Underground Logistics Systems: A Way to Cope with Growing Internal Container Traffic in the Port of Antwerp?

Abstract

During the last decade, container traffic was the driving force behind the growth in cargo handling in the port of Antwerp, Belgium. Between 1995 and 2005 container traffic almost tripled, enabling Antwerp to increase its market share in the Hamburg-Le Havre range. Moreover, various recent studies indicate that container traffic will continue to grow strongly in the years to come. In order to be able to respond to these growth perspectives and to safeguard the future position of the port of Antwerp as a container mainport, a new tidal container dock has been built on the left bank of the river Scheldt, the so-called Deurganckdock. This dock will lead to large flows of internal port container traffic between both river banks. As the traditional hinterland transport modes offer insufficient capacity to accommodate the increasing number of containers in the long-term, it seems worthwhile to consider the idea of constructing a dedicated underground logistics system (ULS) to transfer containers between both river banks. This paper presents a first analysis of different variants of such a ULS.

Keywords:

• Seaport
• container handling
• hinterland transport
• underground logistics system

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their remarks and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper, which greatly helped to improve its presentation. All remaining errors are the responsibility of the authors.