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Recently, marine container chassis have emerged at the forefront of container port operations in the United States, after shipping lines stopped providing chassis as part of their service. With the operation and management responsibilities transferred to new parties, chassis dislocation has been a major problem across the United States. To ensure chassis availability, one response has been the creation of so-called neutral chassis pools, introducing new challenges for container port operations. This paper presents a mathematical model that can be used to objectively support the management and planning of neutral chassis pools. An empirical case study is provided to illustrate the model.

This paper investigates determinants of the probability of non-fatal and fatal crew injuries in container vessel accidents. The determinants are deduced from an estimated probit regression equation based upon 2001–2008 U.S. Coast Guard container vessel accident data. The estimation results suggest that a crew member is: (1) less likely to have a non-fatal injury in containership and ro-ro container vessel accidents if the vessel has a steel hull and the vessel accident occurs at nighttime, (2) more likely to have a fatal injury if fire is involved in containership and ro-ro container vessel accidents, and (3) less likely to have a fatal injury in containership and ro-ro container vessel accidents if the vessel is U.S. flagged, steel hulled, and powered by a diesel engine. These results are critical in developing new policies in reducing non-fatal and fatal crew injuries in container vessel accidents.

The 2016 opening of an expanded Panama Canal will allow for Post-Panamax containerships up to 12 500 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) in size to transit the Panama Canal. In response, some US East...

The purpose of this paper is to review and analyze maritime transportation academic research. For articles published in Maritime Policy & Management (MPM) in the period 2001 to 2012, the most frequent topics addressed include shipping performance/management and shipping finance. For articles published in Maritime Economics & Logistics (MEL) in the period 2002 to 2012, the most frequent topics addressed include port performance and shipping performance/management. MPM articles are more likely than MEL articles to utilize the institutional (IS) methodology and MEL articles are more likely than MPM articles to utilize the optimization (OP) methodology. Maritime transportation proposition theoretical research may be particularly useful in undertaking research in maritime transportation areas for which data are unavailable, insufficient, difficult to obtain, or of poor quality. Future maritime transportation research needs to include focus on: (i) maritime shippers, (ii) maritime transport chains, (iii) mariti...

This study investigates determinants of the number of injured, deceased and missing occupants and the damage cost of passenger vessel accidents that were investigated by the US Coast Guard for the years 1991–2001. Negative binomial and Poisson regression estimates suggest that: (1) passenger-freight combination vessel accidents incur greater injuries than other types of passenger vessels, (2) deaths are greater when precipitation weather and poor visibility exist and (3) missing occupants are greater for capsize accidents and larger the vessel. The damage cost per vessel gross ton is less for ocean cruise and steel-hulled vessels. The major conclusion of the study is that human (as opposed to environmental and vessel) causes of passenger vessel accidents result in increases in the number of injured, deceased and missing occupants.

This study investigates determinants of the number of non-fatal crew injuries, fatal crew injuries and missing crew in freight ship, tanker and tugboat vessel accidents based upon individual accidents investigated by the US Coast Guard for the 1991–2001 period. Poisson and negative binomial regression estimates suggest that: (1) freight ship and tanker non-fatal injuries are higher when the vessel is moored or docked and during high winds and cold temperatures; (2) tugboat non-fatal injuries are higher during poor visibility; (3) freight ship fatal injuries increase with vessel age and tanker and tugboat fatal injuries are higher for fire and capsize accidents, respectively; and (4) freight ship missing crew increase with vessel age and tugboat missing crew are higher for fire and lake accidents.

This study investigates vessel oil spill differentials for transfer and vessel-accident spills for the post Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA-90) period. In-water and out-of-water transfer/vessel-accident oil spill equations are estimated, utilizing tobit regression analysis and data of individual vessel oil spills (of oil-cargo and non-oil-cargo vessels) investigated by the US Coast Guard for the 1991–1995 period. In the data, 47.5% (94.1%) of in-water (out-of-water) gallons of oil spilled were transfer spills; non-oil-cargo vessels accounted for 44.2% of all gallons spilled. The estimation results suggest that out-of-water transfer spills are larger in size than vessel-accident spills, but are similar in size for in-water spills. Transfer/vessel-accident spill differentials exist (do not exist) among determinants of in-water (out-of-water) spills. The policy implication of the results is that a vessel oil spill-reduction differentiation regulatory regime is needed that differentiates between transfer and v...

