Determining ITT configurations on the Maasvlakte by integer programming

Abstract

The large growth in containerized trade in the last decades set pressure on the current operating terminals in most ports around the world. In the Port of Rotterdam, the largest port of Europe, expansion became inevitable. With the expansion project "Maasvlakte 2" 1000 hectares of new land is created out of the sea, which made room for 5 new container terminals increasing the estimated annual container throughput in 2030 to 30 million TEU. This large ow of containers all have to leave the port to be transported all around Europe. To deal with this large ow and prevent congestion in and around the port, hinterland transport by barge and rail is promoted. To attract more containers via these modalities container flows are bundled to reduce the cost per container and make the hinterland transport more efficient. This bundling however will lead to extra movements around the port and for an efficient and congestion free connection an Inter Terminal Transport (ITT) system has been proposed. In this system vehicles transport containers between the various terminals and service providers around the port and can move over a dedicated road closed from all other traffic. To investigate the requirements of such a system the Port of Rotterdam Authority together with the Delft University of Technology and the Erasmus University of Rotterdam set up a research group investigating several aspects of the ITT system. The research presented in this report investigates a new and fast way of determining the optimal fleet size of system using a model based on linear programming. The benefit of this modelling technique versus the conventional simulation techniques is that it can be built relatively fast resulting in tool which costs less money and presents results earlier than conventional methods. This enables companies and agencies to use this model as a tool for decision making processes which provides insight in the costs and benefits of the considered system. The main question however is: Could a reliable tool be constructed, able to determine an optimal vehicle configuration to provide a yet to be determined performance level for an ITT system?...