodal freight centre and it is not expected to grow. There is available land nearby, but the soil conditions are poor for exploitation. Another central point of logistic services in Stockholm is the area around Arlanda international airport. Since freight airlines do not like extra loading points, and no intermodal roadrail transport terminal exists there, this area is not further discussed.

15

3.1.2 Göteborg In Göteborg, two areas can be identified as intermodal freight centres, one with rail transport in focus and one based on sea transport. The first is the area close to Göteborg Central Station. The main intermodal transport terminal of Göteborg is located there as well as a number of forwarders and the rail freight terminal of Green Cargo. DHL has its main general cargo terminal also offering third party logistics services. Also the main post terminal is in the area. The concentration is though not as dense as in Årsta. As the intermodal transport terminal is close to the city centre, this area is not suitable for expansions and the city has announced other plans for the area. Hence, there have been discussions about moving the terminal outside the city, although substantial investments have been made at the intermodal terminal rather recently. The location is close to the city centre but good when communications are concerned. Besides the railway station with lines to Oslo, Karlstad, Stockholm, Kalmar/Karlskrona and Malmö, there is almost immediate access to the international highway system with the intersection between E20 (Göteborg - Stockholm) and E6 (Trelleborg - Oslo) just a kilometre away. The other area is located on the island Hisingen where many port establishments are positioned along 15 km of the estuary of Göta Älv River. The port operation is divided into RoRo shipping in Älvsborgshamnen and Arendal and container shipping in Skandiahamnen. In addition there are oil ports and refineries that are not treated here. Many shipping agencies, forwarders and hauliers have located their operations in association to the Port of Göteborg. Even transport related services as ITU storage and repair are supplied. The terminal of Schenker is located at Bäckebol in the north of the strip. The location of the terminal is chosen close to the road network rather than the port. In the other end of this strip, at the old shipyard area of Arendal, close to Skandiahamnen, Dancargo, DHL and Maersk Logistics have established third party logistics terminals. Also at Arendal, Volvo Logistics, operates a terminal for components to the manufacturing facilities of Volvo Cars and Volvo Trucks. The export of passenger cars is operated from a dedicated area in Skandiahamnen. There are terminals for intermodal sea-rail transport in both Älvsborgshamnen and Skandiahamnen and occasionally road-rail terminal services have been offered in this area. In addition, large units like the StoraEnso Cargo Unit (the SECU box) and Avesta Polarit’s cassettes are transshipped between rail and sea.

3.2 Freeloading sites Because of the extensive number of freeloading terminals these have not been examined individually but data has been gathered jointly from Banverkets survey of loading and unloading sites but also from Inlandsbanan. For further information about specific sites Banverkets webpage can be visited (www.banverket.se) under the heading of “marknad”, only in Swedish though. In figure 14 an overview of these sites in southern Sweden is given.

16

Figure 14

Freeloading sites in southern Sweden. (Source: www.banverket.se)

There are about 130 of these sites according to Banverkets survey, mainly south of Gävle. Approximately half of them have a loading platform. The survey has been conducted separately by the five different regions within Banverket with no uniform definition on what the different terminal types are. Access to data of how much is transported via these sites is scarce. At Inlandsbanan there are about ten more freeloading sites which mostly handle timber. In addition to these sites there are numerous private sites and others owned by the municipalities. This forms a picture of a well-spread existence of freeloading sites throughout Sweden.

3.3 Wagon-load terminals Green Cargo Road & Logistics operates 16 wagon-load terminals spread through Sweden. Most of them are situated in the same area as the conventional intermodal terminals and have freeloading tracks and loading platforms capable of serving from a couple of wagons up to 20 wagons. Storage facilities of the terminals range from a few hundred square meters to several thousand. As these terminals handle flows only for Green Cargo’s customers they are nonpublic. Other private terminals of this kind exist, as the example in figure 6 on page 8 shows. Since freight statistics is at an aggregated level and access to locations of these terminals is limited the number of these terminals is unknown. The usage of forwarders wagon-load terminals, to the extent that this feature exists, is limited or non-existent. Generally though, older general cargo terminals of forwarders have rail connections. The wagon-load share of railway total transport performance of 19.5 billion ton-kilometres is presented in figure 15 to show its importance for the railway.

17

Ore Intermodal consignments Empty privately owned wagons Wagon-load

Figure 15

Transport performance for railways 2001 from Bantrafik 2000-2001.

3.4 Light-combi terminals Green Cargo’s development project Light-combi was tested in the commercial trial “The Dalecarlian Girl”. The service offered included transport, handling and distribution of goods from Dagab’s warehouse in Borlänge to 37 of Hemköp’s about 100 stores, situated in the southern and middle parts of Sweden from April 1998 to April 2001 (Bärthel and Woxenius, 2003). At Göteborg, Hässleholm, Nässjö and Linköping new unmanned Light-combi terminals were built, of which Göteborg was the only terminal where arbitrary swap bodies could be transshipped. The others were more or less temporary and built under the pre-conditions of being as inexpensive as possible, having a capacity adapted to the customer pilot and only considering technical and logistical questions related to the pilot. Arrangements mainly regarded a ramp for the loading and unloading of the forklift truck, a flat asphalt surface and storage racks. The traffic was, as shown in the figure below, divided into two loops, where the counter clockwise loop (left column) included transport of goods to the terminals in Örebro, Göteborg, Halmstad and Hässleholm. The clockwise loop (middle column) supplied the Hemköp districts around Linköping, Nässjö and Malmö. The figure and table also provide an overview of served Hemköp stores, distribution distances from the light-combi terminals and suppliers served by The Dalecarlian Girl for transports to the warehouse in Borlänge (right column).

18

Figure 16

The Light-combi pilot The Dalecarlian Girl. Hemköp stores followed by city abbreviation within brackets are situated close to the terminal. (Woxenius and Bärthel, 2003)

The racks worked as intermediate storage and implied that neither the rail engine driver nor the lorry driver had to fold up the support legs manually. The racks were a working environment requirement for using the unmanned terminals, since the driver was prohibited to leave the forklift truck during the transshipment process. In Malmö and Örebro Rail Combi’s conventional terminals were used and this meant normal shunting and local rail haulage to the terminals. GCR&L carried out the transshipments in Halmstad using a stationary forklift truck.

3.5 Conventional intermodal terminals Dominating this category is Rail Combi which has 17 terminals in their network throughout Sweden, as shown in figure 17. All terminals that are in Rail Combi’s network are not all directly operated by Rail Combi. Five of the terminals are ports, namely Trelleborg, Göteborg Älvsborgshamnen, Göteborg Centralharpan, Norrköping and Stockholm Värtan, operated by respective port company or authority. These will be discussed under section 3.6. Luleå, Hallsberg and Älmhult are operated by contracted terminal companies, which are owned by Rail Combi, the local municipality and/or other partners. At these terminals the tracks and land are owned by the terminal companies but maintained by Rail Combi. Tracks and land at the rest of the terminals is owned by Banverket and Jernhusen respectively, except in Borlänge where the municipality is the owner. Tracks are maintained by Rail Combi at these terminals, meaning that Rail Combi is the track holder. In Borlänge, Umeå and Jönköping another company is contracted for the operation. The only terminal not handling all ITUs is Centralharpan in Port of Göteborg where only containers are transshipped. Lifting 19

equipment at Rail Combi’s terminals is mainly counter-balanced trucks, so called reachstackers, up to 45 ton but at Göteborg, Luleå, Malmö and Sundsvall there is also a gantry crane and Stockholm Årsta has two gantry cranes.

Figure 17

Rail Combi’s terminals. (Source: www.railcombi.se)

Most of the terminals open at 6 am and close at 6 pm. Some are open on weekends too. Generally bigger terminals have longer opening hours; some start as early as 4 am and close as late as 10 pm. Exact opening hours for Rail Combi’s individual terminals is available at their webpage. Besides Rail Combi, three other inland terminals exist that handles substantial flows of ITUs. One is situated in Karlstad and is operated by Vänerexpressen. This terminal only handles containers and semi-trailers but not swap bodies. The other two are in Insjön and Eskilstuna and are operated by Green Cargo Road & Logistics, while the land is owned by private companies. Over the years several more conventional intermodal terminals have been operated, but here only terminals currently in use is discussed. In table 1 basic data of these terminals is presented. On annual basis the number of units handled is ranging from about 5 000 up to 75 000 which shows that the size of operations differs significantly between the terminals. For Rail Combi’s terminals the figures in the table is an approximation for the full year based on statistics from January to October 2003 and for the others the flows are estimated by each operator. Correspondently the area of each terminal ranges from 8 000 m2 to 107 000 m2, but the correlation between area and number of units handled is not strong although a clear trend is that the larger flows a terminal handles the larger area it occupies. A similar trend can be noticed between units handled and track length at the terminal, which ranges from 220 m to 3700 m. Similar results is provided in Sjögren (1996). These facts points at terminals handling smaller flows can be simpler, but not stating how the unit cost is affected because of this.

20

Table 1

Swedish conventional intermodal terminals. Units handled are estimated for 2003.

18500 18500 40000

Terminal company Jernhusen Jernhusen Jernhusen

Track owner Terminal company Banverket Banverket Banverket

16000

Municipality

Municipality

Årsta, Stockholm

107000

Jernhusen

Hallsberg

84000

Jönköping Centralharpan, Göteborg Älmhult

43000

Helsingborg Malmö Karlstad Insjön Eskilstuna

40000 95000

Terminal

Area [m2]

Luleå

13000

Umeå Sundsvall Gävle Borlänge

Land owner

Operator

Track length

Units handled

Operational company Rail Combi Rail Combi Rail Combi Operational company

550

19000

600 640 1250

16000 23000 22000

540

12000

Banverket

Rail Combi

3700

75000

Terminal company Banverket

Terminal company Green Cargo

1320

45000

21000

Terminal company Jernhusen

1750

10000

60000

Jernhusen

Banverket

Rail Combi

2950

61000

Terminal company Jernhusen Jernhusen

Terminal company Banverket Banverket

Terminal company Rail Combi Rail Combi Vänerexpressen Green Cargo Green Cargo

900

20000

2600 3000 420 220 250

42000 56000 14000 5000 12000

8000

Bergkvist AB Eskilstuna E&M

3.5.1 Terminal costs Investments needed for a new intermodal terminal depends on a number of factors such as land price, ground conditions, financing and maintenance setup. In table 2 some important features specific to intermodal terminals is presented. Data about terminal costs comes from Leif Hahne, Green Cargo Road & Logistics for track and truck and from Jan Kristians, NCC for ground work. The figure for track investment refers to main track standard. Table 2

Cost for important features of rail terminals Cost element

Unit of measure

Unit cost [SEK]

Track

Meter

10000

2

Ground work

m

450-650

Reach-stacker (45 ton capacity)

piece

3 500 000

Fork-lift truck (16 ton capacity)

piece

1 500 000

As Hallsbergs intermodal terminal is the latest built terminal it can work as a case of what such a terminal needs for investments. According to the terminal manager Kjell Hammerin 45 million SEK was invested in the terminal with an additional 2.5 million SEK for the land. Investment in tracks was made for 1500 meter and in a surface sustaining 110 ton axle load of 36000 m2. Additional features invested in are partially fencing, entrance gates, a small office of 20 m2 and a small staff space. Needed investments for a new intermodal terminal in Luleå were investigated in 2001. It comprises costs for all measures needed to be taken for its realisation. Three new tracks was planned, two transshipment tracks of 630 meters each and one side-track of 315 meters, in total 1575 meters with electrification on 450 meters. Gammelstads marshalling yard needed some improvements in tracks and switches. Changes were also needed for nearby roads in21

cluding flyover junctions and rearrangement of the high voltage line along the main track. Finally, the more terminal specific costs was included, namely buildings, roads, garage, ground work and water and drain connections in the terminal area. All costs are summarised in table 3 and is from Banverket’s report BRNT 2001:04-III. Table 3

Cost for the new conventional intermodal terminal in Gammelstad, Luleå. Type of cost

Cost [kSEK]

Project management, administration, evaluation etc

1 000

Move of power line

4 000

Water and drain work

1 200

Land, replacement investment

16 700

Access roads

6 100

Railway works

30 555

Terminal units, e.g. ground work, buildings

22 900

Total investment:

82 455

3.6 Ports Sweden has about 50 public ports that range from small, specialized facilities to ferry ports and large general cargo ports. The majority of these ports are still municipally owned. In most cases the municipality also owns the port infrastructure, which is leased to the port on commercial terms. Most of the ports are organised as integrated companies as the result of a merger between the former port authority and the local stevedoring company. The aim has been to boost efficiency and reduce costs – something the ports have managed to do very effectively. The Swedish ports’ income – including cargo handling revenue – has increased by nearly 80% over the past 10 years, whereas cargo throughput has grown by only 30% in the same period. A total of 118 million tonnes of cargo was handled in 2000 with the 11 largest ports handling 76% of the total (www.transportgruppen.se).