This paper presents an investigation of determinants of fatal and non-fatal injuries in ferry vessel accidents. Poisson regression estimates indicate that fatal and non-fatal injuries are 3.35 and 4.46% higher for fire/explosion than for material/equipment failure or grounding accidents, respectively, and 3.13 and 3.38% higher for multi-vessel than for single-vessel accidents, respectively. Non-fatal injuries are higher when the weather is foggy, but fewer at night and when the ferry is older. Estimated marginal effects indicate that every 100 fire/explosion accidents result in 6.1 fatal injuries, while each fire/explosion accident results in approximately 1 non-fatal injury.

This study investigates whether recreational boating safety investments and behaviours of current interest are determinants of boating injury severity, and if so, their effects. An ordered probit analysis of 1989–1993 boating accidents suggests that human capital investments in safety, in the form of operator boating experience and formal instruction, reduce both operator and passenger injury severity. Higher levels of operator (passenger) alcohol consumption increase operator (passenger) injury severity, but no relationship was found between operator alcohol consumption and passenger injury severity. At the time a trip is taken, wearing a flotation device has the most efficacious effect on both operator and passenger injury severity. In general, the results support regulatory policies aimed at increasing the use of personal flotation devices as well as reducing alcohol consumption.

This study investigates determinants of the vessel, cargo, and other-property damage costs of bulk barge accidents in US inland waterways. Tobit estimation of a three-equation recursive model suggests that, in bulk barge accidents: (1) vessel damage cost is greater for collision, fire/explosion, and material/equipment failure accidents than for groundings; (2) cargo damage cost is greater at night and when the weather is foggy and increases with barge age; and (3) otherproperty damage cost is greater for multi-vessel accidents, but decreases with barge size. A dollar of vessel damage cost increases other-property damage cost by $1.38, while a dollar of cargo damage cost increases this cost by $6.90. An important result for formulating bulk barge accident cost-reduction policies is that a given determinant might have a negative effect on one type of damage cost but a positive effect on another.

Through the 1950s, ocean transport of general (dry non-bulk) cargo used break-bulk (i.e., on pallet) methods: pallets were moved, generally one at a time, onto a truck or rail car that carried them from the factory or warehouse to the docks. There each pallet was unloaded and hoisted, by cargo net and crane, off the dock and onto the ship. Once the pallet was in the ship's hole, it had to be positioned precisely and braced to protect it from damage during the ocean crossing. This process was then reversed at the other end of the voyage, making the ocean transport of general cargo a slow, labor-intensive, and expensive process. All of this began to change in 1955. Malcolm McLean, believing that individual pieces of cargo needed to be handled only twice-at their origin when stored in a standardized container box and at their destination when unloaded-purchased a small tanker company, renamed it Sea-Land, and adapted its ships to transport truck trailers. The first voyage, to Puerto Rico, of a Sea-Land containership began in Newark, New Jersey, USA, April 26, 1956. Confrontations with shipping lines, railroads, and unions, however, delayed the company's maiden international voyage to Rotterdam until 1966. The containerization of international trade had begun. In the years that followed, standardized containers were constructed, generally twenty or forty feet long without wheels, having locking mechanisms at each corner that could be secured to a truck chassis, a rail car, a crane, or other containers inside a ship's hole or on its deck. The use of standardized containers also meant that intermodalism of international trade, the movement of cargo from an origin in one

This study investigates determinants of fatal and nonfatal crew injuries in ship accidents, utilizing detailed data of individual tanker, container and bulk ship (US and foreign) accidents investigated by the US Coast Guard. Poisson and negative binomial regression estimates suggest that fatal and nonfatal injuries are greater: (1) if the accident cause is human rather than environmental or ship related and (2) for fire/explosion and multiple-ship accidents. The results provide strong evidence of a positive relationship between crew injuries and human causes of ship accidents, thereby providing support for the current shift in safety focus towards regulating human actions aboard ships rather than just the condition of ships.

This paper investigate cost-recovery alternatives for US federally-operated vessel traffic service (VTS) systems. These include those currently used or have been used by VTS and ‘VTS-like’ systems and other feasible, but not used herefore, alternatives, a federal trust and a federal VTS user-fee structure. Three federal trust funds exist whose waterway-related earmarked revenues could also be earmarked for VTS systems. A federal VTS user-fee structure while raising revenue to finance VTS systems is not expected to be detrimental to the competitiveness of VTS ports nor to the vessel operators that call if their cost-savings exceed fees paid.

