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Long term projections of cargo throughput are indispensable for port development plans. Although commodity flow projections are useful for governments, port authorities, terminal operating companies and port users, scientific research on commodity flow projections for ports is limited. Existing studies generally use econometric models that assume stable relationships between growth of port throughput and such variables as GDP growth and trade growth. This paper presents a method that was developed as part of the Port Vision 2030 project of Port of Rotterdam Authority. The method combines a model with expert judgement and commodity specific research. This combination enables incorporating disruptions of past growth patterns. The contribution of this paper is the description of this method, its application to the volumes in 2030 of all major commodities handled in the Hamburg – Le Havre range, with four different scenarios, while most studies deal with a few commodities in one port, and often for a shorter period and with less scenarios. The results show that in all scenarios, total throughput is expected to rise, although in three scenarios not as fast as in the previous two decades. Furthermore, intermediates and container flows are expected to continue to grow, while throughput of raw materials (iron ore, crude oil) may decline.

Developing rail freight sector in the EU is desirable from both a political-social point of view and from a market business point of view. Fragmentation in the national railway systems impedes, in many ways, social and economic benefits in the liberalised EU railway market. The need for innovative governance to deal with the fragmentation problems is therefore pressing. This paper sets out an innovative governance framework – MCC for the governing of the European rail freight domain. MCC is problem-driven, market-oriented and corridor-based. It puts the lens on the forming of horizontal transnational collaboration next to and in relation to the existing vertically-structured institutional arrangement. The design of the framework is based on multidisciplinary approach, where theories like multi-level governance, supply chain management, and geographic concepts such as corridors and networks are integrated. This governance framework is then employed to preliminary assess the existing governance practices such as policy guidelines and directives, as well as emergent governance developments such as transport corridors developed from both business and research projects. Three types of governance practices are derived from the assessment – legislative governance, corridor governance and MCC governance. The results contribute to a better policy making to accelerate the growth in the EU rail freight industry and the advancement of strategic management, spatial planning and organisation theory.

Transport networks in major urban areas are becoming more and more vulnerable to unforeseen disturbances in transport networks, like incidents. For the near future, we expect an increasing number of incidents with a large impact due to the overall increase of the traffic load. In this paper the hypothesis is tested that, if no measures are taken, the impact of incidents increases in the future and, therefore, the vulnerability of the road network increases. It is shown that the current network of the area The Hague-Rotterdam in the Netherlands is already vulnerable. If the demand increases, the increase in total travel time is more than linear with the increase in demand in the situation without an incident. The impact of incidents also increases when the level of demand increases. This results in the overall conclusion that it is necessary to make the road network more robust.

The Netherlands has a tradition of using mathematical models in policy and decision making in transport (and other sectors). In an effort to improve the information provided to policy makers and to maximise the added value of the existing instruments and available knowledge and data, the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment decided to work towards a new freight transport model. The first step in the building process is a basic model called BASGOED (“BAS” stands for “basic” and “GOED” means “good”). This model is meant as fundamental corner stone for an incremental building process leading to a modular, transparent and flexible set of instruments for policy making in the area of freight transport.

The basic use of transport models is that they help to increase our understanding of the mobility system. In more operational terms, they can be a basis for developing quantitative insights in the past and current state of the system or scenarios about the future. Models are also useful as impact assessment tools in decision making processes or for ex post evaluation. Each purpose places different demands on the availability and quality of information. The issue treated in this paper is how we can improve the organization of the supply side of the modeling market (including the influence of public agents on this market) in a way that the models can meet policy demands of the future. We consider two dimensions of model supply: (1) the contents dimension, i.e. the ability to inform policy makers on specific policy questions and (2) the dimension of governance of model development and model applications. We report on the findings of two studies that were conducted in 2009 and 2010 sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management. The first study developed a long term vision on important governance aspects such as quality assurance and presentation of model results. The second study developed a long term road map for R&D of passenger and freight transport models. The combined result of the two studies should help to establish a new generation of transport models that is as rich in contents as needed, and as context friendly as possible.