Transportation system models to analyse ports competition and cooperation

Abstract

Some global drivers of the shipping market, such as the carriers’ alliance consolidation process and the growing ship sizes have determined critical conditions in standalone ports in the XXI century. The traditional attitude of each port during the XX century was to consider other ports, even if they belong to the same territorial system, as competitors following the postulate of the natural monopoly of access to a territory. However, the necessity to respond to the binding requests of port users and of the ship gigantism brought to different experiences between ports belonging to the same territorial system. New forms of cooperation and competition took place at different levels. The paper presents a theoretical equilibrium model to analyse the competition and/or cooperation scenarios of two, or more, ports belonging to a territorial system. The model is based on the consolidated topological-behavioural paradigm of Transportation System Models (TSMs). The proposed equilibrium model allows to simulate the condition inside a port system, which moves from a competition attitude between ports to a cooperation one, within the same modelling framework. The model could provide to the port authorities, managers, planners and researchers a quantitative tool to understand the competition-cooperation scenarios and to define alternative strategies in relation to the decisions taken by other actors of the market.