The Port of Rotterdam has reached agreement on the location and construction of an intermodal terminal that will transfer hundreds of thousands of containers each year.
The Port of Rotterdam has reached agreement on the location and construction of an intermodal terminal that will transfer hundreds of thousands of containers each year from trucks traveling on congested highways circling Europe"s top box hub onto barges.
A so-called container Transferium located in Alblasserdam, a town east of Rotterdam, is scheduled to open by the end of 2011 and will be switching around 200,000 TEUs a year from trucks to barges for the final 32-mile journey to the port"s container terminals.
This will reduce the number of trucks on the A15 highway leading to the port by approximately 10 percent.
The port authority has signed a founding agreement with the Dutch ministry of transport for the construction and operation of the terminal, which will cost around $55 million.
The port authority said the final destination of the majority of boxes will not be far from the terminal, thus allowing barge operators to quote competitive transit times and freight rates compared to trucks.
Leading ocean carriers including Maersk, APL, Evergreen and MOL, and terminal operators APM Terminals, ECT and Rotterdam World Gateway have signed letters endorsing the concept of the Transferium.
?The Transferium fits into the policy of the Dutch government and the Port of Rotterdam to promote transport by rail and water, and to shift containers from road to other modes of transport, in order to diminish the number of trucks on the road,? the port authority said.
Rotterdam, which handled a record 10.8 million TEUs in 2008 and is adding an additional 8.5 million TEUS of capacity, wants to increase barges' share of traffic to 45 percent in 2035 from around 30 percent currently.
Rails' share is set to increase to 20 percent from 11 percent, while trucking will fall to 35 percent from its current 60 percent.
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