Preferences for alternative short sea shipping opportunities

Data Envelopment Analysis of Helsinki-Tallinn Transportation Chains

“…As price differences between different chains are basically very small, and RoPax offers much better frequency, shorter lead time and convenient price for semi-trailer with cabin, it is not surprising that most of the transportation flows are completed through this chain (even if the driver with the entire semi-trailer truck adds "hidden" indirect costs). Typically, the importance of the frequency of short sea shipping connections is forgotten; based on recent North American empirical study, it was found that customers were willing to pay a significantly higher price from higher frequency of short sea shipping alternative [5]. In this study, the impact of frequency on the efficiency was not analyzed at all, since it is a problem to have it included as input factor: The higher the frequency, the better it is for the users, but in DEA model it is the opposite as it is taken as an input.…”

“…In empirical research works it has been e.g. found that short sea shipping (typically RoRo) is having hard time to compete cost-wise against road transportation [4][5], and typically the only remedy has been public sector subsidy in one form or another [4].…”

Environmental Factors and Intermodal Freight Transportation: Analysis of the Decision Bases in the Case of Spanish Motorways of the Sea

“…In spite of the above, research into SSS or MoS to analyze the determinants of modal choice do not take environmental aspects into account as a parameter that could affect the decisions made [11,12,[49][50][51][52][53] (see Table 1). Most authors have used the following variables: price, transit time, reliability and frequency.…”

“…In addition, the level of importance ascribed to these variables differs in the studies shown in the table. For example, in the studies by Bergantino and Bolis [11,49], the most important attributes in modal choice are reliability and frequency; Pé rez-Mesa et al [52] consider cost and transit time as the most important variables, whereas Puckett et al [53] prioritize cost and frequency. Likewise, environmental aspects are usually disregarded in studies analyzing the competitiveness of road and sea transport on different routes.…”

“…Part of the literature on intermodality is approached from the shippers' perspective, such as those requiring transport services (see, for example, [50,52,53]). Other works, however, explore the question from position of freight forwarders, logistics service providers or road haulers, that is to say, the organizations that offer transport services (see, for example, [11,12,34,35,49,56]).…”