Containers, flats & cassettes New vehicles 8%

15%

1%

Trailers & trucks 26%

Rail wagons

20% 3%

27%

Liquid bulk Dry bulk Other

Figure 18 Cargo in Swedish ports, 2002 (www.transportgruppen.se)

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3.6.1 The port survey In this chapter seaports as well as ports on inland waterways will be discussed. The reason for discussing them together is because the focus of the research is not on ports themselves but on ports’ terminals where transhipment of units from/to rail to/from sea or inland waterway is performed. Data collection for port terminals was conducted through questionnaires sent to 42 Swedish ports that were assumed to either handle unitised goods or have direct connection by rail or both. But not all surveyed ports fulfil the criteria of the study which were following: •

Direct rail connection

•

Handling of containers, swap bodies, semi-trailers, pallets, paper rolls and / or sawn wood

The largest port by far is Port of Göteborg, in sense of area as well as tons handled which is respectively 4 500 000 m2 and 33 400 000 tons. Göteborg is followed by MalmöKöpenhamn, with an area of 2 000 000 m2 and 13 400 000 tons handled. These two ports are the only ports with quantity of goods handled high above ten million tons. They are followed by Trelleborg that last year handled 10 400 000. Size of the port is not closely related to tons handled since, per example, Hallsta Pappersbruk is the smallest of them all, 3 000 m2, but handles 1 000 000 tons of goods, paper rolls, per year. To compare, Falkenberg terminal is 600 000 m2 in size but handles only 500 000 tons per year. The 28 ports that satisfied the criteria above are presented in Appendix 1. Nineteen of these 28 ports that satisfied the criteria annually handle more than 1 000 000 tons of goods and these are listed in table 4. Majority of the ports, 23, are situated in southern Sweden, only five of them are in the north: Gävle, Sundsvall, Härnösand, Umeå and Skellefteå. Northern ports handle annually about 12 347 000 tons which is 11% of total tons handled at these 28 ports of interest for this study. All Northern ports handle sawn wood or paper rolls. Sundsvall handles paper and sawn timber in containers. Gävle and Umeå also handle containers, beside sawn wood and paper rolls. Reason for these types of goods orientation is in the fact that there are many saw mills in this part of Sweden. Majority of northern ports’ terminals offer all kinds of terminal activities, like indoor and outdoor storage, transhipment, consolidation, maintenance of ITUs, handling of dangerous goods, custom clearance and forwarding. Transhipment techniques available are both LoLo and RoRo. Major southern ports, that handle more that 10 millions tons, are Göteborg, MalmöKöpenhamn and Trelleborg. They handle containers and semi-trailers of units that are of interest for this study. These major ports are followed by 7 ports that handle more than 2 million tons; Halmstads hamn och stuveri, Helsingborgs hamn, Karlshamn, Mälarhamnar, Norrköpings hamn och stuveri, Stockholms hamn, Ystad hamn logistik. Southern ports handle all kinds of cargo; 16 of them handle containers, 7 handle semi-trailers, 11 handle paper rolls and 14 handle sawn timber. Goteborg is a leader in handling of containers as well as semi-trailers. Bulk is handled at 14 of these ports. Terminal functions offered are numerous: indoor and outdoor storage, transhipment, consolidation, maintenance of ITUs, storage of empty containers, handling of dangerous goods, custom clearance and forwarding. Wallhamn, although still has not direct rail connection may be of interest since there is a project “Stenungsund terminal” going on. Besides connecting the terminal with Port of Göteborg, one of the aims of this project is to connect Wallhamn with Stenungsund terminal by rail.

23

Table 4

Ports handling more than 1 000 000 tons per year (source: questionnaires and Internet) types of cargo

port

Total containers semi trailcargo in TEU in ers in thousands thousands thousands tons

new cars in thousands

pallets paper tons [t] or rolls tons units [u] in in thouthousands sands

sawn wood m3 in thousands

Göteborg

33 400

756

430

265

MalmöKöpenhamn

13 400

129

203

39

Trelleborg

10 400

10

7

YES

Helsingborg

7 500

85

Stockholm

5 151

37

130*

YES

Karlshamn

5 000

Sundsvall

4 565

9,7

Norrköping

4 050

Gävle

30

YES

bulk, timber, etc YES YES

25 t

30

300

YES

50

554

641

YES

3 900

60

390

115

Köping-Västerås

3 238

30

Ystad

2 100

Halmstad

2 000

11

Umeå

1 800

10

Skellefteå

1 782

Varberg (TW)

1 500

6

Udevalla

1 200

YES

Hallstavik

1 000

Oskarshamn

1 000

0,8

Åhus

1 000

30

70 t

140

3,5 u YES

4,2 t

YES YES

70

570

470

400

YES

200

5

YES

715 YES

YES

YES

700 10 u

24

YES

400*

YES

YES

10

YES

Figure 19

Swedish ports with direct rail connection handling containers, swap bodies, semi-trailers, pallets, paper rolls and / or sawn wood

25

3.6.2 Distribution of new cars New cars are handled in the following ports: Göteborg, Halmstad, Malmö-Köpenhamn and Södertalje. •

Göteborg is the largest car port in the Nordic region. Cars for export are Volvo and Saab while imported cars are mainly from UK. About 265 000 new cars were shipped in 2002.

•

Halmstad handles both, cars for import and export.

•

Malmö: Peugeot, VW, Audi, Skoda, Seat and Kia use the car terminal. Cars are distributed to all of Denmark, Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia as well as the Baltic Region. About 39 000 new cars are handled per year.

•

Södertalje is an import port for following cars: Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda, Mercedes, Citroën, Opel and Ford. About 80 000 new cars are handled per year.

The company Motortransport transports an excess of 500 000 vehicles per year. Vehicle transports are done either by rail (long distances) or transportation trucks. The most important crossroads for transport activities are the ports of Södertälje, Göteborg and Trelleborg. From any of these ports the vehicles are transported to any of the Motortransport’s 15 terminals all over Sweden, where all loading and unloading of vehicles take place. (www.motortransport.se).

Figure 20

Motortransport terminals (source: www.motortransport.se).

3.6.3 Port of Göteborg With a cargo turnover of 33 400 000 tones (2002) and annual turnover of more than 1 billion SEK, the Port of Göteborg is by far the largest port in the Nordic area. In global terms it is by no means a giant (the world's largest ports, Singapore and Rotterdam, are each ten times bigger), but in relation to its potential catchment area - 25 million people - its importance is considerable. The port's cargo turnover comprises almost 60 % oil and almost 40 % general cargo (95% of which is unitized). The remainder is dry bulk cargo. Concerning the transshipment of containers the port reached the figure of 756 000 TEUs (the average weight per TEU is 13 tons) in 2002 of which 20% are empty (www.portgot.se). The distribution between modes is 5% by sea, 30% by rail and 65% by road.

26

Statistics of cargo handled in the port in last 10 years are presented in Figure 21.

Figure 21 Handled goods’ statistics for period 1993-2002

Figure 22 Port map (www.portgot.se) 1: Tors Harbour- crude oil is discharged here and pumped to the oil refineries. 2: Skarvik Harbour - oil harbour, handles imports and domestic distribution as well as exports and storage of oil and oil products. 3: Rya Harbour- the oldest oil handling facilities at the port, nowadays, it is mostly used for smaller oil tankers and bunker vessels. 4: The Roll on/roll off Terminal- a dedicated roll on/roll off facility characterized by frequent schedules

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in North Sea traffic. Trailers dominate the scene here, with paper and steel but it is also a terminal for new cars. 5: The Container Terminal and Car Terminal at Skandia Harbour- the main terminal for the shipment of containers. 6: The Free Port- a passenger terminal for a passenger/car service to the UK and Norway. Cruising vessels can be seen here during the summer season. 7: Majnabbe Harbour- a terminal for the daily passenger ferry and freight ferry connections with Baltic German ports Kiel and Travemünde. 8: The Stigberg- used for representative purposes like cruise calls and naval visits. 9: The Masthugg Quay- the centre of passenger and freight ferry services to Frederikshavn, Denmark. 10: Scandinavian Distripoint- a real estate company that owns, builds and manages the Arendal area, an industrial park with a potential to grow even further as a transport centre. 11: Port railroad- the 120 kilometers of railroad tracks in the port area represent both the most frequented stretch of tracks in Sweden and the main rail cargo station.

Port of Göteborg’s tariff system (fees for passenger ships are not considered): 1. Fees for vessels: • Tankers - based on GT if separate agreements have not been reached • Ferries carrying cargo or vehicle-railway carriages – based on GT if separate agreements have not been reached • Other vessels - based on GT if separate agreements have not been reached 2. Environmentally differentiated fees (charged independently of any other fees) : - additional fee to be charged for vessels with SOx level exceeding 1% by weight - reduced fee for vessels with NOx emission lower than 12 grams per kilowatt-hour - additional fee to be charged for vessels that dispose waste 3. Fees for goods- applicable for goods loaded or unloaded from vessels within the harbour division. 4. Fee for handling goods- negotiated (www.portgot.se)

3.6.4 Port of Trelleborg The Port of Trelleborg is one of the largest ferry and RoRo ports in Scandinavia. With 42 daily connections, Trelleborg acts as a "Continent Bridge", effectively linking Scandinavia and Continental Europe. The port handles more than 10 million tones of goods per year: containers swap bodies and trailers; as well as two million passengers with the total turnover of 130 000 000 SEK per year. Lorry traffic, making up the largest part of the turnover of goods at the Port of Trelleborg, has increased to a level of 4 million tons (+3%) in the first half year of 2003. Railways traffic, which had declined over the past few years, has grown strongly by 8% while combi-traffic (lorry/railways) levels have gone up by 15% for the same period (www.trelleborgshamn.se).

