Assessing the Environmental Benefits of Dry Port Usage: A Case of Inland Container Transport in Turkey

Abstract

Inland transportation of maritime freight conducted by trucks creates extensive emissions. These emissions can be mitigated by using intermodal-rail transport through dry ports. In that regard, this study evaluated the environmental benefits of dry port usage by using discrete event simulation modelling. The results show that the current level of dry port-based intermodal transportation decreases greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 5.79% compared to transportation of all containers on the road. Evaluating the impact of the electrified railway line on the GHG emissions revealed unexpected results; the electrification of the railway line would decrease GHG emissions only by 0.06%. The improvements in empty container movement and scheduling slightly reduced GHG emissions by 0.69% and 0.63% respectively, however, highest GHG emissions reduction resulted from modal shift by 6.56%. This study extended the previous literature by assessing not only the environmental benefits of dry port usage but also its effects on train capacity usage, while taking the empty container movement into account.

Optimizing Transportation between Sea Ports and Regions by Road Transport and Rail and Inland Waterway Transport Means Including “Last Mile” Solutions

“…Tug boats or tugs are operating when it is necessary to push-pull nonpropelled barges, which play a big part in the transportation chain in various countries [33,34,[36][37][38][39]. In Europe, the inland waterways infrastructure network is about 24,000 km in length and quite well adapted for transportation of many different cargoes [30].…”

“…A number of methods for the different factor calculations in waterborne transport [8,9,36], port and logistics [18,26,29,37], presented in the literature, mainly analyzed typical situations. At the same time, it is very important in complex evaluation and comparison, including energy saving and environmental impact assessment.…”

“…Energy saving and environmental impact assessment from transport modes, are analyzed for road transport in research papers [12,17,19], for railway transport in research papers [7,17,19], for waterborne transport in research papers [11,14,33,34,39] and for transport and logistics processes in research papers [29,37] among others, but mainly based on the typical transportation conditions (Table 2).…”

Comparative Analysis of Dry Port Operations in Coastal and Landlocked Countries

“…This state of affairs offsets the benefits of dry ports to stakeholders. Moreover, any obstructions to dry port development in landlocked regions affect the economic development of nations within the regions, which profoundly rely on the existence, efficiency, and operational effectiveness of dry ports along the supply chain (Kurtulus and Cetin, 2019).…”

Dry Port Terminal Location Selection by Applying the Hybrid Grey MCDM Model

“…However, taking into account the role of the DP terminal in logistics networks and some of the basic effects it generates, one of the most important directions of research relates to the analysis of the sustainability of the concept. The impact of the DP terminal concept on the environmental sustainability has been most frequently investigated in the literature, especially the effect of reducing the emissions of carbon dioxide and other carbon-based components [6,[20][21][22][23][24], and also other positive effects on the environment, such as reduction of emissions of other gases, particles, noise and vibration, and reduction of traffic congestion, traffic accidents, etc. (e.g., [25]).…”