International Journal

on Marine Navigation

and Safety of Sea Transportation

Volume 5

Number 3

September 2011

311

1 INTRODUCTION

One of the main challenges identified by the Euro-

pean Commission White Paper on transport was to

address the imbalance in the development of the dif-

ferent modes of transport. Specific actions looking

to boost rail and maritime connections were foreseen

and included the establishment of the Marco Polo

programs. The demand for increased mobility and

increased flexibility and timeliness of delivery has

led to road transport becoming the dominant mode

of transport in the European Union. The growth in

road transport has had a significant impact on road

congestion, road safety, pollution and land use. In

view of this, a change from traditional unimodal to

multimodal transport is desirable. Maritime transport

is one of the least pollutant modes. Additionally, it

contributes to the reduction of traffic congestion, ac-

cidents and noise costs on European roadways. An-

other advantage of ships over trucks and trains is

that vessels consume less fuel as a result of the rela-

tively low speeds at which they travel. All these ad-

vantages justify support actions to intermodal chains

with marine sections including Short Sea Shipping

(SSS) as a way to reach more sustainable mobility

within Europe. The main benefit of Short Sea Ship-

ping lies in the possibility of combining the inherent

advantages provided by the involved modes, thus

reducing costs and increasing freight transport ca-

pacity over long distances.

Nevertheless, maritime society still regards mari-

time transport as a slow, inefficient mode since

shippers do not yet offer the best value for money.

This paper shows the development carried out to

create a simulator that compares freight transport by

only road chains and by multimodal (with SSS)

chains and comprises five sections. The introductory

section summarises the context of the paper. Section

two describes the actual scenario related on the state

of art of freight costs simulators. A brief description

of the methodology used in the development of the

costs simulator is explained in section three. The re-

sults obtained using costs simulator tool are shown

in the next section. Finally conclusions and further

research are drawn in section five.

2 FREIGHT COSTS STATE OF ART

The determination of cost functions and variables is

important in assessing the feasibility of a process.

Historically, the empirical estimation of port cost

functions started in the 60’s with Wanhill’s work.

The works by De Monie, Dowd and Lechines, Tal-

ley and Conforti proposed a cost analysis to appraise

port performance and output by calculations of sev-

eral indicators. Ametller Malfaz thesis describes the

development of cost and time evaluation under the

hypothesis of freight distribution based on popula-

tion density. Actual cost and time simulators an be

divided into two groups: the first one a few parame-

ters must be introduced to determine cost or time

without specifying the method used; the second one

calculates external costs based on theoretical studies

like Realise and Recordit projects.

Development of a Costs Simulator to Assess

New Maritime Trade Routes

F.X. Martínez de Osés, M. Castells i Sanabra & M. Rodríguez Nuevo

Nautical Science and Engineering Department, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya,

Barcelona, Spain

ABSTRACT: This paper is going to describe the design process of a simulator that assesses the costs of dif-

ferent means of transport. The evaluation not only will be done regarding the internal costs but also the exter-

nal costs that will be translated to environmental costs, based on existing databases. The paper shows the de-

velopment carried out to create this simulator and analyse all components of the logistical chain, i.e. port

operation costs, road haulage costs and maritime leg costs. The simulation results have been validated with

real data of actual maritime routes to check its reliability. As a conclusion, the costs simulator permits assess

costs of new maritime trade routes comparing them with road transport.

312

3 DEVELOPMENT OF THE COST SIMULATOR

This paper presents a simulator of internal and ex-

ternal costs which also allows updating data. In or-

der to design the simulation model, the behavior of

freight distribution systems must be known. Road

haulage, port operation and maritime leg must be

modeled to assign costs derived from each of the

parts or components of the logistic chain.

The calculation method of overall costs (in €)

have been calculated considering a single variable

(Gross Tonnage) for all transport modes.

Figure 1.Example of logarithmical ratio between fuel costs and

gross tonnage (GT). Source: Own

Time (in hours) spent by the modes of transport

to move freight between an origin and a destination

will strongly depend upon the physical and operation

speed of the modes employed. Calculations consider

European road transport regulations on driving times

and costs of road freight transport.

Data of truck internal costs will be obtained by

analyzing a set of model trucks specified by the

Ministry of Public Works and for vessels, Short Sea

Shipping Ro-Ro ships are ships employed in Medi-

terranean maritime routes.

All required data is computed by an engine gen-

erated by an Excel spreadsheet and a computer pro-

gram complied in Visual Basic, and then presented

in tables and graphs.