In the rail industry worldwide, there has been a search for new solutions, including restructuring, corporatization, and outright privatization, but the complexity of the rail industry offers special problems. In the Workshop we looked in detail at the British, Swedish, German, Australian (New South Wales) and New Zealand experiences, as well as considering more general issues such as cost structures, vertical separation and competitive tendering. Whilst it was agreed that some developments, such as greater contracting out, were clearly beneficial, other developments such as the separation of infrastructure from operations remained of uncertain value until the issues of efficient pricing and slot allocation were resolved.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate determinants of the ship damage severity of containership accidents. A micro-data set of detailed information on individual containership accidents is utilized in our investigation. Since the severity of an accident is conditioned upon the occurrence of an accident, the likelihood and the severity of an accident are expected to have common determinants. Hence, our determinants may be used by container shipping lines in their decision making for not only reducing the severity of containership accidents but also for reducing the likelihood of a containership having an accident.

The earlier port pricing literature argued that port prices should be based uponk marginal cost pricing. However, recent literature suggests that a conflicts would arise between marginal cost pricing and full cost recovery at ports. Further, problems arise in determining or estimating marginal costs. A price structure that addresses the problems of port marginal cost pricing is cost axiomatic pricing, given the goals, objectives and constraints of ports. Fairness and cost efficiency cost axioms for ports are considered. A methodology for determining cost axiomatic prices for a marine container terminal is presented.

The intent of the recently enacted federal anti-alcohol recreational boating legislation is to reduce boating accidents by reducing alcohol consumption by boat operators. This legislation implicitly assumes that alcohol consumption by operators is a determinant of operators being at fault in boating accidents. The results of this paper, based on a multivariate analysis of microdata, support this assumption for non-fatal but not for fatal boating accidents. However, alcohol involvement was found to be a significant determinant of the severity of boating accidents (i.e. fatal versus non-fatal accidents). These results suggest that alcohol involvement causes boating fatalities but does not cause the operator to be at fault in fatal boating accidents. A policy implication is that laws proscribing intoxication during boating should be directed not just at operators, but at all water recreationists.

The four main aims of Workshop No.1 at the Conference were: (a) to review current approaches to the provision of bus and coach services in different countries; (b) to debate the pros and cons of alternative strategies for competition and ownership; (c) to summarise the main findings from experience across the world of moves towards increasing competition, privatisation and deregulation; and (d) to discuss the ease with which this experience from any one part of the world may be transferred to any other. The chapter reports briefly on the outcome of the Workshop's deliberation. It begins with what was seen as much the easier case of interurban/interstate coach services, where a concensus view saw advantage in quantity deregulation, more private enterprise and vigorous competition between different modes which meet all of their costs including those of environmental protection and passengers’ security. It continues with the much more difficult case of urban bus services, where the arguments for specific soc...

The cost per container movement incurred by a containership per voyage leg on a given route is minimized under various scenarios. The principal conclusions reached from a comparative analysis of the optimal containership sizes are: (1) for a route of a given distance and the same time in port per port call, optimal containership size declines as the number of port calls increase, (2) for a route of a given distance and the same number of port calls, optimal containership size declines as the time in port increases and (3) for the same number of port calls and the same time in port per port call, optimal containership size increases as the distance of the route increases. Rationale for these conclusions are presented.

Facing actual competition and potential competition from internally provided paratransit and contracted‐out paratransit services, respectively, unionized transit labor of a public transit firm may feel threatened (i.e. in terms of potential job losses) and may agree to changes in costly work rules as well as to wage concessions. If so, the transit firm will incur cost savings in the provision of its transit service as a result of providing paratransit and contracted‐out paratransit services (i.e. in becoming a multiservice firm). This paper provides theoretical and empirical evidence to support such cost savings. The literature suggests that such cost savings may exist; however, to the knowledge of the author, the literature has not provided evidence of their existence.

This paper investigates wheather the actions of US ocean ports (since the passage of the Shipping Act of 1984) are supportive of the promotion of an efficient transportation system for US ocean commerce. In the short run, US ocean ports have generally been supportive of this efficiency goal;competiton among US ocean ports has has increased as is evident by the significant reduction that has occurred in port natural hinterlands. In the long run, port sunk costs, consolidations and cooperative activities, and long-term leases with ocean carriers are likely to be non-supportive of the efficiency goal.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the net incidence of government subsidies to a transit system (i.e., the net impact of who pays and who benefits from transit subsidies). Rather than considering the U.S. transit subsidy program in the aggregate, the net incidence of subsidies to a particular transit system — Tidewater Regional Transit (TRT) — is analyzed. The paper concludes that the net incidence of the TRT subsidy program is progressive. Furthermore, the paper provides a methodology that can be used for investigating the net incidence of government subsidies to other transit systems.