801 Sustainable Maritime Transportation and Exploitation of Sea Resources – Rizzuto & Guedes Soares (eds) © 2012 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-0-415-62081-9 Potential of short sea shipping in Brazil Nayara A.L. de Valois, Afonso Celso Medina & Rui Carlos Botter University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil ABSTRACT: Brazil has a transport system with little presence of intermodality and use of Short-Sea Shipping. Nevertheless, these are goals for Brazilian waterborne transportation matrix, which is expected to exceed 13% going to 25% in 2025. Currently, Brazilian transportation matrix isn’t balanced surpass- ing that of other countries in the use of the highway, where approximately 63% of the total cargo is transported. The aim of this paper is to make a diagnosis on the investigative potential use and improve- ment of Short-Sea Shipping in Brazil. To base this effect, we present a new concept of “fast coastal terminals”, its conceptual model and potential gains in an intermodal transportation network. coast”. For authors, SSS should not be relieved of its intermodal nature, since it is dependent on the maritime routes between the terminals and the points of origin and destination and could bring great opportunity for companies to become more competitive by reducing logistics costs and gener- ating greater reliability in service. Thus, it is suggested a new concept in this arti- cle, which considers the SSS inserted into an inter- modal transport chain for movement of goods. It is also presented the concept of “fast coastal termi- nal”, with some suggestions to make it competitive. This discussion does not yield a simple improve- ment to the current Brazilian SSS, but can generate an increasing process of workload attraction to the transportation sector. This article is divided into four main parts: 1) primary diagnosis of Short-sea Shipping in Brazil; 2) the legal, economic and environmental aspects to implement coastal terminals in Brazil; 3) comparative analysis with the experiences of the European Union, mainly with projects such as the Motorways of the Sea (MoS) and 4) recommenda- tions and suggestions. 2 PRIMARY DIAGNOSIS OF SHORT-SEA SHIPPING IN BRAZIL According to Brazilian law, it is considered as Short- Sea Shipping (Law 10,893/04): “a coasting navigation that is held between Brazilian ports, using exclusively the sea or the sea and the interior”. A broader con- cept, however, is presented by CGEE (2009) for mer- chant shipping, based on Regulation for Maritime Traffic (RTM, 1992), classifying SSS as: • Great Cabotage—held at the merchant shipping between Brazilian ports and or harbors of the 1 INTRODUCTION Traditionally, the concept of Brazilian Short-Sea Shipping (SSS) or Coastal Shipping is relieved of the logistics chain and intermodality. The under- representation of intermodality in Brazil exposes the low use of waterways despite of the dissemina- tion and awareness of the benefits to the Brazilian public transport network. According to Jones et al. (2000), intermodal transportation should be generally defined as “the shipment of cargo and the movement of people involving more than one mode of transportation during a single, seamless journey”. As Yevdokimov (2000) argued that “intermodal transport requires the physical transfer of cargo between different modes, in a systemic perspective of the transport chain, from collection to distribution, minimiz- ing downtime of goods in their handling between origin and destination”. Even with the prospects for growth in cargo handling in Brazilian ports, although some companies have adopted logistics solutions that address the use of waterways, the country is still undergoing political and regulatory reforms, and what it is seen is a slow progress in the dissemination of intermodality, even with a low use of Short-sea Shipping, which represented less than 23% of cargo handling in the country in 2010. The use of intermodality associated with Coastal or Short-sea Shipping, as featured on Botter et al. (2007) “is a necessity for the development of trans- portation sector in Brazil” and, in a sense, a neces- sity for achieving the goals of the National Plan of Logistics and Transport—PNLT. The concept also presented on Botter et al (2007) for Short- Sea Shipping is understood as “a freight transport logistics chain that relies on one of its links in the maritime transport between points in the Brazilian