28

Figure 22 Handled goods’ statistic for period 1993-2002 (www.trelleborgshamn.se)

Port of Trelleborg’s tariff system (fees for passenger ships are not considered): 1. Fees for vessels [SEK], not less than 20 meters in length, per day and length meter: • • •

Roro vessel Other vessels Environment friendly discount of 20% for vessels with reduced emission of SOx and NOx 2. Fees for goods [SEK/ton] • •

Normal fee - for goods not specified below Special fee - grain - sand, cement, limestone, etc. - fertilizers - wood and wooden products - bricks, pipes and plates - iron and iron products

• Goods loaded on trucks or trailers • Goods loaded on rail wagons 3. Hour based fixed fees for cargo handling with different types of handling equipment to be added on fees above (www.trelleborgshamn.se).

3.6.5 Port of Gävle The Port of Gävle is positioned in the cross-roads of the green coastal forest industry and the inland blue steel industry and has good connections both land and sea wise. The Port of Gävle has over 1000 ships calling per year and is among the top ten common ports in Sweden. Ports facilities and equipment: trucks; all kinds of wheel loaders; tug masters with carriers; cranes up to 32 tonnes of lifting capacity; facilities for heavy lifts, ro-ro ramps and large storage and warehouse areas. (www.gavle.se/hamn). Port handles 3 900 000 tons of goods per year: containers, paper rolls and sawn wood; with the total turnover of 70 000 000 SEK. 29

3.7 Airports In Sweden there are 49 airports and the supervising authority for air traffic and airports, is the Swedish Civil Aviation Administration, Luftfartsverket (LFV). LFV also operate 19 of these airports and the rest is operated either by the local municipality or private companies. A division between operation and supervision at LFV is proposed in ministry letter Ds 2003:32. Airports that handled more than 1000 tons during 2002 are listed in table 5 and of these twelve airports nine is operated by LFV. The statistics is not complete though; smaller airline companies’ air cargo is not registered. As the table shows there are three major airports in Sweden. Some of the smaller airports competes with low cost handling, e.g. Skavsta, or specialisation, e.g. in project transports as for Örebro. Table 5

Most important cargo airports in Sweden from LFV’s official statistics in tons.

Airport

Mail

Other cargo

Total cargo

31464

123200

154664

Jönköping

1133

90

1223

Karlstad

1746

82

1828

Landvetter, Göteborg

3923

55790

59713

Luleå

1208

728

1936

Norrköping

1952

227

2179

28

1961

1989

Sturup, Malmö

5251

14404

19655

Sundsvall

4059

409

4468

Umeå

5937

645

6582

Växjö

1162

212

1374

0

8261

8261

Arlanda, Stockholm

Skavsta, Stockholm

Örebro

As a case to illustrate a airport cargo terminal handling regular flows Landvetter is chosen, and the information was provided by Björn Lennartz at LFV. At Landvetter three cargo terminals are operated, as shown in figure 23, by the different air cargo forwarders SAS Cargo, TNT and DHL. SAS Cargo’s terminal is the biggest and is owned by a private real-estate company. Both TNT and DHL terminals are owned by Flygplatsfastigheter, the real-estate division of LFV. The most important infrastructure at the airport is its runway, which at Landvetter is 3300 meters. The length of the runway either limits or enables big aircrafts to call the airport. Other infrastructure provided by Luftfartsverket is access roads and parking for aircrafts and trucks, but the airport lack rail connection. Cargo handling activities at the airport is divided between two roles; terminal operators and handling agents. Terminal operators take care of the flow from the truck to the gates at the airside of the terminal and vice versa. This include making all documents available, building and breaking of unit load devices (ULD) for aircrafts, load planning and customs and security issues. Handling agents loads the ULDs into the aircrafts and this activity must be open for competition if the airport handles more than 3000 tons per year. At Landvetter there are three handling agents. For transportation from terminal to aircraft of ULDs a so called dolly is used and for loading the aircraft high loaders or main deck loaders are employed. 30

DHL

SAS Cargo TNT

Figure 23

Landvetter airport’s cargo area with the three cargo terminals marked

Terminal operator’s activities can be handled at a different location and is then termed offairport terminals and the haulage is called off-airport trucking. Then the ULD is built at this terminal as if it was inside the airports gates. Skavsta airport serves as an off-airport terminal to Landvetter and off-airport trucking increases to continental airports (Flygets utveckling 2002, LFV). Airport terminals are not only used for intermodal flows air-road but also for unimodal reloading between trucks. The peak at Landvetter is during weekends due to that intercontinental cargo flights departs and arrives then, and about a hundred trucks are served each weekend.

3.8 Unimodal terminals Freight transshipped within the same mode of transport can be done either at designated terminals but most often these flows are handled at intermodal freight terminals, with the exception for road-road terminals. What makes a terminal unimodal is its part in a transport network.

3.8.1 Sea-sea terminals Some of the goods handled at ports are not intended to be moved inland by road or rail. In Sweden only a minor part is transshipped between vessels operating at inland waterways and short-sea or deep-sea vessels respectively. Slightly more regards ship-ship transshipment, between smaller feeder and ocean-going vessels making direct calls at Port of Göteborg. This type of handling is anticipated to increase, partly due to the definition of Port of Göteborg as a preferred port in the US Container Security Initiative. In the large continental ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg and Le Havre, a significant part of the handled containers are transshipments between vessels. In addition, much of the crude oil is pumped to the refineries in the port area and pumped back to product tankers as refined products for distribution to other ports. Hence, it is not transshipped between traffic modes in the port unless the short pipelines are regarded as a mode.

31

3.8.2 Road-road terminals Road-road terminals are optimised for truck operations, but older terminals also have traditional wagon-load connections. It is only the general cargo and parcels that pass terminals, full loads are transported directly from consignor to consignee. Part loads are operated as a pick-up and a distribution route; the goods stay at the lorry. Often, a forwarders lorry combination contains part loads in the lorry and general cargo and parcels in the trailer. A rough estimation of the part of the flows controlled by the forwarders that passes their terminals is 10% for DHL and 30% for Schenker. At these terminals, or in connection to them, several other services are provided as the forwarders are offering third-party logistics. The size of the flows for each forwarder determines in what way terminals will be connected. The domestic networks are connected to international traffic, either by direct links or via consolidation hubs. Bigger flows enable direct links between terminals as smaller flows calls for another network setup, e.g. DFDS Transport AB’s network in figure 24. It is operated as a hub and spoke network, with direct traffic where flows justify this. Three hubs are used, in order to keep transport times as required by customers.

HUB Sundsvall HUB Örebro HUB Jönköping Direktlinjer

Figure 24

Schenker’s distribution terminals (Source: Schenker, 2003) and DFDS terminal network. (Source: www.dfdstransport.se)

In figure 24 the locations of Schenker’s distribution terminals for general cargo are shown. The picture looks nearly the same for DHL. As the flows for these two are considerable many of these terminals are connected via direct links. An example of the layout of a road-road terminal is given in figure 25. It can be noticed that it is divided into several parts, i.e. third-party logistics, parcels, general cargo domestic and international and a heavy load area.

32

Figure 25

Schenker’s terminal in Lunda, Stockholm. (Schenker, 2003)

3.8.3 Rail-Rail terminals Some terminals are embedded in the rail system, mainly the marshalling yards, at which single wagons are pushed over a hill and switched to form wagon-load trains. In addition, departure stations are used for forming freight trains by use of shunting locomotives pushing and pulling blocks of wagons. After many years of concentration, Green Cargo only operates the marshalling yards in Malmö, Göteborg and Hallsberg. Departure stations are slightly more common but increasingly, other terminals are enlarged to contain full trains in order to avoid time-consuming and costly shunting. In all, Green Cargo arranges transport between 390 loading and unloading places (Green Cargo, 2003). The marshalling yards are Green Cargo’s property while the responsibility of the departure stations is in the hands of Banverket or the ports.

33

4 The Swedish intermodal operators Since the 1980s, three major changes in the industrial organisation of intermodal transport have occurred. First, the infrastructure authority was separated from the operative part of the former State Railway in 1988. Second, the Swedish Parliament voted for establishing competition on all Swedish tracks in 1995. And finally on January 1st 2001 Green Cargo, the former Freight transport division within SJ became a limited company. These changes and the Swedish parliament’s strive to an efficient and effective rail sector created large surplus of engines and to some extent engine drivers and thereby opportunities for new entrants to launch operation on the Swedish network. In this chapter the intermodal operators in Sweden are presented. The rendering is mainly based upon an article by Woxenius and Bärthel (2002).

4.1 Green Cargo Green Cargo AB, the former freight transport division within SJ, was established in 2000/01, when the former national railway authority SJ was divided into a number of limited companies, among them SJ from the former division SJ Resor and Green Cargo from SJ Cargo Group. Green Cargo is 100 % owned by “Näringsdepartementet”, has 3 700 employees including the subsidiaries. The turnover in 2002 was 6 170 MSEK (-195) and the transport work carried out amounted to 12 billion tonkms (Green Cargo homepage). Thereby Green Cargo is one of Sweden’s largest logistics and transport companies with a market share of 18 % of the total transport work in Sweden or 80 % of the freight transport carried out by rail. Like many other European railway authorities, the Swedish State Railways (SJ) has gone through significant structural rationalisation and adaptation to market requirements. For the freight division, the aim at profit rather than volume during the 1990s led to cost rationalisation, for instance by more direct connections and a decrease from 30 to three marshalling yards (Malmö, Sävenäs and Hallsberg). Thereby the core business dedicated trains and wagon-loads strengthened their competitiveness, mainly in the segments of raw material and semi-finished products, while significant unprofitable markets were abandoned. Today rail transports, dedicated trains and wagon-loads, are the core competence within the company, but lorry distribution and warehousing constitute important parts in the business. The company offer complete logistics solution in a door-to-door perspective and has high ambitions to remain a major player in the future transport market or in some relations be a refined subcontractor of pure transport services. The aim, alone or in strong alliances, is to offer a broad spectrum of logistics services with complete responsibility for their customers’ logistic activities. Some of the services are described in the sections below.

Figure 26

Services offered by Green Cargo AB. (Source: Green Cargo homepage).

A current problem with the wagon-load system is the cost and time drivers as marshalling, and shunting to private sidings. Especially the last distance to the customer is very time and 35

cost consuming and thus limiting the competitiveness of the wagon-load system for small and dispersed freight flows. This indicates a need for development of new combined transport systems in order not to further impoverish the wagon-load network and also going further down in the shipment sizes. Rail traffic is offered to 390 terminals and third party logistics is offered at 20 Swedish locations. They operate 230 electric locomotives, 220 diesel locomotives, 9200 wagons and, so far, 245 lorries..

4.1.1 Light-combi To recapture some of the markets abandoned by wagon-loads and conventional combined transport, and to capture new markets for semi- and finished products, Green Cargo has taken various initiatives to develop viable systems for small and dispersed flows using a comprehensive systems approach to re-engineer the whole transport system rather than only the transshipment function. One such project, the Light-combi, was initiated in 1995, and the aim was to recapture geographically abandoned markets with a fine-meshed network of some 3040 small-scale terminals. This in order to target the transport market of full container loads and part loads over distances in the range of 200-500 kms. The concept is based upon fixedformation train sets that make short stops – 15-30 minutes – at sidetrack terminals approximately every 100 kilometres. At the terminals, swap bodies are transhipped under the overhead contact line by use of a forklift truck carried by the train and operated by the rail engine driver. The offered service included local road haulage. The service offered by the Light-combi pilot, The Dalecarlian Girl, included, except from the transport, handling and distribution of temperature sensitive goods from the wholesaler Dagab in Borlänge to 37 Hemköp shops. These shops are situated in the southern and middle parts of Sweden. The system was initially intended to include transport of colonial products and chilled goods requiring controlled temperatures. The Light-combi technique used in the customer pilot, was rather simple and inexpensive and worked technically well. The performance of the customer pilot was high and the customer has been satisfied with this as well as the producer. The customer pilot was closed down, in April 2001, due to the difficulty in pricing and to achieve economy in the system without the large investments required adding more customers (Bärthel and Woxenius, 2003).

