Attn Colleen: CaseStudy1
Limerick
lesson_notes.docx|
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Week One |
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Lesson |
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The U.S. is experiencing continuous population growth and higher population densities; constrained mobility is leading to transportation gridlock. Today 90 percent of our population occupies 10 percent of the nation's land and is continuing to infringe on the transportation station environment; effective transportation solutions are needed, since the loss of human productivity due to air and ground transportation gridlock amounts to over one billion dollars a day (Bragdon, n.d.) The nation's transportation system will not be able to meet future demand without trained people with special knowledge and skills. It is an industry that needs dedicated, technically trained specialists with important engineering, administrative, and managerial skills. Persons with such training and experience will be in constant demand and this need will continue to grow in the 21st century. A recent NATCenter study indicates that over 500,000 new jobs will develop in this field by 2005 in just the U.S. The passage of the U.S. Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) legislation marked a shift from individual modal growth to intermodalism. For the most part transportation and the various modes involving air, land, and sea have been encouraged to develop independently without any systems integration process (Figure 1). The NATCenter was developed under the premise of achieving a balanced or integrated transportation system using the intermodal approach involving the efficient movement, use, and transfer of people, goods, services, resources, and information in order to maximize its potential in a competitive global economy. This approach represented a major departure from individual and isolated modal emphasis (Figure 2). The initiative to develop the NATCenter complex preceded the Federal ISTEA legislation by over two years. To meet these identified needs in aviation and intermodal transportation, the NATCenter has positioned itself to provide national and international leadership. Programs are designed and built on three primary characteristics which provide the basis for all activities. These three ingredients are visionary approach, global perspective, and public/private partnerships. REFERENCES Bragdon C. R.. Intermodal connectivity: A status report. 75th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board,Washington, D.C., 1996. |
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Once the dominant method of moving goods over land and water, break-bulk shipping appears to be slowly, steadily sliding towards extinction worldwide. It's even getting harder and harder to find people in the general transportation industry who have actually heard of the term. In general, break-bulk cargo is anything that can't be sucked out of a ship with a vacuum or placed in a steel container box. Though the break-bulk market has declined steadily in recent years, it still accounts for plenty of goods, starting with perishables and also including giant rolls of newsprint and plate steel, some types of lumber and wood products and even rebar. Yet in each of these areas, when it comes to global transport, break-bulk seems to be losing ground rather than gaining it. "What we've seen in the past few years, just generally speaking, is that the container shippers got a lot more competitive in their rates and a lot of traditional break-bulk cargoes that were palletized changed mode from break-bulk to containerized. A demanding intermodal marketplace is one reason for the shift away from break-bulk. Shippers want to get their containers off of ships and to the marketplace as fast as possible. Unless ports and other facilities are capable of moving with unprecedented speed, break-bulk simply can't supply the efficiency today's accelerated supply chains demand. One of the areas where the shift from break-bulk is most pronounced is in the perishables sector. Not long ago, break-bulk ships ruled the perishables market. Virtually all product moved in vast, refrigerated vessels stacked on carefully arranged pallets. Today, more and more perishable goods are moving via refrigerated containers. "The reefer fleet now provides around 40 percent of nominal reefer capacity," says a recently published report by London-based Drewry Shipping Consultants. Refrigerated containers moving on conventional containerized vessels make up the other 60 percent, the company says. Not all the news is bad in the world of break-bulk. Market difficulties for one sector can prove to be opportunities for others, and that's what some say is happening with break-bulk. In areas where a sizeable infrastructure and sophisticated technology are needed, break-bulk traffic remains strong. One ship can carry 8,000 tons of newsprint. Specialized equipment is needed to handle the goods with any kind of efficiency-which means that the ports and service providers that are willing to invest in those services will have a chance to profit. Many cargoes are also simply not suited for containerization. Some ingots are so heavy that just a few of them will fill a container beyond its legal weight, leading to huge amounts of legal space. Some of the break-bulk building products that are constantly coming into Canaveral are simply too large to fit into a conventional container. It's far too soon to be writing obituaries for break-bulk though. The reality is that break-bulk volume is growing nationwide by about 3 percent-a paltry rate compared to conventional cargo, which in many ports is soaring at 10 percent or more, but enough to make for a satisfactory business for both ports and shippers. |
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