Free to Download - SCLG

OVERVIEW Transport
(transport of fruit and vegetables) ahead
of Rotterdam and Sheerness. The leading
French port is Marseille (0.60 million tonnes)
ahead of Dunkirk (0.26 million tonnes) and
Port-Vendres (0.17 million tonnes). Maritime
freight is seeing a constant rise in volumes.
Despite the current economic difficulties
(rise in petrol prices, etc.), world demand
for container transport has risen still further.
This development has been underpinned
by the expansion of international trade,
the on-going shift from cargo shipments to
containerised deliveries and the development
of transhipments.
There are plans to create a European
maritime area with no border limitations in
order to streamline administrative procedures
and develop the maritime routes deemed
most profitable and least polluting. Until now,
maritime transport was governed by a system
of ‘maritime conferences’ that allowed ship
owners to agree on their pricing policy in
return for certain guarantees on price stability.
This exemption is set to expire in late autumn
2008. Contractors (loading operators) will
then be able to maximise on the competition
between the various ship owners and ports.
There are also plans to triple container traffic
over the next ten years (from 3.5 million to 10
million).
Rail transport is not the
preferred choice for
distances under 100
km but becomes more
attractive as distances
increase (with an average
journey of 450 km)
Rail transport
Rail transport is not the preferred choice for
distances under 100 km but becomes more
attractive as distances increase (with an
average journey of 450 km). At distances
of around a thousand kilometres, which
represents the maximum distance for national
good transport, its market share (all products
taken together) can reach 30%, falling to 10%
for consumption products. Transporting goods
by rail is most efficient when this involves the
exchange of very large product flows between
two sites or towns as this makes it possible
to optimise train use, in particular concerning
34 Link January 2011
whole trains. In fact, the market share for rail
shipments always grows in proportion to the
size of the exchanged flows.
While very low for diffuse flows, it
approaches an equivalent level (all products
taken together) where very large shipment
flows are involved. Rail transport increases its
modal share with the increase in the flows of
merchandise. Diffuse rail traffic loses out to
road traffic due to its terminal runs and sorting
costs. This is the case for consumption
goods and equipment that generate diluted
flows between a large number of sites, with
the added drawback of a low-volume share
of rail transport. Together with the lowered
competitiveness of the rail offer, structural
changes in the French economy are driving
businesses towards road transport.
Together with the lowered competitiveness
of the rail offer, structural changes in the
French economy are driving businesses
towards road transport. The overall rail freight
sector stabilised in 2006 (freight shipments
of 41 bn tonnes/kilometre) following the
sharp drop in its business turnover between
2002 and 2005. Freight shipments of food
products rose by 15.7% in 2007. Around
225,000 tonnes of fresh produce under
controlled temperature were shipped on the
Avignon-Paris region and Avignon-Lille lines
(two trains per day in combined transport)
and 255,000 tonnes of fresh produce under
controlled temperature were shipped on the
Perpignan-Rungis line (three trains/day - two
standard and one combined transport).
The Rungis rail terminal is currently
being modernized and refurbished on
several levels: tracks and platforms (new
platforms are being built while some of
the original platforms are being widened),
superstructures (platforms are being covered
to cater for controlled temperature shipments,
construction of adjacent buildings), roads
and miscellaneous networks (development
of yard facilities, extra roads, public lighting,
purification of water and miscellaneous
networks). This ambitious project should help
to develop rail traffic at the Rungis MIN and
exterior warehouses by increasing volumes
to 340,000 tonnes during 2008. This would
represent the equivalent of about 7,500 less
HGV per year on the Ile-de-France roads .
A moderate business...
Combined transport still provides one of the
best solutions by optimising a multimodal
transport chain according to traffic flows,
geography, and environmental policy. This
system tends to maximise transported
tonnages by using judiciously located freight
exchange platforms. The annual volume of
combined transport traffic represented an
average of 12.7 bn tonnes/kilometre over
the five years of the study (2000-2005). It
represents about 12% of total “road + rail”
transport for distances of over 500 km. If
compared with other modes of rail transport
(separate wagons, whole trains), up to 1997,
combined transport was the only mode to
record a growth in volumes. In 2004, its
tonnes/kilometre figure rose another 4.8%,
in actual fact due to domestic runs and
international routes. Since 2006, the rail
freight sector has seen a slight increase in
transported volumes (40.9 GT/km) compared
to 2005 (40.7 GT/km).
The effects of liberalising the national rail
freight sector (1 April 2006) have not so far
been sufficient to negate the fall in business,
and we shouldn’t forget the potentially
severe impact of the latest periods of social
unrest (November 2007) which could see
profits slashed by up to 40%. Faced with this
situation, Fret SNCF plans to set up a highrate
project designed to reassign production
means where traffic actually exists, and to