| Nowadays, in Europe more and more capacity restraints in road and railway infrastructure occur, and road transport becomes more expensive. This results in negative consequences for European economy. For that reason, it has to be examined whether the integration of inland waterway shipping in continental intermodal transport chains could lead to some economic and logistical advantages compared to the current system for the companies concerned. At least, inland waterway shipping proved that it could handle containerised transport volumes coming from or leaving for overseas reliable and efficiently. Such economically motivated thoughts are supported by political efforts to switch parts of the traffic from road to alternative transport modes (rail, inland waterway, short sea) to ease road congestion and to achieve ecological advantages as well. The aim of the project is to investigate which requirements would have to be fulfilled to build up and establish such waterborne continental combined transport chains and, in particular, which measures could provide an adequate efficient and market-oriented integration of inland waterway shipping into the continental transport chains. Starting-points can be derived from different fields of activity: Interaction of technical components, transport infrastructure, organisational and institutional aspects, suitable marketing strategies, integration into more sophisticated logistical solutions, transport-related information flow, political promotion measures, safety and security etc. Because of the many actors involved who often have different interests, one challenge will be not to look at those measures one by one, but as a whole. This means that a holistic approach will be followed. This leads to a consistent set of requirements. |
