Intermodalism and New Trade Flows

Abstract

Over the last fi fty years, there has been signifi cant growth in international trade. In turn, ports and carriers, ocean and intermodal, have been under pressure to provide suffi cient infrastructure and mobile capital to support this growth. Intermodal transportation today generally refers to the transportation of freight in an intermodal container or vehicle, using two or more modes of transportation. Before containers were introduced in the 1950s, boxes, barrels and bags in which cargoes were packed were transported between carriers and/or modes, namely truck, rail, and ships, by a laborious and ineffi cient unloading and reloading process. This situation began to change in the 1950s with the introduction of containers. Ocean container transportation not only reduced the delivery time of international trade in general cargo but also the delivery costs (for example from the lower rates for ocean container transportation). In 2007, the ocean transportation of containers increased to 487 million TEUs (twenty foot equivalent units), 13 times greater than the number in the 1980s (UNCTAD 2010 ). The growth in international trade has been accompanied by a growth in new trade fl ows, i.e., cargo fl ow to a US port from a foreign port from which cargo has not previously fl owed. If the US port is a container port, an increase in the port ’ s intermodal (e.g., rail and truck) infrastructure will be required, assuming no excess capacity in this infrastructure. The role of intermodalism in the success of these new trade fl ows is investigated in this chapter. In the following section, the evolution of intermodalism is discussed. Section 3 discusses the advantages of intermodalism and its impact on world trade. Section 4 presents the data, models and empirical results from the estimation of these models in investigating the role of intermodalism on new trade fl ows to the US. Finally, a summary and conclusions are provided. Intermodalism and New Trade Flows