1. Some countries imports a lot of goods, and these imports must enter the country through a few seaports. Often, these seaports become bottlenecks; in addition to offloading freight, they must function as distribution hubs.
2. This involves unloading shipping containers, repackaging, and shipping along many different spokes leading to thousands of destination towns and cities.
3. An inland port alleviates the bottleneck. At the seaport, cranes can sort shipping containers. For those destinations now serviced by the inland port hub, containers can be loaded directly onto a freight train. The train spur takes cargo directly to the inland port, where it clears customs and gets processed and distributed.
4. Naturally, the inland port would be a massive operation — some inland ports handle “as much cargo volumes as their coastal counterparts, and would demand a significant infrastructure investment such as dockyard cranes. Vast storage capacities. Clearinghouses. A foreign trade zone. Major surface road access to the port. And much more. Additionally, environmental impacts must be factored.
ECONOMIC BENEFITS
1. Help bring economic development from coastal area to hinterland (particularly for land-locked developing countries). Dry ports can grow to Special economic zones.
2. Reconciliation of between transport infrastructure and supply
chain management. Improving supply chain, logistics, Reducing transportation cost.
3. Shifting distribution function from seaport terminals. Coping with capacity constraints at seaport
4. Adding value to market players.
5. Modal shift to a more efficient mode of transport
ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIAL BENEFITS
1. Reduction in GHG emission through modal shift at dry ports
- By Road - 1 liter of gasoline can move 25 Tons*of cargo for 1 kilometer
- By Rail - 1 liter of gasoline can move 85 Tons*of cargo for 1 kilometer
2. Reduce road congestion (Free up cars from roads)
Example: (Sweden) 70 trains daily service to Port of Göteborg free up
2,400 trucks from road daily, (USA)25% of transport to Port of Virginia
via double-stack container trains free up up to 2,000 trucks on road daily.
COMMON CHALLENGES IN DEVELOPING DRY PORTS
1. Trade supports
2. Developed rail and road network
3. Increased cargo volumes carried by railway
4. Finance
5. Balanced market mechanism and political commitment
6. Multi-sectoral coordination and communications
7. Under context of regional tranport development
(Source: United Nations - ESCAP)
