The European Commission has commissioned the Internalisation Measures and Policies for All external Cost of Transport (IMPACT) study in order to summarise the existing scientific and practitioner's knowledge. The central aim of the study is to provide a comprehensive overview of approaches for estimation and internalisation of external cost and to recommend a set of methods and default values for estimating external costs when conceiving and implementing transport pricing policy and schemes. The study also provides technical support to the commission services to carry out an impact assessment of strategies to internalise transport external costs.

Handbook on estimation of external cost in the transport sector: produced within the study Internalisation Measures and Policies for All external Cost of Transport (IMPACT)

Recent trends in production such as global sourcing, just-in-time deliveries and fragmented production chains have determined clear patterns in relation to growth in demand for freight transport. Although road transport has adapted better to the needs of this modern economy, congestion threatens to overwhelm overland carriage and limit economic growth. The transportation industry faces the challenge of developing an efficient and effective complement to the existing road system. One possible strategy is to revitalize coastal shipping such as Short-Sea Shipping (SSS). The objective of this article is to carry out a literature review and show how SSS can alleviate traffic congestion and enhance economic development by maintaining freight flow efficiency. Because ship transport offers higher fuel economy and lower emissions of harmful pollutants, SSS is considered to be one of the most sustainable and economically competitive modes of transport.

Short-sea shipping: An analysis of its determinants

Barriers to improving energy efficiency in short sea shipping: an action research case study

The continuing growth of international container trade has created capacity problems at major US ports, and the truck-based freight transportation has caused a deterioration of traffic congestion on important US transportation corridors. Using inland and coastal waterways, short sea shipping (SSS) can provide an improvement to these problems. Furthermore, SSS offers many additional benefits for the environment, the economy and society as a whole. Both the US Department of Transportation and the European Commission actively support SSS as an alternative, environmentally friendly mode of transportation. However, there are obstacles, administrative barriers and challenges that should be addressed. Several successful operations on both sides of the Atlantic make a strong case in favour of SSS. SSS can develop customized and technologically advanced solutions that will further integrate it into the intermodal transportation chain and will improve its image among shippers as a mode that can provide reliable doo...

A survey of short sea shipping and its prospects in the USA

Much has been written and spoken about short sea shipping within the European Union (EU) as a means of shifting goods from road to sea and of achieving a sustainable economic development. However, this shift is far from being a general reality, despite the few individual, and success stories that have taken place and the EUROSTAT data suggest that the overall effort has contributed very little towards attaining this desired shift. In the light of this, research was conducted to discover how to put short sea shipping on a more competitive level within European multimodal logistics supply chains. This paper aims at identifying service attributes of short sea shipping operations within multimodal transport chains by means of a questionnaire and, for that, examines the short sea shipping environment and contemporary European logistics trends. The analysis is based on empirical research, involving logistics operators, shippers’ associations and intermodal rail operators, and allows an evaluation (based on stat...

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Papers

Strengths and weaknesses of short sea shipping