4.1.2 Green Cargo Recycling Green Cargo Recycling was launched in 2000 and is a service system for return flows to supply the demand for reverse logistics. The aim is, for the reverse logistics market, to develop dedicated and cost-efficient transport solutions to meet the increasing market demands for environmental requirements. Green Cargos designs transport solutions, using loading units fulfilling specific standards for waste products, bio-energy, waste paper for recycling and scrap iron. Green Cargo has used this concept for some years to transport garbage from Lysekil to Göteborg with a turntable technique.

4.1.3 Green Cargo Intermodal Shuttles In close co-operation with large shippers Green Cargo develops, operates and markets shuttle trains. Recently the shuttles Göteborg-Insjön and Gävle-Insjön were launched. Each shuttle runs three times a week and most cargo, 10 000 TEU’s per year, is bound for Japan. The new container terminal in Insjön and the shuttles are results of close co-operation between the regional authorities, Green Cargo and the customers Bergkvist-Insjön AB and Tomoku Hus AB.

36

Green Cargo, who has equipped the terminal with a reach stacker and a semi-trailer tractor, leases the terminal. Earlier 70% of the 5000 containers were transported to the ports by road.

4.1.4 TGOJ Trafik As mentioned, the Green Cargo subsidiary TGOJ Traffic, offers engines and staff, either as operators or as leasing company (TGOJ Rental). The core business is to operate local or regional rail traffic, with aim at system trains and local rail haulage. TGOJ Trafik is, as shown in figure 27, operating a wide network primarily based on dedicated trains, e.g. as subcontractors for Intercontainer Scandinavia. In 1998 the company transported 1.6 million tonnes. Secondary service includes leasing engine drivers (20 engine drivers) and a larger number of diesel and electrical engines (Ånghwisslan, 2000 and TGOJ homepage). Recently, the company leased a diesel engine, GM class 66, and drivers to IKEA Rail, when their transport of furniture between Duisburg and Älmhult started on May 22nd 2002. TGOJ also operates the intermodal shuttle Gävle-Södertälje-Göteborg for ICS as described below. For the intermodal shuttle Vänerexpressen, BK Tåg is leasing an electric engine class Ma.

Figure 27

Network operated by TGOJ Trafik (Source: TGOJ Trafiks hemsida).

4.2 Rail Combi/Cargo Net A/S As a complement to conventional rail, Green Cargo introduced conventional intermodal services in the late 1960s. While the conventional rail services primarily are retailed to shippers, the intermodal road-rail services are wholesaled to forwarders, shipping agents and hauliers. The Business unit for intermodal transport of SJ, SJ Kombi, became a limited company in 1992 named Rail Combi. From Jan 1st, 2002, Rail Combi is an independent subsidiary within Cargo Net A/S. This new constellation, owned by NSB (55%) and Green Cargo (45%), includes intermodal services in both Norway and Sweden. The business strategy is to remain and develop towards the main intermodal transport company in Scandinavia. Cargo Net has a turnover of approximately 1.4 billion NOK (180 million EURO) some 900 employees. Rail Combi has 174 employees, the turnover in 2002 was 456 million SEK (app. 50 million Euro) and the total volume, mainly semi-finished and finished products, was about 2,5 million tons. During 2003 some 475 000 TEU are anticipated to be handled by Rail Combi.

37

NSB 45 %

55 %

CargoNet Norge Figure 28

Ownership relations within the combined transport organisations in Sweden and Norway.

The conventional intermodal transport, operated by SJ Kombi/Rail Combi, had the aim to complement the lorry sector in the segment of product goods, but did not manage to increase its market hare and become profitable after the deregulation around 1990. The services suffered from problems related to capital-intensive terminals, bad resource utilisation, unclear market profile and efficiency gains for the competing road transport services. Rationalisation had included a halved number of terminals and a strategy towards direct trains between the terminals, which has led to (1) a withdrawal from geographical markets, (2) decreasing number of relations served and (3) longer pre- and post haulage. Today the combined transport network consists of 16 terminals in Sweden and 13 in Norway. From 2004, CargoNet/Rail Combi will operate their network as a hub-and-spoke system using Stockholm and Oslo as hub with spokes to Göteborg, Hallsberg, Norrköping, Borlänge, Gävle, Sundsvall, Helsingborg, Malmö/Trelleborg/Jönköping/Älmhult, Umeå/Luleå and the Norwegian terminals (see figure 29). Where several terminals are called on one spoke it will be in a fixed route manner. The aim is to improve customer service, through development and production of domestic and international intermodal transport solutions for hauliers, forwarding agents, shipping lines and railway operators. Local road haulage is also offered on specific demand, however in cooperation with hauliers. Document handling, mainly print-outs of different consignment notes, is a small but steadily increasing part of the operation. The company supplies terminal services, certain depot services as well as rail haulage. Examples of depot services are ocular inspection and repair, warehousing and cleaning of ITUs.

38

Figure 29

Network operated by RailCombi/Cargo Net or by allied companies (Source: Cargo Net A/S homepage).

It is difficult to put a label on Rail Combi as it sells a wide variety of services related to intermodal transport. Rail Combi is principal for almost all Swedish terminals and it is an intermediary part for rail haulage services. On the domestic market, Rail Combi sells directly to forwarders and hauliers, while ICF and the UIRR are intermediary parts in the bordercrossing market. Generally, Rail Combi focuses on customers in five segments: railway operators, integrators, shipping companies, forwarders and road hauliers, and do not sell directly to shippers. International service is provided in close co-operation with Cargo Net, HUPAC and Kombiverkehr since last year (X-rail, 2001/c). The purpose is close co-operation in developing, marketing, producing and offering intermodal network shuttles through a gateway concept between the different national networks of Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. This service is provided through the SRE, Scandinavian Rail Express Shuttle Service via gateways in Trelleborg and Malmö. Another successful intermodal service is the ARE-train, the Artic Rail Express, developed as a joint venture between Green Cargo and Cargo Net A/S in 1993. The profitable service, with an average speed of 73 km/h through Sweden, made the missing rail infrastructure link Bodö-Narvik unnecessary.

4.3 Intercontainer (Scandinavia) AB Intercontainer (Scandinavia) AB (ICS) was established in 1993 to provide local support service for the Scandinavian intermodal market, organise agency services for ICF and attract new Pan-European business to ICF. The company is now a 100% subsidiary of ICF and provides sales and marketing of ICF’s intermodal transport services to and from as well as within the Scandinavian countries (ICF webpage and X-rail, 2002/c). The headquarter is situated in Göteborg, a branch in Copenhagen and for sales and marketing in southern Sweden a local agency recently was launched in Trelleborg. The turnover in 2000 was 6.6 million SEK (XRail News, 2002/c).

39

In May 2001 ICS implemented the first part of a new shuttle-train system, for containers, semi-trailers and swap bodies, together with TGOJ Trafik. The network has gradually been implemented and since June 2003 ICS operates a network consisting of the hub in Eskilstuna and spoke terminals in Göteborg, Södertälje, and Gävle. A new connection, Göteborg – Helsingborg, will be implemented in the network in December 2003. For international transport ICS uses Göteborg and Trelleborg as gateways. Since January 2002 ICS also operates the Scandinavian Maritime Service, three times a week between Hamburg/Bremerhaven and Copenhagen/Aarhus, as a feeder transport. Intercontainer runs several different intermodal transport services to and from Sweden. For example the DuisScan that runs from Duisburg in Germany and via Denmark enters Sweden at Helsingborg. Another is Scandinavian Maritime Express Sweden (SME Sweden) that connects the ports of Bremerhaven and Hamburg with several terminals in Sweden. These traffics are illustrated in the figure below.

Figure 30

Intercontainer traffic network, left: DuisScan, right: SMESweden. (Source: www.icfonline.com)

4.4 BK TÅG BK Gruppen, the BK Group was established in 1923 as a bus and lorry operator in Småland. After the deregulation of the Swedish rail system in 1988, the company developed BK Tåg AB in order to compete with SJ for regional passenger traffic in Småland and Halland. The company was the first company in Sweden outside SJ who received permission from “Järnvägsinspektionen” to operate rail traffic. The commitment as freight operator started in 1994 and the first agreement was signed in 1997 with Modo regarding transport of paper between Silverdalen and Oskarshamn. Today, BK Tåg is the largest competitor to Green Cargo and Rail Combi/Cargo Net. Regional and local passenger traffic represents 80 % of the turnover, in total 180 MSEK in 2002 (Torwald, presentation, 2003). BK Tåg’s freight division includes both intermodal transport and wagon-loads, for example transports of LPG from Sundsvall to Borlänge and traditional wagon-loads, as subcontractor to Green Cargo, between Göteborg and Säffle (BK Tåg, webpage). In June 1999, BK Tåg took over the transport of Absolut Vodka in containers between the ports in Åhus and Göteborg amounting to 10-15 containers each for the sole customer Atlantic Container Line, ACL, for further transport to the USA.

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Karlsson Gruppen Vänerexpressen (33 %) BK Tåg Figure 31

BK Verkstad

BK Gruppen BK Buss

The BK Group

4.4.1 Vänerexpressen BK Gruppen together with the regional haulier LBC Frakt established the intermodal operator “Vänerexpresen” in March 1998 when an intermodal shuttle for containers was launched between Göteborg and Karlstad in co-operation with the port authority in Karlstad, Vänerhamnarna. The marketing arguments were to relieve the main road between Göteborg and Karlstad and there were not enough volumes for the port authority to transport the goods by boat through the river Göta Älv (Tåg 1998, BK Tåg webpage and Ånghwisslan, 1998). One major customer, Tetra Pak in Forshaga, provided the concept with a base volume and through an iterative process including securing the transport quality and extending the customer base, the transport frequency has, due to increasing amount of goods, changed from three weekly trains (in each direction) to five. The turnover in 2002 was 23.8 MSEK (+ 0.8 MSEK). Vänerexpressen operates a shuttle between the port of Göteborg and Karlstad for cargo destined for or originating from Dalsland and Värmland provinces. Full door-to-door transport is offered and therefore they hold the commercial risk in consolidating the rail transport. In this operation they use the terminal services provided by the port, a private railway operator for traction and local hauliers for distribution. The pre- and posthaulage as well as the rail transport is bought from the subcontractors LBC Frakt and BK Tåg.

4.5 IKEA RAIL The global furnishing store chain IKEA founded its own railway company aiming to transfer large volumes of goods from road to rail. This is a consequence of the environmental policy within IKEA, based upon business considerations as well as the founder/owner Ingvar Kamprad’s profound ethical and environmental concern. The objective is to increase the share of rail from 18% to 40% in Europe. IKEA Rail has signed an agreement with the railway operator Rail Transport Team (RTT)3, for rail traffic between Germany and Sweden. In a further perspective the initiative aims at launching an IKEA Rail Capacity Network in Europe that connects the centre point in Duisburg to the markets in Poland, Sweden, Italy and the Benelux countries. In order to achieve economies of scale in terms of fully utilised trains and balanced flows, IKEA is in the long run open for selling free capacity to other shippers (Beijbom, conference presentation, 2002). 3

The operator RTT is a consortium existing of three local train operators; Ruhrkohle Hafen und Bahn AG in Germany, TraXion in Denmark and TGOJ in Sweden, and this consortium is responsible for the operative part of the Älmhult-Duisburg shuttle (X-Rail, 2002/b).

