Potential freight distribution improvements using motorways of the sea Pau Morales-Fusco a,b,⇑ , Sergi Saurí a,b,1 , Alejandro Lago c,2 a CENIT – Center for Innovation in Transport, Jordi Girona 29, Nexus 2 Building, 2A, 08034 Barcelona, Spain b Transportation and Territory Infrastructure Department, Technical University of Catalonia – Barcelona Tech (UPC), Jordi Girona 1-3, B1 Building, 08034 Barcelona, Spain c IESE Business School, Universidad de Navarra, Pearson Av., 21, 08034 Barcelona, Spain article info Keywords: Motorways of the sea Short sea shipping Roll-on roll-off Door-to-door Modal shift Cost model abstract This paper analyzes how the strategy taken by the cargo carrier when using motorways of the sea (under- stood as regular roll on/roll off short sea shipping lines) affects the competitiveness of the shipping line. Five different strategies were analyzed and grouped into three main types: road door-to-door transpor- tation, road and sea transportation combined with a driver always accompanying the cargo and road and sea transportation where the cargo travels unaccompanied. The analysis provides formulae to calculate the economical and temporal cost differences from using a sea link in distribution and assesses the risk and investments necessary to maximize the profit for each strategy. The paper ends identifying the crit- ical points affecting the competitiveness of short sea shipping roll on/roll off lines and proposes policies that could help in its development and success. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In 2001 the European Commission (EC) laid down the guide- lines in transportation policy for the near and medium future in a White Paper, European Transport Policy for 2010: Time to Decide (Commission of the European Communities, 2001). Emphasis was placed on reducing the congestion on the European network of roads and the external costs associated with transportation. One of the leading initiatives was the promotion of short sea shipping (SSS) transportation as a real bimodal alternative (road combined with maritime/railroad transportation) to the monomodal road op- tion. In fact, door-to-door transportation with a SSS link registers smaller externalities (basically environmental and congestion costs) than road haulage (Kim and van Wee, 2009, for instance). From an operational point of view, SSS and especially motor- ways of the sea (MoS), understood as links between ports with higher standards in terms of travel time, costs and flexibility, have been widely studied as an alternative to road haulage (cf. D’Este, 1992; Marzano et al., 2009; or Perakis and Denisis, 2008, for in- stance). Studies like the one by Bernetti et al. (2002) certified that using RoRo (roll on/roll off) ships for maritime connection might be the best option: the door-to-door cost per transported unit and the overall trip time appear to be of the same magnitude order as only- road-haulage transportation chains. Those points are heavily sup- ported by the conclusions of multiple projects dealing with the competitiveness of SSS multimodal chains. Some of them, the most relevant to this paper’s scope are: EMMA, COREM, INSPIRE, IPSI (4th EC framework program), D2D or realize (5th EC framework program) were aimed to that topic (see Baird (2007) or Castells (2009) for further information). However, most projects deal with a specific transportation chain (a prefixed origin and destination) and whenever models are developed to assess the performance of SSS, those usually end up comparing road transportation with accompanied cargo (truckers travel with their cargo on the ship) in RoRo or RoPax (RoRo combined with passengers) ships. This kind of chain is competitive only when the maritime link is used to give the truck driver enough time to rest, so the ports have to be a cer- tain distance from one another (Peeters et al., 1995; Ng, 2009). But another business model is possible: unaccompanied cargo, that is, transport by truck from the origin to the first port, cargo on a platform without a trucker on the maritime leg and a truck from the second port to the final destination. The cargo is always on the same platform. As such, the business can be operated with one truck and two platforms and the truck can be used more times. This basic model can be extended by using several trucks and platforms. Moreover, the business model of road haulers (carriers) must be considered when developing any model assessing the performance of SSS chains. In fact, different carriers’ strategies have already been analyzed but mainly with a qualitative and/or descriptive ap- proach, such as the works by Paixão and Marlow (cf. Paixão and Marlow, 2002, 2005; or Paixão Casaca and Marlow, 2009). 0966-6923/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2012.05.007 ⇑ Corresponding author at: CENIT – Center for Innovation in Transport, Jordi Girona 29, Nexus 2 Building, 2A, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. Tel.: +34 93 413 7667/401 5655; fax: +34 93 413 7675. E-mail addresses: pau.morales@upc.edu (P. Morales-Fusco), sergi.sauri@upc.edu (S. Saurí), alago@iese.edu (A. Lago). 1 Tel.: +34 93 413 7667/401 5655; fax: +34 93 413 7675. 2 Tel.: +34 93 253 6404; fax: +34 93 253 4343. Journal of Transport Geography 24 (2012) 1–11 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Journal of Transport Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo