Kristina Anzeljc Postgradute student at Faculty of Maritime Studies and Transport

Transcription

1 Kristina Anzeljc Postgradute student at Faculty of Maritime Studies and Transport ABSTRACT In the last few decades we could see the higher level of growth in the rail-road transport all over Europe. Because of the increase in flow of goods a need for the building of terminals also grew. Terminals are the complexes used for storage, handling of goods, unloading, and transport of cargo. With their help it is also possible to perform integrated logistic services. In comparison with classic systems of transport, the diversity of the tasks of land-based terminals, dictates the design of their development process, that is suppose to improve the global circulation of goods between production and consumption. The need for rational transport demands establishment of the basic criteria for locating and construction of container terminals, as the basic institutions of combined and multimodal transport system. The introduction of pallets, containers and subsequently rolling motorway system of integrated transport has enabled a drastic reduction in the number of individual packages, cargo units and shipments. It is desirable to develop terminals with stable trade flows. This article deals with the research of technical, economic and logistical characteristics of land-based terminals. It includes a description of some essential parameters that influence the operation ability of those terminals, like spatial arrangement, activities, technical characteristics, transporter machinery, devices, tracks, vehicles and flow of goods. The article examines three land-based terminals; Ljubljana terminal, Verona terminal and Graz terminal. 1 INTRODUCTION Land-based terminals are the intersections of traffic ways and represent one of the most important parts of infrastructure. They allow a quality implementation of combined transport, together with road and rail connections, appropriate equipment, transport means for transporting containers and flawless organization. Economic boom of combined transport in Slovenia started forty years ago on the rail-roads. The railway was the only one at that time to offer this transport service and was at the same time able to ensure the regular transport of goods in containers. Slovenian railway stays a very important factor in combines transport until nowadays. It conveys about 20 % of load, which is 3,8 million tons per year. One third of this load is transported in containers and one third by other services of combined transport. Containers for the transportation of load began to develop in year Most of the inland container terminals are built on the crossroads of roads and railways with strong gravitational background. This is why the most of the land-based terminals are built as the combination of rail and road terminals. For well-functioning of inland container terminal there has to be enough of manoeuvring area as well as the rail tracks needed for the huckepack or integral rail-road transport. The structure of land-based terminals depends on the type of the terminal, its location, and gravitational background, flow of goods, the size and type of the different traffic branches that interweave at the terminal. Rail terminals are most commonly based on the main rail intersections, where there is a high concentration and distribution of trade flows and their goods. For the successful functioning of their technology and organization of work, there are some essential elements like: bridge cranes for handling containers, railway tracks for container rails, different container cranes in the storages and road traffic routes. Warehouses for containers and smaller workshops for their repairmen are also desired. 1

2 2 DESCRIPTION OF LAND-BASED TERMINALS Land-based terminals are treated in a special prospect, with the view to success that can be reached by advanced technology and avant-garde operations by the inclusion of relevant criteria like costs, availability and reliability. Inland container terminals offer space, equipment and operational environment for the transfer of intermodal transport units between different transport models. A terminal like that has a wide range of installations. In this range of terminals are also so called simple terminals, that offer a transfer among two or three models of transport; but also more sophisticated centres, which offer different services, like storage, maintenance, repair services, etc. Very common case of a course of action is when a train arrives to the transhipment line and is immediately served (loaded or unloaded) and stays there until the departure. This is the simplest case of action and enables almost exclusive direct transhipment among wagon and truck, without the storage on the floor in between. The sequence of transhipment is dictated by the arrival to the terminal. The actual cases are in general much more demanding than this. If the number of incoming wagons is higher than the length of the railways, the train must be divided between two or even more tracks. When the number of incoming trains (or their parts) exceeds the capacity of transhipment tracks, some of the trains must be moved from those tracks in a short time after being loaded or unloaded, this being the only way of releasing the space for the new coming trains. This procedure requires the first wave of wagons being totally unloaded to the trucks or safety lines. Empty wagons are than moved to the storage panels so the next wave of the wagons can be moved to transhipment tracks. After this the empty wagons are compounded back together and now form the outgoing trains. After the uploading, all the necessary inspections and testing of breaks the train is ready to leave. Typical land-based terminal is a very complex system where different parameters are strongly related. Parameters like terminal location in relation to the spatial allocation of production and spatial centres, existence of opposing terminals, access to the main rail and road networks, etc. all have a very strong influence on the volume of the load in ITU (International Transport Unit) mixed service. The other parameters, like the cost and the availability of the area are set by the planner of the terminal and play a crucial role that is set by the terminals territory and its productivity. 2.1 Ljubljana land-based terminal Ljubljana land-based terminal is a provider of integrated intermodal transport in Slovenia, as well as outside of its boarders. With a help of modern logistic centres in Ljubljana, Maribor, Celje and Koper they connect trade flows from the north-western and middle Europe to south-eastern Europe all the way to Turkey. Both transport ways run along the V. and X. pan-european transport corridor, which cross each other in Ljubljana. They provide to their users integral and complete logistic services in the combined traffic (transport of containers, convertible containers, trucks). They also assure the introduction of a new trail connections and transport possibilities. For this end they provide all the different logistic services as professional as possible and they keep in mind the aim to transport the load in time with the highest quality and safety. They are developing capabilities that rank them among the most important regional indicators of logistic services on V. and X. trans-european transport corridor passing Slovenia. The fifth corridor is passing from the southwest of Europe (Italy and Slovenia) to northeast (Ukraine). The main way of the corridor number V. connects Venice and Trieste (Italy) throughout Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Budapest (Hungary) with Lvov and Kiev (Ukraine). Tenth pan-european corridor runs from the 2

3 northwest of Europe (Salzburg in Austria) through Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade and Skopje to the southeast in Solun (Greece). The majority of the load in Slovenian railways is meant for import, but if we sum up both transits we can notice that together they represent almost half of all the transport on railways. After the year 2000 the share of transit transport of load on railways even increased, from 45 % to 47 %. Transit of goods by road represented in year 1990 less than half of the sum of both transits by railways. Because of the rising of road transport the rail transport is loosing its significance and it only represents ⅓ of the transit of goods by roads after year At the inland terminal in Ljubljana they assure to their clients the reliability, speed, safety and accuracy of the transport, real-flow of information, supported by modern information system, guaranteed and competitive timing of transport, storage of goods, possibility of delivery of goods to the final consumer. The transport of load from door to door, including the entire logistic, adequate number of wagons for transportation of different goods, control, monitoring and high quality of transportation and simple management. Ljubljana land-based terminal is covering the area of m 2 that is completely surrounded by wire fence. The access to the Ljubljana container inland terminal for the road vehicles is through the main gates from Letališka cesta and through the entrance for intervention vehicles (fire fighters, police, and ambulance). Intervention entrance is equipped with smaller doors for the entrance to Ljubljana land-based terminal for drivers of piggy-back vehicles and for the staff of Ljubljana-Moste railway station. The area of Ljubljana inland terminal is divided to: Main paved deposit ITU (Intermodal Transport Units) that is further divided to 5 horizontal lines (A, B, C, D and E) and 70 fields (field = TEU) in length. Containers are being deposited by three in height; Deposit for the damaged ITU that is divided into 2 horizontal lines (H and I) and 25 fields in length. Containers are being deposited by three in height; Side deposit 2 ITU that is divided into 2 x 2 horizontal lines (H1 and H2) and 25 fields in length. Containers are being deposited by two in height; North paved avenue that is being used for storage and customs examinations of personal cars (it is being hired by Inerteuropa d.d.); Parking space for the trucks of piggy-back transport; Parking space for own tracks and trailers; The rest of the area is being used for the administration building, assembly hangar (that is owned by Fersped d.d.), workshop and manipulative area. Ljubljana land-based terminal is the intermediate commercial station on the single-track electrified railway Ljubljana: Zalog-Ljubljana (track 4). It is linked with the station Ljubljana- Moste through the federal track number 304 a and is part of Section for Combined Transport Ljubljana. Its main activity is performed under the combined transport with emphasis on rail transport. It is open for reception and sending off of the wagon boxes, loaded with ITU. Activities on the Ljubljana land-based terminal and services that are being offered to their clients are: Organization of combines transport in domestic and international traffic; Performance of ITU transport by rail and road vehicles; Reloading and storage of filled and empty ITU; Examination and repair of ITU; Consolidation of goods in ITU (gathering, filling, emptying and reloading); Storage of Frigo containers (16 electric plugs); Implementation of monitored combines rail transport in cooperation with tour services Adria Kombi d.o.o.; 3

4 Performance of custom formalities for their users; Distribution of transit declaration; Organization of ITU customs examination; Work and tasks arising from the local Agentura Intercontainer (paper work concerning duty and transfer notes, providing information, etc). Dangerous cargo loaded in ITU units is being deposited on the main repository on a specified location (positions A, B, C from number 14 to 18). They are properly marked with prescribed orange colour and inscription dangerous cargo. Land-based Ljubljana terminal has available the following elementary assets, with which they conduct their business; gantry crane Mostovna with carrying capacity of 37 t; two container manipulators Kalmar with carrying capacity of 40 t; forklift truck Litostroj with carrying capacity of 3 t and the other with carrying capacity of 12 t; two battery forklift trucks Indos with carrying capacity of 2-3 t; 5 haulers Iveco Stralis ; 2 haulers Iveco Eurotech, 7 semitrailers Krone & Schwarzmüller ; and rail tracks number 301, 302, 303 and 304 with the total length of 2400 meters. Ljubljana container terminal is opened for reception and dispatch of goods in road and rail transport. It is essentially the extension of rail transport since it is its function to get the goods to their users in the shortest possible transport by road, or the so-called function of delivery to the home user. Some of the important users of Ljubljana terminal are: Mearsk Adria d.o.o., Adria Kombi d.o.o. and other k.d., Intercontainer-Interfrigo SC, Jadroagent International d.o.o., Navis d.o.o., Schenker d.d., Faros Logistika d.o.o., CMA-SGM d.o.o., Fersped d.d., etc. Chart 1: Main rail-road destinations of Ljubljana land-based terminal Source; mr. Robert Gaber 2.2 Verona land-based terminal Verona land-based terminal is situated on the crossroads of two important European corridors - corridors V. (Lisbon Lyon Trieste Kiev) and corridor I. (Berlin Brener Verona Napoli). The area called Marangona, where the terminal is located, is situated S-E from Verona. It is located along the highway Milano-Venice (A4), and next to railway Bologna-Verona and Verona-Manuta. Terminal has the name Interporto Quadrante Europa and is highly specialized city of goods, ruled by a high degree of integrated logistics systems and is equipped with fully effective telecommunication network over the entire area. There are, railway area, office area, customs administration, freight forwarder, Volkswagen Group Italia SpA, service centre, park 4

5 Quadrante Europa, airport terminal and centre for agriculture and food are all located on the terminal. Its strategic area is directly linked to the railway station, motorway system and other areas like Valerio Catullo Airport and Verona Fair. The plan of the area is based on the existing principles of designing in environmental, economic and social sector. There are also some headquarters of the companies that work in the sector of high technology, technology research, environmental compatibility and stability of the production cycle. In year 1977 the owner, consortium ZAI, established the Intermodal centre, thanks to which it is now possible to exchange goods by rail and road. The area of intermodal terminal covers around m 2 of the entire surface. Terminal of combined transport is being managed by the company Cemat SpA and other carriers, that offer all services, needed to carry out combined rail and road transport. Terminal operates 24 hours per day without any interruptions on the surface of square meters. There are around 12 kilometres of railways built in the terminal. Container terminal consists of 12 tracks that are about 650 metres long. On the tracks are 4 large bridge cranes, built in the range of 32 metres. There are two maintenance services also operating on the terminal. Intermodal transport flows that occur on the Verona landbased terminal include the supply of goods from foreign countries as well as from the inside of the country. Actual arrivals and departures on the terminal include; 14 pairs of particular trains per day, for transportation of swap bodies, containers and semitrailers, which connect terminal with some of the most important industrial bases, like Germany, Benelux, Denmark, Sweden, etc. One pair of particular trains per day is meant for the transportation of goods in Eastern Europe. They handle of rail wagons per year. Terminal is supported with stand by station, which area covers m 2 and has 18 tracks. It is also serviced for 6 railway lines with 40 tonnes cranes. Together with bridge cranes they enable significant increase of combined rail-road transport. Rail-road connection has 15 rail lines. Every one of them is 600 metres long and is meant for reception and delivery of wagons. All of them are located just before the terminal and next to it. Measured in length those have metres that connect the entire area of Freight Village. The terminal also includes the area of m 2 that enables the expansion of combined transport. Verona land-based terminal is connected with the main railway station from the Verona Freight Village. The direct connection with the rail Brenner is also being used. Inland transport takes place on the surface of m 2, which consists of three rail lines and one of each is 550 metres long. There are cranes and two intermodal cranes in built on the lines. In average there are about 20 trains on the terminal per week. The terminal is divided into two sectors on the area of m 2. The sectors are meant for storage and flow of swap bodies and containers. It is equipped with five tracks, which length measure 3 kilometres, four lanes for trucks and storage area that cover m 2 and also has three modern fully rotating cranes. Customs administration is also based within the Verona inland terminal and covers the area of about m 2. In the chart below we can see the export lines of rail-road transport of goods to foreign countries that cooperate with Verona land-based terminal. 5

