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Highways of the Sea: Fact or Fiction
Much has been written about the ” Autoroute de la Mer” and considerable money has been spent by the European Commission and various national governments studying the viability of shifting truck traffic from the land highways to the maritime routes, particularly in the Mediterranean between Italy, France and Spain, but also across the Bay of Biscay. The concept is that this traffic would be catered for by roll on/roll off services with high frequency sailings. But is this more fiction than fact?
The problem is that so far there has been relatively little support by the industry for this alternative routeing. The industry is concerned about the cost, given the much higher operating cost of ro-ro ships and the level of service frequency. Added to which, bureaucratic paperwork issues arise when the ships discharge.
Another problem is the infrastructure requirements to deal with this type of traffic in non-international ports.
So what are the alternatives? Continued congestion on the highways, particularly on the Mediterranean coast and the North/South autoroutes in France? Use of the container services currently available? The latter may prove to be the answer.
The ro-ro service sees its market in the trucking industry.
A container service has its market with the actual shippers.
Today, containers are more and more being standardised around the 45ft box and standard industry pallets, which are a perfect fit for this type of container. The 45ft container is the functional equivalent of a truck in terms of internal dimensions and volume. The containers can be constructed to have “curtain-side” features, the same as a trailer.
The 45ft pallet-wide container opens the perspective of the implementation of an intra-European logistics which is already proven in the international container trade by offering integrated intermodal service combined with flexibility lower transportation costs. A number of ports have already signed up to investigate this business. Perhaps we will then see a redefined Highways of the Sea which has more reality than the present concept.
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