As businesses start to address their plans for reducing CO2 emissions by 20% by 2020 to meet Government targets and 80% by 2050, it is important to look at the contribution that intermodal transport can make towards achieving these goals. Switching freight from road to rail can reduce CO2 emissions by up to 70%, particularly on journeys over 150 miles, so it is well worth looking at your network operations to see if any conversions of freight flows can be cost and service effectively transferred to rail or intermodal rail in ISO containers or swap bodies. Government data shows that transport represents about 23% of UK domestic CO2 emissions of which over 30% comes from road freight. With proposed increases in the electrified network in the UK, these savings can be further enhanced.

Service expansion

In spite of a 10 – 20% reduction in traffic through the ports, containers moved inland by rail have only reduced by 2% thus indicating a growth in rail market share through the last year. Meanwhile Channel Tunnel traffic has grown by 4% before the addition of recently announced new international rail services into the UK. Novatrans has introduced a number of new services recently, some using their new hub terminal at Dourges in northern France, where connections can be made into other long distance services particularly to southern Europe. Last October, the Stobart Group and DB Schenker and Transfesa have started 2 new temperature controlled container train services from Valencia to Dagenham, whilst Colas Rail have begun a service from Novara in Italy into Hams Hall, thus demonstrating that intermodal rail can compete with road freight services even where a change of rail gauge and temperature controlled transportation is involved. Within the UK, the Malcolm Group. the Stobart Group, Russells and others have introduced new container services by rail during the past year and opened a number of new terminals. This is in addition to the expanding port to inland terminal services operated by Freightliner, DB Schenker and others. Whilst the majority of these new intra UK services have been between terminals in England and Scotland, others have been over shorter distances eg the Grangemouth to Paisley service of the Malcolm Group which crosses the Glasgow conurbation.

Support grants

At present there are some revenue support grants available from DfT and through the Welsh and Scottish Assemblies under the Sustainable Distribution Fund and capital support from the Freight Facility Grant scheme, particularly relevant for intermodal terminal expansion. Both of these budgets were increased in 2009. Even in Ireland, where average trunk transport distances are shorter than in the UK, the Government in Dublin has recently decided to “introduce an allowance per tonne for freight by rail in line with climate change objectives.” Previously no grant schemes had been available to encourage the movement of freight from rail to road. New container services are now being introduced eg Dublin – Ballina in Co. Mayo.

The UK network

To further develop new intermodal container services a national network of container terminals is required, some of which should be capable of acting as hubs for linking domestic UK container trains with the expanding continental services. At present there are some geographical gaps in our network compared with the old internal UK networks of Freightliner in the 1970s, whilst others are very congested or working close to capacity. Logistics Companies and Property Developers are both working hard to fill some of these gaps in spite of the recession. But are UK intermodal container terminals and facilities keeping up with new terminal designs and technologies and improving their productivity, efficiency and environmental impact in line with best practice being introduced elsewhere in Europe?

In our next issue we will look at recent investments in terminal facilities across Europe.

2 - INTERMODAL TRANSPORT DEVELOPMENTS

Facilities at terminals

At present UK terminals rely either on the reach stacker or rail or rubber tyred gantry cranes. (See photo 1 old technology). Whilst the reach stackers are slower than gantry cranes and require significant aisle space, typically up to 17m wide if handling 45ft long containers, they are cheaper than gantry cranes and are useful for smaller terminals handling 2 trains or less per day. The gantry crane is usually more efficient above this level with a capability of achieving c20 - 30 lifts per hour. With outriggers these rail mounted gantry cranes can typically cover 10 lanes of rail, road and storage and are generally found in most of the UK’s larger intermodal terminals.

In October 2009 a new design of intermodal terminal was formally opened at the Quadrante Europa Terminal Gate in Verona. The new terminal is situated alongside an existing intermodal terminal currently operating with 4 rail mounted gantry cranes, two with outriggers, and a number of reach stackers to link the 2 parts of the old terminal. About 30% of Italy’s combined transport movements currently go through the old terminal. It is also adjacent to a very large Distribution Park covering many acres of large warehouses, distribution centres and other forwarding activities. Geographically it is well situated to link the north – south European rail services via the Brenner pass with other regions of Italy.

To provide for significant expansion in intermodal services over the next decade,

and provide capacity to double the terminals throughput, the owners and management decided to invest in the most innovative technology available and chose the Compactterminal. Following the planning phase, the Compactterminal took only 11 months to build, install and commission. This was undertaken by  Tuchschmid Constructa AG from Switzerland. The new terminal consists of 2 side by side modules of overhead gantries 550m long; each module being 8 lanes wide. (See photo 2). The site is 66m wide. The transhipment module (See photo 3) contains 5 rail, 2 road and 1 storage lane whilst the storage / road module has 6 storage lanes with 2 high stacking and 2 road lanes. The modules are linked by 6 automatic horizontal transhipment devices all under the control of the overhead crane drivers. (See photo 4). 2 overhead cranes are provided in the transhipment module and one in the storage module. Further cranes can be added as traffic increases as required without additional infrastructure. The horizontal transhipment units obviate the need for any road or reach stacker movements from transhipment to container storage. The 2 cranes in the transhipment module of the terminal are designed to handle 13 x 550m long trains in and out per day. The terminal will handle ISO containers, and bottom lift swap bodies and semi-trailers. The storage module has capacity for about 1000 TEU.

The key advantages of the Compactterminal design using overhead cranes are the crane performance of c40 lifts per hour, a reduction in energy consumption of about 30% due to the lower tare weight of the cranes, reduced handling within the terminal, greater space efficiency and a low noise level of less than 70dBa on maximum lift. The Quadrante Europa Terminal Gate are looking for a much lower level of CO2 emissions than their conventional gantry crane or reach stacker terminal, higher productivity and container throughput, and lower unit operating cost from their investment.

Perhaps now is the time for your business to be considering the intermodal alternatives within your transport network.