6 2.3 Graz land-based terminal Chart 2: Main rail-road destinations of Verona land-based terminal Source; Graz land-based terminal is situated in the biggest commercial region in south Austria. It is located near the highways A9 (Pyhrnautobahn), A2 (Südautobahn), 5 kilomtres from the Graz-Thalerhof airport and 12 kilometres from the city of Graz. It is 50 kilometres away from Maribor and 100 kilometres form Szombathely. The surface of inland terminal is m 2 and has the connections with other regions south Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, west Hungary and Italy. Railway connections go through the X. corridor (Graz Maribor Zagreb). The tenth multmodal pan-european corridor runs from northwest (Slazburg in Austria) through Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade and Skopje to Solun (Greece) in southeast. Beside the main line the tenth corridor also has four sections. One of them runs from Graz to Maribor and Zagreb, the other runs form Budapest to Belgrade, the third one from Niš to Sofia and extendts to Istambul with corridor number V. The fourth section runs from Veles (Macedonia) through Florine (Greece) to Igoumenitsa (Greece). The terminal in Graz is managed by the company Cargo Center Graz Betriebsgesellschaft m.b. H&Co. Like in the majority of cases, the most important factors at choosing the location at Graz inland terminal are; accessibility, long-term development perspective, different activities and infrastructural conditions. Companies that operate at the Graz container terminal and those that colonized its area, appriciate this advantages. Six years after the start of one of the most modern terminals for the combines transport in Austria, this became a very important location. In this time leading logistic companies moved to the area and were followed by large and established industrial as well as commercial companies. This companies named themselves Koralmbahn and managed to achieve even greater importance of the location through fast connectins to greek and north italian regions. Graz land-based container terminal became a transport and economic hub with the extension of the highway and southern railway. The terminal has four railway lines in the length of 750 metres. Above them are two gantry cranes. Terminal employs about 550 people, 650 truck transfers being treated per day and 370 tonnes of load being transshiped per day. Beside bridge cranes they also use some other devices for reloading the general loads and RO-RO ramps for trucks that load the wagoons. Through this terminal 20, 30, 40 and 45 TEU containers. The Graz terminal offers around m 2 of office space. It is also possible to rent some 100 parking spaces for trucks at the terminal, for long term or on monthly basis. Terminal receive about 300 trucks and trains per day. They offer the possibility to repair the containers and there is the gas station for trucks. We can also find the Customs administration within the terminal. Some of the more important parters they work with are: Hofer, Rail Cargo Austria, Logwin, Fresenius Kabi, 6