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In the first step, launched in May 2002, 50 long distance lorries will be exchanged for rail transport. IKEA has signed an agreement with the three rail infrastructure authorities Banverket (SE), Banestyrelsen (DK) and DB Netz (DE) to secure fast (65 km/h) and stable time schedule using the North-South Rail Freight Freeways. The fact that IKEA Rail itself controls the train slots distinguishes it from other large shippers’ purchasing or logistics departments, like Volvo Logistics, that merely buy full train services. IKEA now invests considerable sums in their network of stores and logistics facilities and expects a steep rise in internal flows (Roos, 2002). Combined with expected congestion on European roads and tracks, IKEA considers the train slots as a vital asset for their future business (Kamprad, 2001). Recently, however, it has been announced that IKEA Rail will terminate operations from January 15th 2004 (På HuGGet, 2003).

4.6 Port networks Compared to intermodal road-rail terminals, ports are traditionally rather operated individually than in formal networks. Instead, the shipping lines design and operate the networks, in which European ports traditionally play an infrastructure role, while it is more common with shipping lines operating own port terminals, so called dedicated terminals, in the USA. With the huge investments needed for adapting to the ever-larger container vessels, however, comes an increased acceptance of privately operated ports or terminals also in Europe. Over the last, say, ten years, specialised container terminal operators have emerged. One category is container port operators such as PSA of Singapore, Hutchison of Hong Kong and American CSX World Terminals that build global networks. Another category is shipping lines operating port terminals supporting own operations but also as a business in its own rights in subsidiaries such as APM Terminals (Maersk), P&O Ports and Evergreen. Some data about the operations of these growing companies are shown in the table below. Table 6

Leading operators of container port terminals. (Sources: the web pages of the companies).

Operator Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH) PSA Corporation CSX World Terminals Eurogate APM Terminals (Maersk) P&O Ports Evergreen

No. of terminals 32 15 13 9 30 24 4

No. of countries 15 8 7 3 18 18 3

Handled TEUs, million 35,8 24,5 9,5 18,5 9,8 Appr 4

* 2002 except for P&O Ports that regards 2001. CSX World Terminals do not publish volumes. For Evergreen the capacity stated to be appr. 5 million TEU.

Yet another category is local companies operating a single terminal, often with local authorities, rail or intermodal operators, hauliers and dominant shippers as co-owners. For further reading on container port trends and the emerging networks, see Woxenius, 2003.

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5 Synthesis and outlook This chapter contains a wider discussion on the role of terminals in the Swedish transport systems and some comments on what type of barriers are raised by an inefficient terminal structure and whether the public or private sector is best suited to operate terminals. In addition, an analysis of current logistics trends and their implications for intermodal transport is presented. The chapter is based upon earlier own work, e.g., Woxenius, 1997 and Woxenius and Sjöstedt, 2003.

5.1 The Swedish industrial organisation This section gives a view of the Swedish intermodal industry according to the main activities performed. Many actors supply a large variety of services using their own or other companies’ resources. The question of competition in the Swedish railway sector has been frequently discussed during the last decade. Economies of scale are important to the railway sector and competition has not solved all the problems in the industry. Implementing competition has though forced the former railway authorities, affecting the intermodal service, to improve their service. In January 1995 the Swedish parliament voted for establishing competition on the network, but competition within the intermodal sector is heavily influenced by the weak competition in the railway sector as a whole. This has resulted in a strong position for the former freight division of Swedish State Railways (SJ), Green Cargo, including Rail Combi, each operating a domestic network. New entrants such as BK Tåg and IKEA Rail have established shuttles were there are volumes enough for full trains, where they act as suppliers of core terminal-to-terminal services. IKEA Rail is an interesting new entrant in the market, fed up with the poor quality delivered by the rail operators in the international service and thereby trying to establish a European long haul rail network, at least by possessing train slots. Local road haulage and terminal service do not differ between domestic and international intermodal traffic, except for that hauliers generally control both pre- and end-haul domestically but only one haul internationally, while many other activities are divided among different actors according to geographical markets. The competition for local road haulage is not fierce, except in the spot market for semi-trailer traction, since most hauliers still are connected to forwarders. Close co-operation between the intermodal service provider and the local haulier reduces the competition. As an example BK Gruppen and the local haulier organisation, LBC Värm-Dal, work in close co-operation to extend and enhance the service. Rather the competition might appear at the terminal transfer activity. Potential establishers must be able to reach the intermodal rail network to guarantee business. Problems are caused by capital-intensive terminals and less densely populated countries such as Sweden face a concentration to fewer terminals. Rail Combi controls 14 out of 16 conventional terminals, offering their service to other intermodal operators. Competitors have faced problems since the deregulation in 1995, but those might be overcome, even for small competitors, like BK Tåg. BK Tåg uses the local side-lifter for the transhipment activities at two terminals and for terminal activities in Göteborg, the company uses the terminal owned by the port authority. To facilitate fair competition, planning of the timetable and access to the terminals have been transferred from SJ to Banverket. There is still no extensive competition, although new entrants have focused on competing for routes with large existing volumes, i.e. the competition only regards some full train shuttle routes. Marketing aimed at shippers is divided between forwarders, shipping agents, Green Cargo and, in the future, IKEA Rail. The unattractive position as supplier of the pure terminal-to43

terminal transport is clearly shown in the strategy of Green Cargo. Its ambition is to offer the shipper a complete service or a complete intermodal service door-to-door or door-to-port. The table below sums up the Swedish situation.

TGOJ Trafik

Gothia Rail Shuttle

IKEA Rail

BK Tåg

Rail Combi

Light-Combi

Green Cargo Int. Shuttles

Summing up the Swedish intermodal road-rail freight industry.

Green Cargo Recycling

Table 7

Actors Actors → Resources Activities ↓ Local road Road D D D D D D haulage vehicles Terminal Terminal D D D D D D DI DI transfer w. equipm. Other termiD D D D DI DI Equipm. nal services Rail haulage D D D D D D D D I I D D Slot/Engine Marketing Marketing to D D D D D D D D systems shippers Adm. sys. Arrange the D D D D I I for total Int. total Int. Arrange the Adm. sys. D D D D DI DI D D I I I I core Int. for core Int. Supply of ITUs ITUs Rail Supply of rail D D D D D D D D I I DI DI wagons wagons Rail Supply of rail D D D D D D D D ? ? DI DI engines engines Supply of Engine D D D D D D D D DI DI critical staff drivers Explanations: D – applies to domestic intermodal service, I – applies to international intermodal service, codes in italics only apply in exceptional cases.

The arrangement of the core terminal-to-terminal service was earlier divided according to two dimensions. The first dimension was whether domestic or international intermodal transport was provided, where the railways arranged the domestic service and the international one was arranged by ICF. This structure has almost disappeared, due to deregulation and strategic decisions of the railway operators aiming to focus the door-to-door transport or the door-to-port transport asked for. A merger and co-operation process started to offer the shippers, hauliers and forwarders a high-quality pan-European network, i.e. both offering international and domestic service, within the same company or as a strategic alliance. As mentioned, the former all-Swedish company, Rail Combi, merged with Cargo Net A/S in January 2002. Cargo Net A/S has established a close strategic alliance with Kombiverkehr and HUPAC. The aim is to improve transport quality between Scandinavia and the continent. This might show that ICF and the UIRR, former strong actors on the Scandinavian market, either slowly are disappearing, replaced by other network actors or the former partners might appear as competitors. Secondly, the other dimension focused on were the type of ITUs shipped. This division is now almost dissolved.

5.2 Terminals as part of the Swedish transport system The transshipment between ships and land-based traffic modes obviously has a very long history. In the public mind, ports are also a very natural phenomenon so the rendering is kept 44

short here. The main types of goods handled in Swedish ports are petroleum products, bulk materials, vehicles and cargo unitised as containers, semi-trailers, cassettes or sawn wood products. In addition, ports and ferries substitute bridges as links in road and rail transport chains. In such chains, rail wagons and lorries are transshipped rather than the goods itself. This report focuses transshipment of unitised cargo. The Swedish terminal net for intermodal road-rail transport was established in the late 1960's when handling equipment for 40 terminals was bought. The 13 largest terminals were equipped with gantry cranes able to lift all types of ITUs weighing up to 30 tons. Smaller terminals were equipped with fork lift trucks, side loaders or smaller cranes that limited the terminals to smaller load units or load units with fork entries. Four port terminals were also built to handle semi-trailers and ISO-containers for transshipment rail-sea. Rail Combi AB, owned by Green Cargo (45%) and Norwegian CargoNet (55%), is principal of most Swedish intermodal terminals. In a domestic perspective the company offers service between 14 cities, i.e. Borlänge, Gävle, Göteborg, Helsingborg, Jönköping, Luleå, Malmö, Norrköping, Sundsvall, Trelleborg, Umeå, Årsta (Stockholm), Älmhult and Hallsberg. International routes are produced in co-operation with the international intermodal operators HUPAC and Kombiverkehr. The largest terminal is Stockholm/Årsta with two gantry cranes and some counter-balance trucks handling a total of approximately 75 000 unit loads annually. As a city, however, Göteborg accounts for a larger part of Rail Combi’s flows, the terminals in Göteborg handle approximately 105 000 units/year compared to 85 000 in Stockholm. In addition to Rail Combi’s network, some new terminals have emerged recently. Gävle, Södertälje, Norrköping (part of Rail Combi’s network) and Karlstad are examples of ports offering transshipment road-rail. Eskilstuna and Insjön are examples of new intermodal terminals. Some large intermodal transport customers operate own handling equipment for load units, especially containers. Examples of such customers are Gävle Korsnäsverken and Volvo Olofströmsverken. The wagons are shunted into private sidings and this procedure is considered as a hybrid between intermodal transport and traditional wagon-load transport. This type of transport has been significantly reduced during the last ten years. Furthermore, some port authorities have counter-balance trucks, so called reach-stackers, and Port of Göteborg has two gantry cranes for handling container trains in the port. Opening hours are somewhat flexible even though every terminal has its own official service hours. Customers with perishable goods need to distribute their goods in the early morning hours and customers with general cargo need some extra hours for terminal handling prior to distribution. Consequently, these customer categories are subjects of special negotiations on terminal hours. In general, the opening hours have been extended over the years.

5.2.1 Services offered at the terminals The core service offered at the terminals is ITU transshipment between two modes of transport, but also related services like empty storage, inspections, cleaning and minor repairs of ITUs are offered. The inspections are made to identify damage responsibility, but even status checks at the request of shipping agencies are performed. In conjunction with the terminal services, most intermodal operators lease out ITUs and arrange local road haulage. Most customers, however, are forwarders or hauliers arranging their own local road haulage.

