This paper investigates a specific pattern of maritime transportation, which is currently developing at a noticeable rate: the hub and spoke transhipment within a maritime basin. More than 15 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) currently cross the Mediterranean on the deep-sea routes through Suez and Gibraltar. According to a detailed prediction by the Ocean Shipping Consultants Ltd, such a figure is going to rise up to 25+ million TEUs by the year 2010, and more than a half of that traffic will be transhipment traffic. In this light, the Mediterranean represents the ideal condition for the development of hub and spoke maritime networks. In this respect, the authors are developing a model to point out the fundamental requisites of a hub port. Supply factors (such as sea depths and gross productivity) together with the demand of movements are considered, in a gravitational model providing a measure of the port's ability to attract (transhipment) traffic. The paper explains the calibration of the location parameter, which has been undertaken for 26 Mediterranean ports, and presents the results of the application of the model to the same ports. Owing to the width of the Mediterranean basin, it was divided into three sub-basins. Finally, the results of the application to each sub-basin are considered. For the covering abstract see ITRD E126595.
Abstract