7 Leykam-Alpina and many others. The terminal has a highly developed logistic improvements for individual customers, industry and fields of work. It also tries to establish new partnership and regional logistic concepts. Chart 3: Main rail-road destinations of Graz land-based terminal Source; mrs. Gertrude Leitner and mr. Joachim Herler 3 COMPARSION OF THREE TERMINALS From a comparative Table 1.: land-based terminals Ljubljana, Verona and Graz; we can see that the Verona terminal is much larger than the other two by its surface ( m 2 ), which is conditioned by the fact that at this terminal far more goods are being transshipped through year than on the other two terminals, ( t, compared to t and t at a terminal of Ljubljana and Graz respectively). Customs administration is located on all three terminals. Table 1: Comparion of terminals Source; Kristina Anzeljc, Februar 2011 Terminals LJUBLJANA VERONA GRAZ CORRIDOR V. in X. V. in I. X. SURFACE m m m 2 CUSTOMS ADMINISTRATION YES YES YES DEVICES ON TERMINALS gantry crane, 2 container manipulators 4 x large bridge cranes, 6 x 40 tonnes cranes 2 x gantry cranes, Ro-Ro ramps, 2 x 45 t forklift trucks LENGHT OF TRACKS m m m TRANSSHIPMENT OF GOODS IN TONNES INTERMODAL TRANSPORT Ljubljana land-based terminal is intended to effectively serve and direct the central Slovenian industry and its service area. The condition of Slovenian railway infrastructure that is affected by lack of means and insufficient investment, it s reducing reach of Ljubljana terminal. The bad condition of infrastructure is evident form many mistakes and damage made on tracks, rail network, devices, rail switches as well as from introduced restrictions of speed. All those imperfections should be serviced immediately. Insufficient maintenance, slow process of modernizing of the railway system and increased transport, affect the quality of services. Due to lack of permissible axle loads, the individual loads are already focused on the bypass route past Slovenia, which means the loss of cargo for Ljubljana terminal. The opportunity of Ljubljana land-based terminal is to modernize the railway infrastructure and 7

8 start to invest in new manipulative means that are needed for undisturbed functioning of the terminal, which should also be expanded in the future. Slovenian land-based terminal has the advantage of its geographical position in the network of road and rail connection, therefore I think that with some more investments in this infrastructure and some more emphasis on the railway transport, the terminal could be expanded. With this there would also come the increase of quantity of transhipment of load and the rest of activities at the terminal. Terminals in Graz and Verona don t have the advantage of their geographical location like Ljubljana, but they do have the higher number of manipulative and transfer assets as well as higher number of rail tracks, that are all also more modern. The advantage of Verona landbased terminal is their storage for containers and service for mending and cleaning of containers. As it is evident from Table 1., the Verona land-based terminal also tranships very high number of load per year. The advantages of terminal in Graz are very similar to one in Verona. It does have one more advantage that is the direct connection to highway, which further enables the possibilities of transfers. I believe that terminals in Verona and Graz will function as well as they do, if they will continue to invest in rail and road infrastructure, new technologies and technological means. 4 CONCLUSION Before the construction of land-based terminals, many europeans were convinced that combined transport doesn t have any future. Combined transport accounted for the marginal percentage of the whole and its growth was lower than today. There was no political initiatives for the promotion of combined transport, nor there was a will for that at the side of the operators. This explaines the low level of investiton in land-based terminals and lack of will to ensure the terminals with efficient equipment and good location. Organization of container transport it is far from easy task. It demands good knowledge of legislation, customs and insurance regulation. Infamiliarity of this fields can lead to a great financial costs and losses. Construction of land-based terminals brought reduction of transport costs and safer manipulation of higher number of homogenus bulky products. Delivery of the products itself became faster and more reliable, which means that business of land-based terminals became more reliable and predictable at the same time. To achieve optimum utilization of land-based terminals it is necessary to thoroughly update its infrastructure. For the lack of will and financial means, Slovenia decided for cheaper, progressive updating of railway infrastructure. We can see the consequences of this decidion in our neighbouring countries that are building bypass lines, which will lead to redirection of transport flows past Slovenia. Slovenia should focus on building of fast railway infrastructure, embedded into the network of european fast tracks. It should also modernize its tracks, rail-road switches and other devices being used on a daily basis. It should provide long-term competitivenss of rail and road networks and implement strategic development interests. Considering the whole line of projects on the field of infrastructure and mobile means that are being prepared it is necessary to set a list of priority works according to actual needs. There are new investitions needed at Ljubljana landbased terminal that must be well-thought in order to get the maximum investition and economic gains from the inputs. We must take into account that comparing to terminals in Verona and Graz we already missed and lost a lot. REFERENCES 1. Website: 2. Website: 8

9 3. Website: 4. Website: 5. Annual Report Rail-road traffic of Graz, Annual Report Rail-road traffic of Slovenia, Annual brochure Interporto Quadrante Europa,