5.2.2 Capacity utilisation Capacity utilisation is a crucial question for transport operators. The resources must be analysed as a part of a larger system and there is hardly any meaning to discuss the utilisation of 45

a single resource. If only one intermodal transport terminal is considered as satisfactorily used, the other terminals cannot be shut down and thereby closing all traffic. Furthermore, counter-balance trucks are sometimes used as backup for the gantry crane. To demand a high utilisation of this truck is therefore wrong. The intermodal transport terminals are supposed to make quick transshipments to enhance good utilisation of surrounding resources, e.g. rail wagons, lorries and general cargo terminals. A levelled resource utilisation is therefore not possible, nor wanted, in the intermodal transport terminal of today. In general they are busy in the early morning hours and in the late afternoon. However, resource utilisation is interesting once a terminal is closing in on the capacity ceiling and hence affecting the customer service. In recent years, Rail Combi has expanded some terminals for handling full trains of 650 metres thus avoiding shunting. Jönköping remains as an example of an over-crowded terminal that limits expansion of intermodal transport.

5.3 Terminals as barriers In this section, terminals as barriers is discussed briefly divided in intermodal road-rail terminals, ports and intermodal freight centres.

5.3.1 Intermodal road-rail terminals A major barrier for intermodal transport growth is the large-scale terminals used today. Intermodal transport cannot compete for the really large flows over medium distances of 200 to 500 kms as long as the economies of scale limit the number of terminals severely. For shorter distances, all profitability calculations fall if the lorries have to drive too far – or even worse in the wrong direction – in order to reach an intermodal terminal. Small-scale terminals in relatively large numbers are required, but they have to be intelligently linked if the intermodal transport system should be an attractive alternative to single-mode road transport. The terminal cost itself is another serious barrier. The business economic rationale for using intermodal road-rail transport is that the line haul costs are lower for rail than for road. This benefit can only be used, however, after paying the price of terminal handling in terms of lift fees and also waste of time. Technologies and systems able to lower the terminal costs and delays will substantially contribute to the growth of intermodal transport.

5.3.2 Ports Ports are in a slightly better situation than intermodal road-rail terminals when it comes to intermodal barriers. Sea transport is today generally used when geography calls for it, while rail is more regarded as a substitute for road transport. Except for a parallel transport chain involving the much more expensive air transport, there is no real alternative to using the ports. For some short-sea shipping services along coasts and for feeder services, the barriers are somewhat similar to road-rail terminals. Nevertheless, RoRo-ports generally imply low barriers since they only require small investments in a RoRo-ramp and enough space on the quay. Ports serving container feeder traffic, on the other hand, implies higher barriers due to the need for cranes for vertical handling of containers. A recent barrier in the deep-sea ports is the new generation of Post-panamax container vessels. When the new generation of container giants carrying some 8000 TEUs call a port with older panamax cranes, only a part of the load can be transshipped, severely limiting the planning flexibility for loads and routes. The development towards larger ships will further add to the concentration of direct calls by deep-sea vessels to fewer ports. In Scandinavia, Port of Göteborg has manifested its ambitions in deep-sea shipping with the investment program for 46

accommodating the new big vessels. The other Scandinavian ports, except for Aarhus, will most probably be limited to feeder ships.

5.3.3 Intermodal freight centres Despite far-reaching development plans and the theoretical attractiveness of intermodal freight centres, they have not proven to be too popular among the transport operators. One reason for their reluctance is that they fear restrictions in their flexibility once established at the intermodal freight centre. The establishment close to an intermodal terminal, implies a fear that the authorities will force them to use rail transport between the intermodal freight centres and perhaps also to co-ordinate their city distribution. The operators’ service offers will then be very similar, and thus they fear price wars. The general development in the logistics sector is rather the opposite – specialisation and deeper integration into the shippers’ operations. The limited operator interest is thus a serious barrier for the development of intermodal freight centres4.

5.4 Terminals – public or private assets? The issue about who is to operate terminals is a decisive one in most transport systems. Forwarders have traditionally kept the consolidation of general cargo in-house while contracting out the physical movements between terminals. The national railways originally placed the terminals and station buildings in the train operating part and not in the infrastructure part when splitting up, thus impeding the entrance of new railway companies. Ports, on the other hand, has generally been regarded as public assets although there are some privately operated ports and some big shipping lines operate own container terminals. Despite the strong position in infrastructure planning, the European Commission is not heavily involved in terminals. According to Höltgen (1997/a): “Terminals (like seaports) are an integral part of the Trans-European Network (TEN). The Community Guidelines for the development of TENs explicitly include the improvement of interconnection nodes as a priority measure. However, while the EU has established the main links of the European intermodal transport network, it has not yet provided guidelines regarding the location of the nodes of the network (neither has it so far determined criteria for the selection of port-related projects of common interests). Moreover, the functions of different types of transshipment centres (e.g. regional, national, European) have not been defined at the EU level.”

Consequently, the European Commission has concentrated its efforts to the links and not to the nodes. In an amendment to the above mentioned decision (1692/96/EC), however, the European Commission has identified some 300 seaports as well as 233 intermodal terminals and 35 inland ports for inclusion in the TEN intermodal transport network (Höltgen, 1997/b).

5.4.1 Intermodal road-rail terminals Most intermodal road-rail terminals are still operated by the national railways, directly or through subsidiaries, and thus a public asset by definition. In this report, however, the discussion starts out from whether terminals should be regarded as infrastructure (and thus a public

4 For further reading on intermodal intermodal freight centres, see HÖLTGEN (1995) and CARDEBRING and

WARNECKE (1995). For Scandinavian conditions, see the latter reference.

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concern) or an operational asset controlled by the transport operators. Public or private ownership of the transport operators is not relevant in such a discussion. As described above, the European Commission has not clearly defined whether terminals are part of the TEN, mainly by referring it to the Member State level. At the national level, terminals are generally regarded as the operators’ assets. For instance, when SJ was split into Banverket for infrastructure and a “new” SJ for train operations, one of the basic criteria was that facilities and functions which were directly connected with product design and efficiency of traffic operators should not be included in the infrastructure (Jensen et al., 1992, p. 8). Freight terminals and station buildings were obviously of that category. It must be stated that it is very risky to invest in terminals without controlling the operations on the links since the demand for transshipment is absolutely derived. Although Swedish road-rail terminals are operated by hauliers, forwarders and shippers, Rail Combi AB is consequently the principal of most terminals. One of the terminals is operated by a company jointly owned by Rail Combi, the shipper IKEA and the municipality of Älmhult. Port terminals for sea-rail transshipment of semi-trailers and containers are dominated by public interests, and somewhat outside Rail Combi’s control. Rail Combi is, consequently, often directing customers to its own road-rail terminals in Göteborg and Stockholm although many customers would have preferred to go closer to the port terminals. Moreover, the capacity of port terminals have been needed for handling sea-rail transshipments and now the security issues make ports reluctant to bring flows external to the port operations inside their gates. The operators that have entered the Swedish intermodal road-rail transport market during the last years have decided not to use Rail Combi’s terminals. Instead they use the port terminals in Södertälje, Göteborg, Trelleborg, Gävle and Karlstad together with the new terminal in Eskilstuna. Green Cargo uses their own terminal in Insjön. The remaining time of IKEA Rails operations they will continue to use the co-owned terminal in Älmhult. Trends in the USA point towards an increased role taken by specialised and independent terminal companies. The railroads sell or contract out the terminals to two large competitors, ITS and Parsec (Cass, 1997, p. 88), of which the latter planned to enter Europe in the late 1990’s (Young, 1997/a, p. 67), but is not yet active here. Currently, Parsec operates in over 30 locations throughout the U.S., Canada and Mexico. According to estimates, Parsec is responsible for handling over 45% of the nations TOFC/COFC5 traffic each year (Parsec Inc., 2003). It is more or less an accepted fact that the different traffic modes do not fully cover the costs they cause society in terms of pollution, noise, traffic accidents as well as excessive use of energy and land. Until a legal framework levelling the playing field is a reality, and at the current pace this will be a long time, public money has to be spend on supporting the use of rail and sea to a larger extent than today. The question is how to spend the money. A widespread, and mostly true, conception is that efficiency comes from competition. Nevertheless, taking the risk of being mistaken for pre-glasnost communists, when it comes to infrastructure we think it is not such a good idea to use public means for creating redundant infrastructure. This is mostly true also for terminals. Economies of scale will still be very prominent in the terminal business, and terminals created by the public sector will probably miss its target of favouring the rail mode. We think, however, that public terminals might be able to play a positive role in some major European cities, but for Scandinavian conditions, the terminal structure must be developed in accordance with the plans of the transport opera-

5 COFC: container on flatcar, TOFC: trailer on flatcar.

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tors. Especially for networks not relying on direct connections, the terminals are much closer interlinked with the train operations then for large-scale direct connections designs. Subsidising intermodal transport per metric ton transported, as once proposed by the Swedish Communications Committee (KomKom), is neither a brilliant way of using public means. Intermodal transport should not be exhorted to compete for “tons”, which is easiest done by taking market shares from single-mode rail transport and coastal shipping. Instead, intermodal road-rail transport should compete with road transport for the high-value cargo with demands for high transport quality. A much wiser way of subsidising intermodal transport should then be to cover parts of the transshipment costs. This could be done either through direct investment support to new terminals, by subsidising the fixed installations at existing terminals or by subsidising the operations. The latter fashion will, however, probably violate EU legislation on competition, but that was the case also for the proposition of the Communications Committee. The EU Commission has recently allowed France and an Italian region to subsidise intermodal transport and the principles behind those schemes might give inspiration to the Swedish investigations. In the case of France, for instance, the forwarders and not as earlier the rail operators get the subsidy.

5.4.2 Ports Ports are traditionally a public asset. Its role in the transport chain has also been much less integrated with the transport operators than is the case for intermodal road-rail terminals and intermodal freight centres. Nevertheless, trends point towards an increased interest as the ports will probably span a larger part of the intermodal transport chain than they do today, e.g. by establishing distribution centres and offering value-added services in the ports. The emerging networks of ports will also play an important role, but except for Port of Göteborg, the Swedish ports are regarded as too small for being incorporated in the first expansion phase.

5.4.3 Intermodal freight centres Intermodal freight centres are regarded as mainly local matters, but there is a clear need for co-ordination at the regional, national and EU levels. Some years ago, a consultant tried to sell the idea (but basically his consultant services) to virtually any Swedish local authority. It makes sense that the local authorities support the development, but only following objectives for better co-ordination and land use at the local level. Public infrastructure money can be much better spend than by local authorities in the competition for jobs with their neighbouring communities. At a higher policy level, Höltgen (1995, p. 314) argues that: “… there would seem to be no reason to prioritise Europlatforms6 in the development and integration of the European intermodal transport network, which includes more than 500 terminals. Moreover, in view of the limited impact of logistics centres on intermodal transport, the proposition that EU funds should be allocated specifically for these facilities in the context of the TENprogramme has to be rejected.”

Höltgen also mentions that at least three sites, Boulogne, Doncaster and Wakefield, have received financial help from the European Regional Development Fund, but he recommends further studies on the actual effects to the society. For a successful transfer of goods to rail

6 Europlatforms is an organisation of 40 intermodal freight transport centres in Spain, France, Britain, Denmark

and Germany (Europlatforms, 2003).

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and sea transport, he recommends that the public policy should be focused onto the internalisation of the external costs. The general conclusion from this part of the study is that the public sector should be involved in the terminal planning process, mainly for city planning reasons, but stay away from the day-to-day operations. Nevertheless, until the different traffic modes carry their full social costs, intermodal, or even better modal-independent transport, has to be developed using public funds for achieving the well awaited modal split in favour of rail and sea transport. It is then natural to subsidise the terminal function, which is the main barrier for intermodal growth.

