?INTEGRATION? ? the answer to road transport congestion in Europe

The Integration of transportation is considered the solution to the expected increase in freight traffic.

In its ongoing attempt to manage predicted increases in freight transport, the European Commission is taking steps to encourage the use of intermodal systems and containerisation. Integration of the different modes within the transport chain will mean improved flexibility, quality, and cost effectiveness and will stimulate competition between transporters instead of between transport modes.

One of the initiatives aimed at achieving this, is the EC funded ?Integration? (Integration of Sea Land Technologies for an Efficient Door to Door Intermodal Transport), and the results of the first 18 months research were presented last month. The main achievement is a new Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) to speed up loading and unloading operations of RoRo ships and terminal operations, with a 500 TEU/h handling capacity. Hand in hand is the design and development of new RoRo ships specifically designed for the AGV system.

The Intergration systems appear to give a practical and viable answer to the huge increase in transport demand for Europe (38% in the period 2000-2010 as stated by the EU Commission White Book on Transport) which cannot be addressed by road transport using current modal systems.

Key to the success of the system is the central computer control for system management. The AGV vehicles would respond to a central computer?s commands as to where they should go and what they should do. This level of control permits automatic tracking of every load in the system and is particularly efficient where high volumes are involved. To a degree, this system is already operating in Rotterdam and Hamburg using transponders to track AGVs.

Cargo handling

Integration deals with the transportation of general unitised cargo, containers and swap bodies. Pallet-wide containers and maritime swap bodies allow a more efficient handling of pallets compared to the traditional 8?6″-wide containers. Complying with the current requirements for cargo security, pallet-wide containers and swap bodies are considered to be the future intermodal transport cargo unit and are able to fully satisfy logistic requirements.

The proposed systems are characterised by very fast cargo loading/unloading operations of the ship, the highest capacity of which would include quay ramps and automated operations. Handling tools shift cargo on a horizontal plane with a minimum of vertical movements. Ships are of the RoRo type, designed to make the whole cycle of cargo handling and cargo lashing on board easy, fast and less expensive.

A full range of new RoRo and ROPAX vessels has been designed by the shipbuilders Fincantieri of Italy and Izar of Spain together with Italian building and propulsion research specialist Cetena. These three are part of the ?Integration? project formed by 24 companies and 13 institutions across Europe that aims to introduce AGVs at RoRo terminals. The ships are designed to satisfy a wide range of speeds from 10 to 55 knots, and cargo volumes from 80 to 1,300 TEUs bearing in mind the integration requirements for the ships in relation to a wide range of terminal facilities from the smallest and least well equipped to the largest fully automated ones. These new efficient designs are claimed to meet market demand and satisfy current and potential requirements for short-sea shipping (including feeder traffic) and the intermodal freight transport.

Efficiency gains

For example, the biggest RoRo ships, carrying 1,300 TEUs with a speed of 20 knots, are designed to compete with the traditional feeder boxships. The loading/unloading cycle for these vessels using a fully AGV automated RoRo terminal, equipped with an external fixed ramp, has been calculated at approximately six hours.

According to Carlo Camisetti, the Integration project Coordinator, this enables a single terminal to host up to four ships every 24 hours with a yearly handling flow of more than two million TEU.

This enormous freight flow is comparable to the entire container flow in 2003 of one of the larger Mediterranean ports such as Genoa (including VTE terminal) or Valencia.

Currently, the movement of two million TEU containers per year, would require a fleet of 25 container ships using traditional Lo-Lo container terminals. With the application of the ?Intergration? system, it is estimated that only 14 RORO ships would be needed with a significant reduction in the use of terminals.

All these estimated findings obviously need to be field-tested and, for this purpose, two AGVs prototypes built by TTS and Danaher Motion are almost ready and will be used to load and unload RoRo ships in the ports of Gothenburg, Genoa and Gioia Tauro starting this spring.

Feasibility

The feasibility of transhipment operations from a deep-sea boxship to a feeder vessel will be trialed at the Gioia Tauro Medcenter container terminal, using quay cranes to load and unload the container ship and AGVs to move the cargo from the crane to the RoRo ship.

This kind of system can also be applied to ROPAX vessels although the economics are different since it is strongly influenced by the flow of passengers and cars which is subject to seasonal variations in the payload mix. To enhance the ROPAX efficiency it is necessary to reduce the level of ?accompanied trucks? in favour of containers, swap bodies and ?unaccompanied trailers? equipped with trailer trestles to reduce the time spent lashing down trailers.

Obstacles

A number of obstacles still impede the further development of short-sea shipping. First, many commercial players still view it, wrongly, as an old-fashioned mode of transport. Second, full integration of short-sea shipping into door-to-door multi-modality remains to be accomplished.

Third, the complexity of documentary and administrative procedures is a fact that needs to be examined and tackled. Fourth, the efficiency of ports, port services and port-hinterland connections needs to be enhanced.

Only by the concerted effort of all EU member states, regional and local governments, industry and the Commission, will the advantages of short-sea shipping become a reality.

IPSI and INTEGRATION get integrated

At RoRo 2004 in Gothenburg, TTS Ships Equipment is to demonstrate the results of its involvement in the IPSI (Improved Port Ship Interface), in which the company has been a leading player since 1996. The original IPSI feasibility study, which was completed during 1999, has led to Integration, taking onboard all the lessons learnt from IPSI and integrating them into a ‘demonstration’ project to develop an economic door-to-door short-sea shipping service using the RoRo concept.

The outcome of IPSI was a new design of ro-ro trailer trestle with built-in cargo lashing system. The ?IPSI Trailer Trestles? offer both ship owner and port operators major advances in reducing vessel turnaround times, improved safety and important savings in the manpower requirements for handling RoRo cargoes. This new trestle was a major breakthrough because the manpower required for conventional lashing of trailers on a typical North Sea RoRo freight route is 32. By using the IPSI trailer trestle however, this figure is reduced to 10 as a result of the significant reduction in securing points and, in certain circumstance, even totally removed without compromising the safety of the cargo, crew or ship.

Another positive outcome from the IPSI project and within the ?Integration? project has been the development of the Automatically Guided Vehicle (AGV) for RoRo and LoLo terminal operations.

The effectiveness of IPSI depends on the use of AGVs. These units are steered by a laser guidance system into specially designed straight, kerbed cargo lanes on a vessel?s RoRo deck. The AGV loads a specially designed cassette which can carry up to four TEUs, or, alternatively, a trailer with a special trailer trestle. The cargo is secured to the kerbs with an automatic lashing system inside the cassette and trailer trestles, without the need for human intervention.

TTS Ships Equipment is currently building two 12.2m x 2.3m diesel-powered AGVs with navigation systems provided by Gothenburg-based specialist Danaher Motion, based on results from the IPSI project. Both AGVs are able to carry cassettes with a load of either four 20ft containers or two 40ft containers (approx. 80 tonnes maximum load). They are also able to operate on ramps with an inclination of 5°. The 12 tonne AGVs have a height of 750mm, a lifting distance of 300m, turning radius of 18m and a maximum speed of 20 km/h.

Tests are to be carried out during the RoRo exhibition scheduled for May 2004 in Gothenburg. Other trials will be carried out in Genoa and the Medcentre container terminal in Gioia Tauro to enable the evaluation of an efficient transhipment system for ro-ro feedering by AGVs. Tests will also be carried out on an AGV-based solution for transporting cargo from shore-side gantry cranes to storage areas.

However, the adaptation of a fully automated cargo securing system requires ships with absolutely straight lanes on the freight decks and straight cargo access via the bow, stern or both entry points. The IPSI project has designed a number of such vessels.