Dublin Port Research Articles

Long Transport Chains: Exporting from a Peripheral Island

The crucial dependence on intermodal transport of an open island economy, where almost all external trade passes through the seaports, is examined. The rapid growth of the Irish economy puts great strains on the transport supply chains, particularly in the vicinity of the principal seaport in Dublin, where major congestion occurs. This adversely affects the competitiveness of small and medium-sized exporting companies. Increasing prosperity has resulted in an explosion in the numbers of private cars, which puts great strain on an inadequate internal infrastructure. A review of Irish ports confirms that congestion on the access routes to the Dublin port is the major bottleneck in the long transport chains for exporters. Relief from the freight traffic transiting the city center must await the completion of a dedicated port access tunnel, and interim solutions are needed. In the case of food exporters, globalization, the power of the retail conglomerates, and peripheral location demand a high level of supply chain efficiencies. A survey of export transport chains for selected products shows that transit costs can be a significant proportion of the total consignment value. At the level of the indigenous companies, supply chain management capabilities are shown to be below an acceptable standard in two-thirds of the firms surveyed. Possible solutions for facilitation of freight access in the vicinity of the port and for introduction of more sustainable solutions for goods deliveries in the historic city center are explored. Measures that can be taken to improve the logistics management capabilities in companies are also described.

Using ELECTRE III to Choose Route for Dublin Port Motorway

The 1985 European Union Directive on Environmental Impact Assessment was transposed into Irish law in 1988. The resulting complex environmental impact statements often contain large volumes of information on relevant impacts, yet make relatively little effort to organize this information into a decision-assisting framework that enables the relative merits of the options to be comprehensively compared. This paper describes a practical application of the ELECTRE III decision-aid system to a preliminary environmental appraisal carried out recently on the Port Access and Eastern Relief Route (PAERR), a new motorway proposed for Dublin City. The case study illustrates how the ELECTRE III framework takes complex information from the environmental appraisal and uses it to rank the various project alternatives considered. The paper describes new techniques put forward by the writers for use within the ELECTRE III model. A weighting system previously developed by the writers is used for estimating the relative importance of criteria. Also, the writers’ own methods are used for estimating indifference, preference, and veto thresholds. These estimates allow the uncertainties inherent in each set of criterion valuations to be incorporated directly into the decision model. Both these techniques make the model more readily applicable to the decision problem under examination within this paper.

SUMMARY. RECENT DEVELOPMENT WORKS IN DUBLIN PORT.

"SUMMARY. RECENT DEVELOPMENT WORKS IN DUBLIN PORT.." Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 46(1), pp. 78–

Dr. Bindon Blood Stoney, F.R.S.

WITHIN a few weeks of his eighty-first year, Dr. Bindon Blood Stoney, F.R.S., died at Dublin on May 5. Dr. Stoney was born at Oakley Park, Birr, in 1828, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he had a distinguished engineering course, graduating in 1850. His abilities were early perceived by the then Earl of Rosse, whom he assisted in the astronomical researches of the early ’fifties of last century. In 1852 he went to Spain, and was engaged on railway work in that country. On his return horns he was engaged in the important work of the Boyne Viaduct, which was regarded as a remarkable engineering achievement at that time. It is, however, by reason of his work as engineer to the Dublin Port and Docks Board that Dr. Stoney will be most remembered. He was appointed assistant engineer to the board in 1856, and three years later chief engineer to the port, a position which he held until 1898. During his tenure of office, Dublin was converted from a purely tidal port into one in which some of the largest vessels may be moored alongside the quays and lie constantly afloat, and the river so deepened that the cross-channel steamers may enter and leave at all states of the tide. In this work Dr. Stoney used the method of laying down the harbour walls by means of large blocks of masonry, weighing as much as 350 tons, and sunk by means of shears on a prepared foundation, the quay walls of the Alexandra Basin, the North Quay extension, and other work being laid in this manner.