This paper introduces to the findings of the case study "Rotterdam Port" carried out within the EU REVENUE project. The REVENUE project focuses on analyzing the efficiency and equity impacts of different options to use revenues from infrastructure charges. It also deals with the acceptability and feasibility of these options. Specifically, three ambitions were pursued: to know what are current institutions and practices of transport revenue use of infrastructure pricing; to develop guidelines for a good revenue use in the presence of marginal social cost pricing on the basis of sound economic theory; to test guidelines on a large set of case studies. For carrying analyses a simple model (MOLINO) has been developed to evaluate theeffects of the investments in infrastructure and pricing policy for two competing routes. The MOLINO model was used in a case study "Rotterdam Port" dealt with in this paper. For the port of Rotterdam and its biggest rival-port Antwerp the investments, various sources of investments and different charging policies have been studied (restricted to sea container transport). Given the complexity of sea ports, on the one hand, and the simplicity of the model on the other, the results are tentative. One of the findings is, to recover the investment costs on the basis of correct prices leadto high charges. This will result in lower growth rates of container transport for both ports and increase of a third-port competition effect. It might be difficult to earn back the investments because the direct revenuesare insufficient. The rationale for such type of port investments may be justified through indirect effects, and not in shipping transport as such.Furthermore, in practice a political trade-off solution was chosen. This is considered a bad example from the point of view of making investments more transparent. For the covering abstract see ITRD E135582
Abstract