Maritime Transport System: Introduction

1. Introduction

In this section, you will learn more about the maritime transport system. You will get to know the activities that drive this system and the goods that are transported on waterways. You will then be introduced to the vessels used for transportation. In addition, the infrastructure of the waterways and its port facilities will be explained. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of maritime transport will be highlighted.

Mindmap — Maritime transport system model von Prof. Dr.-Ing. Heike Flämig, Dorothee Schielein (CC BY-SA)

Maritime transport is often responsible for the main carriage of goods and therefore for the long distance transport and is a part of a multimodal transport chain.
Multimodal transport describes the carriage of goods by two or more modes of transport.
Is the movement of goods in one and the same loading unit, e.g. container, or a vehicle by successive modes of transport without handling of the goods themselves when changing modes, it is called intermodal transport.
Combined transport is an intermodal transport where the major part of the European journey is by rail, inland waterways or sea and any initial and/or final legs carried out by road are as short as possible.

The figure "Maritime transport" shows the leg of the maritime transport and the two ports with their hinterlands.

Maritime transport von Prof. Dr.-Ing. Heike Flämig, Dr. Axel Schönknecht (CC BY-SA)

In order to overcome the long distance between two regions, maritime transport is used. As you can see in the figure above, maritime transport connects two ports and their hinterlands. In the hinterland, procurement, distribution and production of goods take place.

The different factories, warehouses or terminals in the hinterland transport their export goods to the port or pick up their import goods from the port.

On the next page, the activities of the maritime transport system are presented to you.

Literature
Flämig, H., Sjöstedt, L., Hertel, C. (2002): Multimodal Transport: An Integrated Element for Last-Mile-Solutions? Proceedings, part 1; International Congress on Freight Transport Automation and Multimodality: Organisational and Technological Innovations. Delft, 23 & 24 May 2002. (modification of Sjöstedt 1996)

Schönknecht, Axel (2009): Maritime Containerlogistik. Leistungsvergleich von Containerschiffen in intermodalen Transportketten. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg (VDI-Buch).