European Commission [6] aims to the achievement of a more environment-friendly transport system via shifting traffic from road to rail and waterborne modes, among them also to inland navigation, which is one of the ten key transport goals of the European Commission. Therefore, the European Commission funds innovative transport concepts that have as a main aim to contribute to this modal shift. NOVIMAR is one of these concepts. NOVIMAR stands for Novel Inland Waterway Transport and Maritime Transport Concepts.
The main aim of NOVIMAR is the modal shift in favor of waterways (inland waterways (IW), sea-river and shortsea shipping (SSS)). Besides to that, it also aims at improving the existing waterborne transportation system and allowing access into small waterways, while achieving at the same time economies of scale without the use of big ships. The means for the achievement of the above aims is the vessel train (VT). The VT is a semi-autonomous vessel platooning concept that resembles the truck platooning. The VT is composed by one leader vessel (LV) and follower vessels (FVs) (Fig. 1). Information Technology (IT) equipment, which has been already developed by Argonics, will be installed on all vessels that will allow the semi-autonomous sailing of the FVs and enable the LV to monitor and communicate with the FVs. The vessels are connected in a non-tangible way (i.e. not with a rope) but via sensors. The LV has full crew on board and probably one additional person (still to be decided) that will be in charge of monitoring the VT. The FVs could have reduced crew on board, which is a main research assumption and one of the main economic advantages of the VT. At least one crew member will be on board in the FVs, but this person will not be in charge of the navigational tasks of the vessel, since the LV will guide them, but will be in charge of other tasks, such as maintenance of the engine or for emergency reasons. Sailing with reduced crew could be a solution for labor shortage in the inland waterway transport (IWT) sector [19]. FVs’ role is to transport cargo from A to B and they should be ready to depart (arrive) on time, so as not to delay the whole VT.
A key actor of the VT concept, apart from the vessel owners (VOs) and the cargo owners (COs), is also the VT organizer (VTO). The VTO is either a third-party logistics service provider or a shipping company that is responsible for composing and managing the VT. The VTO does the matching between the VOs and COs and between the LV and the FVs. For providing this service, the VTO receives a fee by the FVOs.
The expected benefits of the VT concept are twofold: business-economic and societal. From the business-economic perspective, fixed costs of the FVs are expected to decrease thanks to the reduced number of crew members on board, which could lead to a reduction of crew costs. Also, productivity could increase thanks to the longer sailing hours of the VT compared to the sailing hours of the conventional vessels, due to the fact that the FVs will not need to stop for the crew members to rest, as it happens for the conventional vessels. From the societal perspective, the expected benefit is the reduced external costs. The expected positive societal impact of the VT concept, thanks to the expected modal shift from road to waterways, is of high importance considering the high energy and carbon dioxide intensity in road transport and as a result the need for sustainable development [2].
Although in general the VT is examined for the IWT, sea-river and SSS transportation and for different types of cargo, this research focuses on inland container (TEUs) shipping for the trajectory ‘Antwerp – Rotterdam – Duisburg’. This case has been selected because it is a case with high IWT density of traffic.
There are several waterborne modes: the maritime, the IWT, the sea-river and the SSS. Given the focus of this paper on IWT, a description of all waterborne modes, including IWT to a more detailed extent, is presented.
The maritime transport concerns the transport of passengers and cargo with ships by sea between two or more seaports. Different types of cargo are transported via sea, such as containers (i.e. clothing, computers, meat etc.), dry bulk (i.e. grain, coal, iron ore, cement, sugar, salt and sand), liquid bulk (i.e. fuel oil, crude oil, petrol, vegetable oils etc.), break bulk (i.e. cargo packaged in pallets, boxes, bags etc.) and neo bulk (i.e. cargo that is not packaged in boxes like the break bulk, such as paper (rolls), wood, steel (rolls), lumber and vehicles etc.). There are two cargo handling systems for loading and unloading the sea vessels, roll on-roll off (RoRo) and load on-load off (LoLo). The former system is used when the vessel’s cargo is wheeled cargo (i.e. vehicles), which can roll on and off the vessel without the need of a crane and the latter system makes use of a crane for the shift of cargo between land and sea vessels.
The same types of cargo handling are also applicable for the IWT. The types of cargo transported via IWT are dry bulk, liquid bulk, heavy cargo, vehicles and containers [17]. The IWT concerns the transport of cargo (or passengers for recreational purposes) with vessels via IW (i.e. rivers, canals etc.) between inland ports. They are called inland because they are waterways that are within the territory of a country. The vessels that are used in IWT are either motorised or non-motorised, which are pulled or pushed by another vessel, i.e. a tugboat. IWT is an environment-friendly transport that is a competitive alternative to rail and road transport [8]. It is a safe, quite noiseless mode and with low infrastructure costs. Six classes (sizes) of vessels operate in IWT, class 6 of a cargo capacity up to 350 TEUs, class 5 of a capacity up to 200 TEUs, class 4 of a capacity of up to 50 TEUs, class 3, 2 and 1 of a capacity up to 30, 20 and 10 TEUs respectively [4]. There are different modes of exploitation/operation, namely A1, A2 and B that refer to the maximum number of hours allowed for sailing per day, being up to 14, 18 and 24 h a day [15]. The mode of exploitation and the type of equipment of vessels affect the number of crew members on board [1, 16]. A resting period is required for the crew members on board, which differs based on the mode of exploitation [16]. In the VT, the crew on board can rest while the VT is sailing because the crew members on board the FVs do not have navigational tasks. The vessels operate as liner service providers, i.e. sailing regularly based on a schedule, or as tramp service providers, i.e. not sailing regularly but based on demand.
The six classes of vessels differ not only for the number of containers that can transport, but also for the minimum required crew members on board, the sailing regimes and their dimensions (L: Length) [4, 16].
Sea-river transport is a branch of the IWT that refers to transport via the rivers and sea, and thus the vessels that are used for this waterborne mode of transport can navigate in both rivers and the sea (to a restricted extent) [5]. SSS is a branch of the maritime transport that refers to the transport of goods over relatively short distances, compared to the intercontinental cross-ocean deep sea shipping [9].
The research of the present paper examines from a business-economic and societal perspective whether it is interesting to invest in and use the VT instead of sailing with a conventional vessel. The transport model developed by van Hassel et al. [17] is used for answering the former research question. For answering the latter research question, the external cost savings are calculated, taking into consideration the expected modal shift from road (and potentially rail) to IWT. The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 describes the methodological approach, data and case study that are used. Section 3 presents the scenarios used. Section 4 shows the results and discussion and section 5 formulates the conclusions.