The unexplored arena of remote facilities
Inland container depots are often point-to-point operations and might benefit from the introduction of AGVs
Many of the more congested ports, especially those in city centres, are looking at remote facilities where boxes can be processed – and automated guided vehicles could, possibly, provide an interesting transport option.
A paper titled, ‘A new hinterland transport concept for the port of Rotterdam’, authored by Ben-Jaap Pielage, Johan Visser, Rob Konings and Bart Wiegmans, put forward the idea of using AGVs in this arena because these are highly systematised point-to-point journeys – and might even be achieved by lengthening an existing AGV system.
But as mixing automated transport and manual vehicles is not a good idea, you need a completely dedicated lane and infrastructure that is out of the reach of both workers and public – which may be problematic as congestion is the main issue that a remote facility is usually trying to address.
High volumes would be required to make the immediate investment worthwhile but given this, terminals could consider a number of options, some of which have already been tried out inside port gates.
For example, Rotterdam has used Multi Trailer Systems for a number of years: these could conceivably be combined with an AGV – a technical trial in Rotterdam showed one AGV could pull a set of five trailers quite happily.
The potential performance of automated trucks, possibly combined with multiple trailers, is high. The trucks can run close together, 24 hours a day. Even with relatively low speed of 3m/s (about 11 km per hour) the theoretical maximum capacity of a single lane could be around 1,000 teu per hour or 24,000 teu per day.
Systems would most probably require additional loading/unloading areas and several other adaptations at the marine terminal. Application of these types of systems on the terminal should however not lead to major problems.
There is also the possibility of using automated trains, although as with automated trucks, these require a dedicated infrastructure and mixing fully automated freight trains with manned passenger trains on the same track will most probably not be accepted, at least not in the near future.
More intriguing is the idea of automated barges. One push boat and three associated barges might offer a service up to a distance of 80 km, and possible savings of between 10% and 15%. However, it would take novel and dedicated infrastructure – which could be expensive.
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