ûIn the past few decades inland waterway transport has opened up new markets, such as roll on-roll off (ro-ro) services for road vehicles (cars, trucks, tractors) and trailers, lift on-lift off (lo-lo) traffic for maritime containers, waste, and the carriage of oversized or heavy goods. Especially the transport of maritime containers, in the hinterland of the container handling seaports in the North Sea area has gained strong momentum. However, there exists almost no combined transport in intra-European continental traffic. This means that inland waterway transport on European rivers and canals has not benefited yet from the continuous growth of intra- European (continental) trade resulting predominantly from European integrationprocesses in spite of its high reputation in the maritime container business. Now, given the fact that many experts do see a high potential for an integration of inland navigation into continental intermodal transport chains, how can such a continental combined transport system be achieved? This study takes up the challenge to specify a more comprehensive interdisciplinary theoretical framework for understanding continental intermodal waterborne transport. The position of the single economic actors (logistical deciders of shippers or freight forwarding companies) who are in charge of the modal choice is considered at a micro level. For parts of the research, the position of a whole transport/supply chain is also considered because competition not only occurs between single companies, but also between whole supply chains, and, as transport chains represent parts of these supply chains, also between transport chains (meso level perspective). In certain stages of the analysis it may be necessary to look at the topic at themacro (political) level as well. The three case studies included one of asuccessful case, one of an unsuccessful venture, and finally one to carryout an independent assessment of the success and failure factors found inthe two earlier case studies. The successful case deals with the floatingmotorway on the Danube between Passau (DE) and Vidin (BG). The unsuccessful case study deals with the container service Danube Combined Services that was in operation between Deggendorf, Enns and Budapest for some months in 2001. The validation case deals with the hinterland carriage of continental containers by inland waterway between locations in the United Kingdom(UK) or Ireland (IE) and places along the Rhine corridor. For the covering abstract see ITRD E145999
Abstract