Modal Shifting from Road to Coastal Shipping Using a Mobile Harbor

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to suggest the possibility of modal shift by developing a mobile harbor (MH) with a container crane on board for container transport. As per the technical specification of MH, it has 8∼15 knots speed, 250TEU laden capacity, 4 meters draft, 92 meters LOA, 26 meters breadth, 30 moves handling rate capacity per hour. With this specification, the strong point of MH is to reduce port time of the mother ship by implementing a cross-docking handling system alongside the mother ship or feeder ship. Furthermore, due to the crane on board, the berthing place will be expanded, i.e. MH is able to approach general cargo handling berth without a dedicated quay crane. The paper concludes that MH may be used as a useful modal shift tool. The transit distance of 100 nautical miles is a decisive point to win the road mode regardless of the ship's speed. If the distance is more than 100 nautical miles, mobile harbor has the competitive advantage in pulling cargo from road transportation mode. Even though the result of analysis shows a positive signal for modal shift, the real situation does not go that way. That means modal shift has several attributes applicable to the real world.