Abstract
Inland navigation is hardly ever used to transport cargo in cities. In most urban areas, it is performed almost exclusively via road transport, with the virtual exclusion of rail and inland transport. Research and implementation projects in several European cities have shown that employing inland navigation is a viable alternative for road transport in urban areas. The research involved a case study of transporting the same number of 40-foot containers by inland waterway and road and then comparing the results in terms of transport time, transport costs, and carbon dioxide emissions between two metropolitan areas in Poland. The article shows that River Information Services (RIS) system can contribute to improving freight transport efficiency not only on longer routes, but also in urban and inter-urban conditions. The findings were that inland shipping is much cheaper and more environmentally friendly, but transport takes much longer and is not always possible due to insufficient waterway infrastructure. The paper can be used as a road map to proceed with new approach to planning urban and inter-urban logistics, with the use of inland navigation supported by the RIS system. The study delivers evidence that the main benefits of using RIS for urban logistics are: optimization of the cargo route, improved supervision and control of cargo transport, optimization of inter-branch transport, optimization of the use of fleet, more efficient use of technical infrastructure of waterways, combination of many recipients/senders into one transport, and reduction of administrative barriers.
Highlights
There are nearly 623,000 km of navigable waterways in the entire world [1] and many cities are located in the vicinity of rivers and other water reservoirs
The potential of inland navigation for container transport can be seen in data published by the Port of Rotterdam, which shows that of the 14.3 million TEUs handled by the Port in 2020, 38% of the containers on the port-hinterland relation were transported by inland vessels
The aim of this paper is to indicate whether it is feasible to use inland shipping to transport containerized cargo on waterways with lower technical parameters, such as in Poland
Summary
There are nearly 623,000 km of navigable waterways in the entire world [1] and many cities are located in the vicinity of rivers and other water reservoirs. Urban freight transport accounts for around 10–15% of vehicles, which corresponds to 19% of energy consumption in road transport, 25% CO2 emissions, 30% NOx emissions, and 50% particles emissions [2]. The above means that urban cargo transport is becoming increasingly more difficult to organize and manage [2]. In some cities—such as Stockholm, Szczecin, Gdansk, Berlin or Göteborg—inland navigation may be a viable alternative for road and rail transport. The aim of this paper is to indicate whether it is feasible to use inland shipping to transport containerized cargo on waterways with lower technical parameters, such as in Poland. The aim of this article is to indicate the possibility of using this mode of transport to carry goods in cities and between metropolitan areas and the role of River Information Services (RIS) to facilitate this process
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