HSC cargo ships outperform road transport

Road transport accounts for almost 80% of intra European freight traffic flows. Therefore road transport performance and costs have become quality and economic standards in European logistics.

Alternative systems such as rail or maritime transport must therefore result more favourably in terms of economic efficiency as well as environmental protection before we can expect the industrial community to become motivated and start using these systems. This is the case of HSCs cargo ships.

Long term sustainability of HSC Ro-Ro services

The long term sustainability of combined road/sea transport made available to road hauliers by HSC cargo ships are a response to road congestion and environmental protection needs.

Economic analysis show that speed is the key element for making HSC cargo ships competitive compared to pure road transport; slow standard Ro-Ro ships available at present cannot deliver the service and cannot compete in terms of economic efficiency.

A short presentation of compared efficiency of road and HSC transport appears in a “power.point” presentation (see under)

Facts and figures needed to evaluate long term sustainability have been collected from independent and/or official bodies.

Evaluation of environmental and social efficiency

The European Commission made extensive research on this subject and published a paper called “External costs” (see hereunder the pdf version of this paper).

The MARCO POLO programme of the European Commission provides for an appraisal methodology of the environmental efficiency of all projects submitted. It shows that HSC operated routes are more efficient than pure “road” routes particularly on long hauls.

The example appearing in this section concerns an HSC route from Norway (DRAMMEN) to northern France (BOULOGNE-SUR-MER); it shows a 58 million € environmental and social benefit for a 3 year period.

See hereunder :

 “Rationale for the development of high speed Ro-Ro services in Western Europe”
 “External costs” paper (European Commission)
 “MARCO POLO” regulation – Extracts
 “Calculation results” (Overview) of the Drammen-Boulogne route