Question

Tema Container Terminal (TCT) plans to build a new container terminal. You have been contracted to determine the land area for the new terminal. Explain the factors you will consider and how these factors will affect the land area for the terminal.

Answer 1

The Factors for Consider while Constructing a Container Terminal

Ports are points of convergence between two geographical domains of freight circulation (sometimes passengers); the land and maritime domains. While the maritime domain can involve substantial geographical coverage related to global trade, the land domain is related to the port’s region and locality. The term port comes from the Latin portus, which means gate or gateway. Historically, ports emerged as safe harbors for fishing and those with convenient locations became trade hubs, many of which of free access and designed to protect trade. As such, they became nexus of urbanization with several becoming the first port cities playing an important role in the economic welfare of their regions. Today, many of the most important cities in the world owe their origin to their port location. The port is a multidimensional entity at start anchored within geography, but also dependent on its operations, governance structure and embedded within supply chains.

Considering the operational characteristics of maritime transportation, the location of ports is constrained to a limited array of sites, mostly defined by geography. Since ports are bound by the need to serve ships, access to navigable waterways has been historically the most important site consideration. Before the industrial revolution, ships were the most efficient means of transporting goods, and thus port sites were frequently chosen at the head of water navigation, the most upstream site, such as London on the Thames, Montreal on the St. Lawrence River or Guangzhou on the Pearl River. Ship draft was small, so many sites were suitable to be used as ports. Sites on tidal waterways created a particular challenge for shipping because of the twice-daily rise and fall of water levels at the berths, and by the 18th the technology of enclosed docks, with lock gates was developed to mitigate this problem. Because ship transfers were slow, with vessels typically spent weeks in ports, a large number of berths were required. This frequently gave rise to the construction of piers and jetties, often called finger piers, to increase the number of berths per given length of shoreline.

As terminals, ports handle the largest amounts of freight, more than any other type of terminals combined. To handle this freight, port infrastructures jointly have to accommodate transshipment activities both on ships and inland and thus facilitate convergence between land transport and maritime systems. In many parts of the world, ports are the points of convergence from which inland transport systems, particularly rail, were laid. Most ports, especially those that are ancient, owe their initial emergence to their site as the great majority of harbors are taking advantage of a natural coastline or a natural site along a river. All the main port constraints have a significant impact on their operations which are part of the port performance continuum.

• Maritime access: which refers to the physical capacity of the site to accommodate ship operations. It includes the tidal range, which is the difference between the high and low tide, as normal ship operations cannot handle variations of more than 3 meters. Channel and berth depths are also very important to accommodate modern cargo ships. A standard Panamax ship of 65,000 deadweight tons requires more than 12 meters (40 feet) of depth. However, about 70% of world ports have depths of less than 10 meters and are unable to accommodate ships of more than 200 meters in length. Many ports are also impacted by sedimentation, particularly ports in river deltas. This requires continuous dredging, which adds to the costs of port operations. Some river ports may be impacted by periods of flooding and drought while other ports may be impeded or closed during winter because of ice conditions.
• Maritime interface: Indicates the amount of space that is available to support maritime access, namely the amount of shoreline that has good maritime access. This attribute is very important since ports are linear entities. Even if a port site has excellent maritime access, namely deepwater waterways, there may not be enough land available to guarantee its future development and expansion. Containerization has expanded the land consumption requirements of many ports. It is therefore not surprising to see that modern port expansion projects involve significant capital investments to create artificial port facilities providing more room for this interface.
• Infrastructures and equipment: The port site must have infrastructures such as piers, basins, stacking or storage areas, warehouses, and equipment such as cranes, all of which involve high levels of capital investment. In turn, these infrastructures consume land which must be available to ensure port expansion. Keeping up with the investment requirements of modern port operations has become a challenge for many ports, particularly considering containerization which requires substantial amounts of terminal space to operate. Modern container terminals rely on a unique array of infrastructure, including portainers, stacking yards serviced by gantry cranes and the vehicles used to move containers around the terminal, such as straddle carriers. Container ports have also developed infrastructure to handle refrigerated containers (reefers) with separated stacking areas. Many terminals are also becoming automated, particularly for stacking areas that can be serviced by automated cranes and vehicles.
• Land access: Access from the port to industrial complexes and markets ensure its growth and importance. This requires efficient inland distribution systems, such as fluvial barges, rail unit trains and roads handling intense heavy truck traffic. The land access to ports located in densely populated areas is facing increasing congestion. For instance, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have invested massively to develop the Alameda rail corridor to promote inland access and reduce truck congestion. A similar trend has taken place in Europe where ports such as Rotterdam and Antwerp have been involved in the setting on an inland barge and rail shuttle services.

Problems that may Faces:

There is also an array of problems related to port infrastructures. Ports along rivers are continuously facing dredging problems and the width of rivers is strongly limiting their capacity since it provides constraints to navigation. Rarely a port along a river has the capacity to handle the new generation of mega-ships, namely Post Panamax containership. These ships have put additional pressures on port infrastructures to accommodate growing operational pressures in terms of volume and throughput. Ports next to the sea are commonly facing a lateral spread of their infrastructures. Several ports have growth problems forcing them to spread their infrastructures far from the original sites. Older port sites associated with the centrality of cities are facing congestion problems where the transport network has the least capacity to be improved.

Inland accessibility has become a cornerstone in port competitiveness since it can be serviced by several road, rail and barge transportation systems. Those three options a particularly present in Europe, while North America is dominated by road and rail hinterland access. Port regionalization is characterized by strong functional interdependency and even joint development of a specific load center and logistics platforms in the hinterland. This leads ultimately to the formation of a regional load center network, strengthening the position of the port as a gateway. Many factors favor the emergence of this phase, namely:

• Local constraints: Ports, especially large gateways, are facing a wide array of local constraints that impair their growth and efficiency. The lack of available land for expansion is one of the most acute problems. This issue is exacerbated by the deepwater requirements for handling larger ships. Increased port traffic may also lead to diseconomies as a local road and rail systems are heavily burdened. Environmental constraints and local opposition to port development are also of significance. Port regionalization thus enables to partially circumscribe local constraints by externalizing them.
• Supply chain management: Global production and consumption have substantially changed distribution with the emergence of regional production systems as well as large consumer markets. No single locality can service efficiently the distribution requirements of such a complex web of activities. For instance, globally integrated logistics zones, including Free Trade Zones (FTZ) has emerged near many load centers, but seeing logistics zones as a functionally integrated entity may be misleading as each activity is part of a specific supply chain. Port regionalization thus permits the development of a distribution network that corresponds more closely to fragmented production and consumption systems.