Selected Maps and Diagrams

Short Sea Shipping can be used both for domestic and international traffic or transshipment. Identification of various activities and respective costs in the process, as illustrated above, is critical for assessing the short-sea service viability and comparing it to land-based transport.

Ship / Gang Time Chart illustrates the ship handling process at a container terminal. It is is a usefully tool for defining and measuring the various ship's and gang's (crane's) activities and respective times. It is also the basis for devising meaningful performance indicators. The chart was instrumental in defining the performance indicators in the Ports of Seattle, WA, USA; Cartagena, Colombia; and Tema, Ghana. It was also employed in creating a national regulatory system to monitor the performance of all the Colombian ports and in the Louisiana Statewide Intermodal Plan, USA.

The distribution of Berth Productivity as a function of the number of moves per call and ship size was the key input for the queuing simulation model developed for assessing the capacity of the container terminal in San Antonio, Chile. The mathematical productivity function used in the simulation, the thin red line in the chart, captures very well the actual productivity, the thin blue line. The thick blue line, based on regression, represents the basic trend. The simulation model allows assessing the impact on terminal capacity of various future trends such as changes in ship's arrival pattern, ship's size, handling productivity and others.

Container terminals usually consist of 3 major components: berth, yard and gate. The most restrictive component, the "bottle-neck", usually determines the entire terminal's capacity. Hence, increasing terminal capacity requires identifying the most restricting component and relieving it. This chart, taken from an analysis conducted for the National Science Foundations, lists optional measures to do so. In the US, the most restrictive is usually the yard. A simple, non-structural measure to increase yard capacity is through appropriate pricing system as emphasized in this chart.

Port cost is a common concern for port authorities, chambers of commerce and governments. Charge-Flow diagram is an analytical tool for examining the total cost (charges) and its various components in a port system consisting of multiple operators and complex intra-operator charges. The tool was employed in many port-cost assessments, including a cost comparison among 20 Latin and North American ports.

Assessing the feasibility of green-field port, such a new transshipment hub in Haiti, requires the examination of many variables and specifying complex scenarios and conditions. The special financial model was developed was this purpose was equipped with a series of draw-down menus and macro-driven buttons for each of the main variables, allowing instant sensitivity testing. The summary worksheet of this model is presented above.

The proposed container terminal (lower portion) is intended to augment the existing one, providing a deeper and longer berthage and much larger yard. The new terminal may delay for several years the need to developed a new harbor outside the present one, saving Georgia several hundred million dollars.

CPIB is a new container terminal in Buenaventura, currently under construction, characterized by a pile-mounted container yard. The high cost of the yard resulted in a relatively small footprint and a dense storage. Assessing terminal capacity was a critical part of the due diligence study conducted for a bank consortium.

Embraport is a green-field container terminal in Santos, based on a concept emerging during a study of a much smaller bulk terminal at the same location. The proposed terminal, with 1,100-m berth, 50 ha and 10 STSs, is expected to have capacity of 2.1 million TEUs.

The New Busan Terminal, South Korea, considered as alternative to further expansion of Busan, involves the creation of a new harbor and massive reclamation and dredging. Some of this expansion would not be necessary following the development of a new, outer-harbor terminal in Inchon, which is the natural gateway for Seoul the main origin/destination point of South Korea's traffic.

All-Rail automated terminal is a critical component of an "express" intermodal route for Asian import to the US. This envisioned route is based on a combination of dedicated pure-rail shipping services and Pacific Northwest pure-rail ports.

Defining and understanding the various options for the ship-to-rail intermodal transfer is essential for planning of US ports, most of which are heavily involved in handling container destined to remote hinterland. This chart, developed for the POrt of Seattle, WA, differentiates amongst the various options according to the distance from the dock (marine terminal gate) and traffic mix handled,

The future global service pattern system could be transformed by an emerging bi-directional Equatorial-Round-The-World (ERTW) service pattern, with Pure Transshipment Ports (PTP) at its intersection points of the ERTW with North/South services. Some elements of this visionary "global grid" are already in operations.

The "L" shaped service pattern is currently the dominant service pattern of the West Coast South America / Asia trade lane, coupling the trades between Asia and the West Coasts of Central and South America and the Intra-America trade. Following new port projects on the Americas side, this pattern may be "de-coupled" into direct Transpacific services and a North/South services (see below). Assessing trends in service patterns was critical in the planning studies of Mexican Pacific Coast ports; Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala; Puerto Callao, Peru; Santos, Brazil; Tema, Ghana and others.

Following the expansion of the Panama Canal and the development of Panama hub ports, the entire shipping system in the region may be transformed. The emerging system will be based on intersection of East/West and North/South services in a "radiating" fashion, similar to that common in air services. The North/South service along the Pacific Coasts of the Americas could handle both the North/East trade and feedering the Asian and Atlantic trades.

Two alternative layouts were defined for the proposed San Antonio Outer Harbor, a Minimum Layout, geared to Post Panamax II ships of 8,000 TEUs and 14.5 m draft and a Maximum Layout, geared to Post Panamax II ships of 15,000 TEUs with 16.5 m draft. Each layout had an initial phase and a fully developed phase. The Maximum Built Out layout has 4.1 km of berthage and 230 ha, with capacity of about 10 million TEUs -- sufficient for the foreseeable future of Central Chile.

The development plan for Central Chile ports (San Antonio and Valparaiso) involves two demand (forecast) scenarios and two supply (capacity) scenario. The demand scenarios involves different growth rates; the supply scenarios are based on different facilities development plans, one supported by the regional port authorities and the other developed by us.

Estimating the diversion level of the Asia / USEC traffic from the water / rail or Intermodal (IM) to All Water through-Panama route was the most challenging task in the feasibility study for the Canal expansion project. Our methodology was based on an innovative route allocation model based on the Premium-per-Day-Saved as its main explanatory variable. The specification of the Logit function employed in this model was based on historical data on market share of each route, along with interviews with shippers.

Assessing the viability of the Tehuntepec Land Bridge in Mexico's isthmus had much similarity to that of the Panama Canal (above), except that in this case there are more contenders, among them other Mexican ports as well as intermodal routes through US Pacific Coast and the All-Water route.

Bocas de Cenezia is a new coal export terminal on the mouth of Magdalena River in Colombia. The main advantage of this terminal is the barge connection to far away mines. The feasibility study of this terminal involved defining alternative routings between hinterland mines and marine terminals, identifying the overall mine-to-ship costs and, using a route allocation model, developing demand scenarios.

A convenient way to categorize containerships is by referring to their dimensions, especially their width (beam) as related to the Panama Canal exiting and proposed locks. The present locks can accommodate Panamax ships with 13 raws of containers stacked across the deck. A Post Panamax I has 14 -15 raws; a Post-Panamax II 16 - 18 and a Post-Panamax III 19 and over.