5.5 A changing logistics environment for intermodal transport Over the years, shippers have been much more particular about their demand and the development seems to be towards even more advanced logistics services. The almost naive exchange of stock levels for expensive Just-In-Time deliveries with small vehicles in the 1980’s and early 1990’s has certainly halted in line with lower interest rates and cost consciousness, but phenomena such as out-sourcing of logistics activities, delivery time windows, increased frequencies, global sourcing, merge in transit, demand for track and trace and ICS7-support (see, e.g., Chopra, 2003) indicates that the transport companies have to offer much more than just place utility. A part of the OECD-EU-project TRILOG-Europe regarded trends in SCM. The list of trends shown in the table below was generated using methods such as the Delphi survey, case research, analysis of statistics, workshops and desk research. Table 8

Logistics trends lined out in the EU project TRILOG-Europe. (Source: Demkes (Ed.), 1999).

Level of logistical decision making Restructuring of logistics systems Realignment of supply chains

Rescheduling of product flows Management of distribution

Changes in product design

Trend Spatial concentration of production and inventory Development of break-bulk / transshipment systems Creation of hub-satellite networks Concentration of international trade on hub ports Rationalisation of the supply base Vertical disintegration of production Wider geographical sourcing of supplies Wider distribution of finished products Postponement / local customisation Increased direct delivery Time-compression principles applied in retail and manufacturing Increase in retailers' control over supply chain Growth of 'nominated day' deliveries and timed delivery systems Changes in freight modal split Reduction in international transport costs Impact of legislation and regulation Increased use of ICS Developments in vehicle and handling technology Complexity, Packaging, Modularity De-materialisation

The next section contains an analysis of how these logistics trends affect the transportation industry.

7 ICS: Information and Communication Systems.

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5.5.1 Goods: larger flows but smaller consignments One identified trend is that the magnitude of freight flows increases while the average size of each consignment in long-distance transport decreases, meaning that the number of individual consignments increases significantly. The first part of the statement is supported by general statistics saying that the intra-European freight flows have more than doubled since 1970. The annual growth is about 3% with road and short-sea shipping capturing the absolute majority of the increase (European Commission, 2002). It is harder to show that the average consignment size decreases. Interviews with operators and numerous articles in business magazines support the statement, but these are rarely supported by statistics, often refer only to parts of the market and are of a rather general character such as by Demkes ((Ed.), 1999, p. 132): “A shift from material density towards information density … has led and will continue to lead to major shifts in distribution patterns: the number of shipments will increase and at the same time their size decreases.”

The discussion is often confused by the fact that the size of consignments varies between the actors in a transport chain. In intermodal transport, for instance, the forwarder might stuff a semi-trailer with hundreds of consignments while the semi-trailer as such is the consignment for the intermodal transport operator. For the railway operator performing the haul between terminals, the wagon set constitutes the consignment. Sub-consignments, consignments and super-consignments can thus be defined in consolidation networks for describing the Russian Doll effect (Woxenius, 1997). The forwarders are prevented from fulfilling the new demand by just adding transport resources to the system by the economic and environmental restrictions set by customers and society. Hence, they must constantly find and implement new structural and operational patterns, of which most of them have in common that they add to the complexity of the systems.

5.5.2 Vehicles and vessels: larger units for the high-density routes The trend of ever larger vehicles and vessels primarily concerns the biggest units for each mode, but there are strong tendencies that also the average size for each mode increases. However, due to the modal split towards road transport, the average size of all vehicles and vessels are rather decreasing. Reasons for increasing vehicle sizes clearly involve economies of distance and scale. McCann (2001) argues that the unit cost of moving a shipment follows a concave curve with decreasing marginal costs with larger vehicles and vessels while there is no strict theoretical proof that marginal costs decrease by distance although this is the usual empirical result. For obvious operative and market reasons, any increase of vehicle size must be matched against departure frequency and transshipment productivity gains (Ballis and Golias, 2002). Each period of time has a dominant traffic mode offering spatial or network coverage (Grübler, 1990) while other modes offer high capacity and low unit costs at densely trafficked routes over relatively long distances. Such improvements in the late product life cycle are often explained by the sailing ship effect, referring to the 50 years after the introduction of the steam ship, when sailing ships improved more than they did in the previous 300 years. Accepting that road has the network carrying function of most societies today, larger vehicles and vessels mostly relate to rail, sea and air. On rail there is a trend towards longer and heavier trains for transportation of commodities in order to better utilise economies of scale. Here signalling systems, weight capacity of the tracks and length of meeting tracks limit the sizes. 51

The fact that intermodal transport with inferior load factor increases its importance at the expense of conventional wagon-load transport, however, points in a direction of lower average payload of trains. Container vessels have grown significantly in recent years after leaving the panamax era. Hapag-Lloyd’s Hamburg Express Class carry over 7500 TEU:s and their partner OOCL operate the OOCL Shenzhen at 8000 TEU:s. The future promises even larger vessels since shipping lines tend to invest in over-sized vessels to have low marginal costs for price wars and to meet future rather than current demand (Lumsden, 1998). To facilitate for larger vessels, ports’ fairways and handling equipment must be enlarged accordingly and port calls must not be prolonged significantly. Also aeroplane sizes increase. Most significant are the 250-tonne freighter Antonov AN225 ‘Mriya’ that entered commercial service in 2002 (Antonov, 2002) and Airbus’ A388F carrying 150 tonnes that will enter service in 2008 (Airbus, 2003). For road that is strictly limited by the parameters set by the infrastructure, the expansion mostly refers to the length of articulated lorries and semi-trailer combinations on longdistance routes. After a period of harmonisation within the EU implying increases in most countries, the vehicle length is now believed to stay at 18,75 m for several years, although 25,25 m is allowed in Sweden and Finland and might be allowed on the European core highway network like the interstate regulations in the USA. Height and width will probably be slightly adjusted upwards. Increases not resulting in more pallet places are less important. The maximum length of semi-trailers will most probably remain at 13,6 m or slightly longer 45 ft.

5.5.3 Ways and terminals: more consolidation and more rigid systems Pressured by decreasing transport prices, the forwarders look for economies of scale and enhanced resource utilisation. The trend that the size of vehicles and vessels increases at the same time as the size of each individual consignment decreases implies that a larger number of consignments have to be consolidated in each moving container, ship, train, lorry or aeroplane. It also necessitates further efforts to unitise the goods flow in order to transship quickly and cheaply between traffic modes. In order to cope with the increased complexity, it is a postulate that the mega-carriers employ very strict systems in order to control their flows. This applies to the parameters of the consignments as well as the administrative systems. In the process “the fixing forwarder” is sacrificed and flexibility and tolerance in goods parameters yield for standardisation. The standardisation of transport systems contradicts with the shippers’ demand for more specific logistics demand. Forwarders’ trick is then to develop a service portfolio and interfaces so that services produced by a standardised transportation system are experienced as unique by the shippers.

5.5.4 Impact on intermodal transport: transport services and traffic The European Commission (2002) estimates that intermodal transport almost doubled from 33 to 62 billion tonkms between 1990 and 1998, accounting for 2.2% of all transport work in the EU. Despite the growth, intermodal transport does not fulfil the political expectations that it will deliver us from evils of road freight transport. Supporting words have been abundant and a truly wide range of political instruments have been used for promoting intermodal transport but they have never been able to create a truly levelled playing field with road transport. On the contrary, the perpetual promises that have not been realised have hurt intermodal transport severely. One example is when Danish politicians opened the Great Baelt connection for rail well ahead of road and indicated high lorry fees for using the connection. Rail 52

than invested in intermodal services that were immediately shut down after the parliament decided upon very low lorry fees. Nevertheless, political decisions like the new German road tax and the French subsidy to forwarders using intermodal transport are promising. With substantial border-crossing and transit traffic, the national policies also have a European dimension. Swedish Volvo, for instance has decided to transfer some 8 000 annual lorry loads from German suppliers to intermodal transport when the LKW Maut applies (Andersson, 2003). Trends towards shippers that grow in size and scope that source and market globally imply larger flows over longer transport distances. More consolidation implies shorter but denser transport flows between nodes. By use of ITUs, the potential of lower marginal costs of larger vehicles and vessels can be utilised without restriction to the largest consignments. The trends do not all point in a direction of more intermodality, but the combined picture is favourable. The trend towards demand of more advanced transport services and modal split, due to environmental concern and saturation on the roads and in the air, will force intermodal transport to offer a higher transport quality to meet the demand for new goods categories. From a supply side perspective the main obstacles for growth of intermodal transport are referred to infrastructure obstacles like lack of spatial coverage and terminals, infrastructure interoperability, some links and access to attractive slots. Hampering are also the lack of standardisation of load units, information systems and administrative procedures as well as the remaining lack of competition in the railway sector, despite EU efforts. From a demand side perspective, the non-compliance of intermodal transport to service requirements is regarded as the main problem (Henstra and Woxenius, 1999). Demand for environmentally friendly transportation will affect the demand positively, but intermodal transport can not solely rely on the “environmental friendliness” (IFEU and SGKV, 2002). Once lorry engines can be made more energy efficient and discharge less emissions, their currently superior operational efficiency might actually make them superior also from an environmental perspective. Moreover, on a local level, neighbours to intermodal terminals protest against the increased local traffic and related disturbances (Slack, 1999). This implies that some present terminals have to operate during restricted hours and others have to be re-localised. New terminals will be built outside city centres or be designed for less noise emissions. Certain technologies, e.g.; Noell’s Mega Hub, Krupp’s Fast Handling System and Tuchschmid’s Compact Terminal, have been shown in versions with huge noise protecting hoods. Overcoming the obstacles is a true challenge and it is here assumed that the intermodal transport will follow four main development lines in order to compete successfully with singlemode road transport. Special emphasis is put to the competitiveness over medium distances of 150 – 500 kilometres that accounts for 46% of national transport work in the EU compared to the 22% above 500 kms (European Commission, 2002), that by few exceptions is the market intermodal transport attacks today. All development lines do not aim for the medium distances, but it is still vital for the competitiveness of intermodal transport that services with different characteristics can be co-ordinated (Trip and Bontekoning, 2002). Economies of scale are clearly present in rail transportation and the integration of different services can facilitate that economies can be utilised. In addition, Liu et al. (2003) prove that hybrids of traffic principles can save at least 10% of the travel distance in consolidation networks, an issue also addressed by Houtman (2002). In the long run and except the RoRo-niche, the services will be aimed at swap bodies, ISOcontainers, pallet-wide containers and smaller freight containers. The recent standardisation initiatives of the European Commission (2003) will be of significant importance. However, in member states where road transport is currently dominated by semi-trailers, e.g. the UK, 53

Spain, Belgium and France, intermodal services will encompass these for a rapid capture of market shares.