After we have introduced all required data, the

methodology used by de simulator can be summa-

rized by the following steps:

1 Choose data from the destination matrix and find

out whether there is a destination for the selected

route.

2 Choose data from the origin matrix and find out

whether there is an origin for the selected route.

3 Choose data from the maritime distance matrix.

4 Introduce ship occupancy rate (σ).

5 Introduce type of freight (σ).

6 Introduce the number of stops made by the ship in

each trip (ρ).

7 Introduce specific company profits as a payment

for ship services (β).

8 Print and display all solutions for the selected

ship (calculation of Short Sea Shipping and only

road transport costs and pollutant emission costs).

9 Choose the three best ships for the selected route

from the simulator’s database and provide their

particulars (ship’s name, year of building, length,

breath, tonnage, lane meters, power, speed and

number of platforms).

10 Perform routines under the established formula-

tion.

All data are interpreted by means of tables, charts

and mask designed for the presentation of simulator

data.

Figure 2. Example of the mask showing parameters to be se-

lected before the calculation process and results of external and

internal costs. Source: Own

4 PRELIMINARY RESULTS EXAMPLE FROM

THE COSTS SIMULATOR

Once we have designed the costs simulator, we have

analyzed routes between Spain and the Black Sea

region, considering the imminent entrance of candi-

date East and Middle European countries into the

European Union. Trade operations with all these

countries open the door to two big markets: Central

Asia and the Middle East. The number of volumes

exchanged between Spain and the Black Sea Region

shows and upward trend. The total volume of ex-

ports and imports between Spain and the Black Sea

region is approximately 3,941,806.1 and

24,898,406.1 tons, respectively, value that justifies

the management of a trade route between both re-

gions. The data were obtained from figures regard-

ing Spanish import and export operations with Bul-

garia, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey and

Ukraine, although the countries with the highest

number of exchanges with Spain are Greece, Tur-

key, Russia and Ukraine.

313

Costs ant times differences for all possible routes

between Spain and the Black Sea region have been

calculated considering multimodal and road

transport. Next tables show the results between dif-

ferent Spanish origins and Black Sea Area.

Figure 3: Costs and times differences between multimodal and

road transport from Spain to Black Sea region. Source: Own

After the most important exchanges have been se-

lected, Cost Competitiveness Index (CCI) and Time

Competitiveness Index (TCI) are calculated. If the

resulting value is more than one, then the Short Sea

Shipping alternative is more competitive in costs and

in time than the only road alternative.

Table 1: Example of Cost Competitiveness Index (CCI) and

Time Competitiveness Index (TCI) between Spain and Turkey

(Istanbul port). Source: own

___________________________________________________

TCI CCIa CCIb

___________________________________________________

Barcelona 1,828896 2,2809114 3,946985

Cádiz 1,643525 1,9559147 2,704304

Madrid 1,746747 2,1564750 3,306404

Murcia 1,848956 2,3061440 3,675953

Valencia 1,937316 2,4842342 4,365663

Vizcaya 1,491680 1,7688517 2,509041

Zaragoza 1,70757 2,0653322 3,175024

___________________________________________________

Next figure shows the results of Cost Competi-

tiveness Index of SSS versus only road transport be-

tween Spain and the Black Sea region routes:

Figure 4: Cost Competitiveness Index of SSS versus only road

transport between Barcelona and the Black Sea. Source: Own

From results obtained, we can state:

− The Time Competitiveness Index (TCI) deter-

mined that SSS routes between Spain and Geor-

gia and Spain and Ukraine are the most efficient

in terms of time.

− The Cost Competitiveness Index (CCIa) deter-

mined that SSS routes with the driver, truck and

trailer onboard the ship are more competitive in

terms of cost than the above case.

− The Cost Competitiveness Index (CCb) deter-

mined that SSS routes with only the trailer

onboard the ship are the most competitive in

terms of cost.

5 CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH

A design process of a simulator for the assessment

of internal and external costs of an only road chain

and an intermodal one has been designed. Costs

simulator is a fast tool to help customers decide on

the most convenient transportation mode for a spe-

cific trade link.

This model has been validated according to data

from actual commercial exchanges. This validation

analysis is quite successful and the simulator data

are very close to real prices. The difference between

the model data and real data do not exceed 10%.

In this paper we have studied the special case be-

tween Spain and the Black Sea Region but the tool

presented can assess new maritime trade route com-

paring with road transport.

A more in deep analysis should be carried out.

Data obtained can be used for further research, af-

fording prediction of emissions in the near future by

keeping in mind the traffic and fleet evolution and

the existing legislation and can also be used to check

price variations due to commercial reasons.

314

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