54

References Published references BALLIS, A., GOLIAS, J. (2002) Comparative evaluation of existing and innovative rail-road freight transport terminals, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Vol. 36, No. 7, pp. 593-611. Bantrafik 2000-2001, SIKA, Sammanställd av Banverket , Stockholm 2003 BÄRTHEL, F.; WOXENIUS, J. (2003) The Dalecarlian Girl - Evaluation of the implementation of the Light-combi concept, Paper presented at the AGS (Alliance for Global Sustainability) Annual Meeting, University of Tokyo, 24-27 March, 2003. CARDEBRING, P. W., WARNECKE, C. (1995) Combi-Terminal and Intermodal freight centre Development – an Assessment, KFB Report 1995:16, Stockholm. CASS. S. (1997) Parsec vs. ITS, Cargo Systems, No. 4, April, p. 88. DEMKES, R. (Ed.) (1999) TRILOG-Europe End Report, TNO Inro, Delft. European Commission (2002) European Union - Energy and Transport in Figures, DG TREN in co-operation with Eurostat, Brussels. European Commission (2003) Proposal for a directive by the European Parliament and the Council on Intermodal Loading Units, Brussels, 7 April. GRÜBLER, A. (1990) The Rise and Fall of Infrastructures. Dynamics of Evolution and Technical Change in Transport, Doctor’s Dissertation, Physica Verlag, Heidelberg. HENSTRA, D., WOXENIUS, J. (1999) Intermodal transport in Europe, Report within the EU-project TRILOG Europe, TNO Inro, Delft. HÖLTGEN, D. (1995) Terminals, intermodal freight centres and European infrastructure policy, Dissertation, University of Cambridge. Published by GVB Verlag, Nürnberg, 1996. HÖLTGEN, D. (1997/a) Terminals in the Trans-European Network, Abstract to speech at the conference Freightconnection ´96, London, 1-3 October. HOUTMAN, J. (2002) The Portfolio Effect in Hub-Networks with stochastic Cargo Volumes, Integrationsaspekte des Supply Chain Management, Logistikmagement, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 6170. In German. IFEU, SGKV (2002) Comparative Analysis of Energy Consumption and CO2 Emissions of Road Transport and Intermodal transport Road/Rail, IRU/BGL Energy & CO2 Study, Geneva. JENSEN, A. (1990) Intermodal transport. Systems, Economics and Strategies, Swedish Transport Research Board, Stockholm. JENSEN, A., SJÖSTEDT, L., WOXENIUS, J. (1992) Railway Organization – A Preliminary Appraisal of the Swedish Model, Proceedings of the 6th World Conference on Transport Research, Lyon, June 29 - July 3. R. LIU, J., LI C.-L., CHAn, C.-Y. (2003) Mixed truck delivery systems with both hub-and-spoke and direct shipment, Transport Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 325-339. LUMSDEN, K. R. (1998) Logistikens grunder (Fundamentals of Logistics), Studentlitteratur, Lund. In Swedish. 55

LUMSDEN, K.R. (2003) Fundamentals of Logistics, Student’s literature-translation, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg. McCANN, P. (2001) A proof of the relationship between optimal vehicle size, haulage length and the structure of the distance-transport costs, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Vol. 35, No. 8, pp. 671-693. På HuGGet (2003) IKEA Rails tågtrafik lags ner, Vol. 4, Nr. 151, 2003-10-30. SLACK, B. (1999): Satellite terminals: a local solution to hub congestion?, Journal of Transport Geography, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 241-246. Tåg (1999), BK Tåg tar över gods i Dalsland, (BK Tåg takes over the goods to the province Dalsland) Issue 4, p 8. In Swedish TRIP, J.J., BONTEKONING, Y. (2002) Integration of small freight flows in the intermodal transport system, Journal of Transport Geography, Vol. 10, No. 102., pp. 221-229. UN Economic Commission for Europe (UN/ECE) (2001), Terminology on intermodal tranort, United Nation New York and Geneva. World Cargo News (2002), Paper handling changes gear, May issue, pp53. World Cargo News (2003), Curtain rises on the new Eurobox, June issue, pp31. WOXENIUS, J. (1997) Terminals – a Barrier for Intermodality?, Nordic Transport Research’s conference on Intermodal Freight Transport, Ebeltoft, 22-23 September. Published in proceedings NTF Conference report No. 97.01. WOXENIUS, J. (1998) Development of Small-scale Intermodal transportation in a Systems Context, Dissertation, Report 34, Department of Transportation and Logistics, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg. WOXENIUS, J. (2003) Utvecklingstrender för lastbärartransport med sjöfart och järnväg (Development trends regarding unit load transport by sea and rail), Meddelande 118, Institutionen för logistik och transport, Göteborg. WOXENIUS, J., SJÖSTEDT, L. (2003) Logistics trends and their impact on European combined transport - services, traffic and industrial organisation, Logistik-management, Vol. 5, No. 2. pp. 25-36. R. WOXENIUS, J.; BÄRTHEL, F. (2002) The organisation of the European Intermodal road/rail freight Transport Industry, FTAM, Delft, 23-24 maj. WOXENIUS, J.; BÄRTHEL, F.; ANDERSSON, A. (2001) “The Dalecarlian Girl” - Evaluating the implementation of the light-combi concept, W. i. p., NOFOMA 2001, Reykjavik, 1516 June. X-Rail News (2001/c) Co-operation NSB Freight, Kombiverkehr and Hupac, Issue 23, p. 1. X-Rail News (2001/f), Rail4Chem: Direct connection Germany - Antwerp, Issue 50, p. 1. X-Rail News (2002/c) ICS with new branch in Trelleborg, Issue 6, p. 2. YOUNG, R. (1997/a) Parsec Hams it up, Cargo Systems, No. 1, January, , p. 67. Ånghwisslan (1998) Vänerexpressen (The Vänern express), issue 2228, p 10. In Swedish.

World Wide Web sites Airbus (2003-05-19) : www.airbus.com. 56

Antonov (2002-01-03): www.antonovairlines.co.uk. Banverket (2003-11-10): www.banverket.se. BK Tåg (2002-04-12): www.bktag.se. DFDS Transport (2003-11-10): www.dfdstransport.se. Europlatforms (2003-11-10):www.freight-village.com/europlat/. Green Cargo (2003-11-10): www.greencargo.com. ICF (2002): www.icf-online.com. Motortransport (2003-11-01): www.motortransport.se. Parsec Inc. (2003-11-10): www.parsecinc.com. Port of Gävle (2003-10-20): www.gavle.se/hamn. Port of Göteborg (2003-10-20): www.portgot.se. Port of Trelleborg (, 2003-10-20): www.trelleborgshamn.se. Sverige hamnar (2003-09-20): www.transportgruppen.se/templates/SvHamnarStart. TGOJ Trafik (2002): www.tgojtrafik.se. UIRR (2002): www.uirr.com.

Interviews and oral presentations ANDERSSON, M., Project leader “Inbound Germany” for Volvo Logistics, 14 May 2002. BEIJBOM, C., CEO of IKEA Rail, Presentation at the VTI conference, Linköping, 2002-01-10. KAMPRAD, I., Founder and owner of IKEA, Question at seminar, 2001-05-28. LUNDGREN, B., General Manager Swe-Kombi (now Intercontainer (Scandinavia) AB), conference presentation, Godstransportdelegationen's and Banverket's seminar: Has intermodal transport any future in Sweden?, Stockholm, 2000-10-04. NILSSON, L., Green Cargo AB (now Celexor AB), 2000-08-04. ROOS, K., Transport Manager IKEA Group, 2002-02-20.

57

Appendix 1 After excluding those ports that do not fulfil requested criteria there are following 28 ports that have direct rail connection to port terminals as well as handle requested units and therefore will be part of the further discussion: •

Falkenberg terminal

•

Oskarshamns hamn

•

Gävle hamn

•

Skellefteå hamn

•

Port of Göteborg

•

Stockholms Hamn

•

Hallsta Pappersbruk

•

Sundsvalls hamn

•

Halmstads hamn och stuveri

•

Södertälje hamn

•

Helsingborgs hamn

•

Terminal West (Varberg)

•

Härnösands hamn

•

Trelleborgs hamn

•

Kalmar

•

Uddevalla hamnterminal

•

Karlshamns hamn

•

Umeå hamn

•

Karlskrona - Verköhamnen

•

Vänerhamn – Karlstads

•

Lysekils hamn

•

Vänerhamn – Kristinehamn

•

Malmö Köpenhamn port (CMP)

•

Vänerhamn – Åmål

•

Mälarhamnar Köping-Västerås

•

Ystad hamn logistik

•

Norrköpings hamn och stuveri

•

Åhus hamn & stuveri

Ports that haven’t satisfied the criteria set out in the report: •

Bergkvara hamn, Piteå hamn, Skärnäs hamn, Strömstads hamn, Wallhamn and Örnsköldsviks hamn are not be discussed since these ports don’t have rail connections although handle paper rolls and sawn wood; Wallhamn also handles containers.

•

Delta terminal – Söråker, Hargshamn, Luleå hamn, Oxelösunds hamn, Sölvesborgs hamn and Västervik- Lucernahamnen, although have direct rail connection, are not considered since the same don’t handle containers, swap bodies, semi-trailers, pallets, paper rolls or sawn wood.

Wallhamn, although still has not direct rail connection may be of interest since there is a project “Stenungsund terminal” going on. Besides connecting the terminal with Port of Göteborg, one of aims of this project is to connect Wallhamn with Stenungsund terminal by rail.

1

mästargatan 13

Transportvägen 10

84000 Hallsbergsterminalen solåsvägen 5 21000

kruthusgatan 4

Terminalgatan 11

rännarbanan 11

containergatan 1

Kolgatan

Borlänge

Årsta

Hallsberg

Jönköping

Göteborg

Älmhult

Helsingborg

Malmö

Karlstad Insjön Eskilstuna

8000

95000

40000

43000

60000

107000

16000

18500 18500 40000

vännäsvägen 1 Björneborgsgatan 3 strömsbrovägen 17

Umeå Sundsvall Gävle

13000

Area [m2]

Terminalgatan 14

Adress

Luleå

terminal opening hours

13500 5000 12000

56000

42000

20000

06.00-17.00 06.00-18.00

06.00-20.00 06.00-19.00, lör fm, sön

06.00-18.00

2 3

18

12

4

36

5

7

40

04.00-22.00, lör 8-12

4

2 6 6

6

no of employees

06.00-18.00

2500000 5000000

turnover

05.00-21.00, lör 511

07.15-17.15 05.30-21.00, lör fm, 61000 sön em

10000

45000

75000

12000

19000

06.00-16.45, sön 09 15 16000 06.00-18.00 23000 05.00-18.45 22000 05.30-19.30

Units handled

important facts

2

Bergkvist AB Eskilstuna E&M

Banverket

Terminal company Banverket

Jernhusen

Banverket

Terminal company Jernhusen

Terminal company Banverket

Terminal company Jernhusen Jernhusen

Banverket

Municipality

Terminal company Banverket Banverket Banverket

Vänerexpressen GreenCargo GreenCargo

Rail Combi

Terminal company Rail Combi

Rail Combi

Terminal company GreenCargo

Rail Combi

Operational company Rail Combi Rail Combi Rail Combi Operational company

owner track Operator

Jernhusen

Municipality

Terminal company Jernhusen Jernhusen Jernhusen

owner land

Data on conventional intermodal terminals

550

420 220 250

3000

2600

900

2950

1750

1320

3700

540

600 640 1250

Track length

42 42

45

45

45

45

45

45

45

45

45 45 45

45

1 1

4

4

1

5

1

4

1

1 3 2

2

max capacity Transshipment [tonne] resources

transhipment technique

x

x x x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x x x

x

x x x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x x x

Umeå Sundsvall Gävle

Borlänge

Årsta

Hallsberg

Jönköping

Göteborg

Älmhult

Helsingborg

Malmö

Karlstad Insjön Eskilstuna

20' 40' containers containers

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x x x

x

swap bodies

standardized units

Luleå

terminal

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x x x

x

semitrailers

x no no

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x x x

x

x no no

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x x x

x

x no no

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x x x

x

storing storing >1 and storing