Transport Information Group

Everybody knows summer is a “slow” period. Thus we have not been writing a lot in the last couple weeks on Transport Expertise, but we did quite a bit of thinking to improve the services we provide, and to choose what we will write about in the future.

After six month of successful activity, we needed to figure out where to go and why. Also, some organizational questions have been raised, and we needed time to work on certain things like “How to market our work and the website?”, “How to promote the documents we produce?”, “What do the readers want to read about?”, etc.

To answer the last questions, we analyzed the site statistics and decided that we will mainly concentrate on five particular topics that have been interesting most of Transport Expertise visitors, since the website’s opening:

• High Speed Rail;
• Public Transport: infrastructure, rolling stock, operation;
• PPP / Toll Roads / Infrastructures investments;
• Green Logistics / Green Supply Chain; and
• Freight Rail and Waterways.

Also, in order to better integrate all the services we provide, we chose that we will publish directly the Transport Information Group Newsletter from a “transport-expertise.org” email address. The Google Group that we have been using until now will be abandoned. Working on the new tools will however take time, and we hope the new delivery system to be ready by September 2008. We will thus be able to send other materials such as new study released to our subscribers.

Activity will resume at full rhythm in the next couple days; our goal now is to publish two daily articles, one in French at 2:00 PM Paris time (6:00 AM EST), and one in English published at 12:00 PM EST/9:00 AM PST.

We are still working on two studies that will be released soon (delayed because of the previous reasons):

• French Offer in Urban Mobility;
• High Speed Rail in France.

We hope to see you on Transport Expertise in the next couple weeks/months. We thank you for your support, and wait for your feedback and comments.

Matthieu Desiderio, Transport Expertise Editor

Roissy Carex, a High-Speed Freight Rail project

Since 1999, a group of companies settled on the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport platform have been thinking and working together to set up a high speed freight rail service. From this idea came a struture, involving several partners:

• Public entities: Roissy Development (Economic Development Agency of Roissy Porte de France), the Val d’Oise Economic Expansion Committee, and the city of Goussainville;
• Private businesses: Air France Cargo, La Poste, and FedEx; and
• The Eurocarex College: composed of Lyon Saint Exupéry Airport Authority, Liege Carex (similar project in Belgium), Eurotunnel, High speed Trains (HST) Cargo Schiphol (Amsterdam Carex), Köln-Bonn Airport Carex, and Londres Carex;

There are also two of the major freight carriers that will soon be members of this alliance (DHL and UPS) and a bunch of associated members (see the complete list on Roissy Carex website referenced below). (more…)

Reading Les Echos today makes me rise this question… The French Government implemented a system of tax/subsidy (bonus-malus écologique aka écopastille), that is applied to new cars’ buyers: the system is quite simple, if people buy a car that has a low gas consumption and thus low emissions, the buyer gets a refund/subsidy and if they buy a gas guzzler, they have to pay a tax over the car price (see the chart below for more details).

However it seems like this measure implemented by the new Government early 2008, following the decisions taken during the Environmental Roundtable, may cost around €200 million to the French State in 2008. The reason is that more people are buying more smaller cars than large ones or SUVs, since petrol prices are going up and the tax does not match the subsidies distributed. The Government initially anticipated the system to be self-funded… For the first five months in 2008, small-low-polluting cars sales increased 15% whereas large-engine-gas-guzzzling ones fell 27%, according to the French Carmakers Committee.

Amount of environmental tax/subsidy per grams of CO2 emitted per kilometer

Source: Transport Expertise/Ministère de l’Ecologie

A phenomenon that might be temporary

It might be alarming that the system is not financially sustainable but the Ministry of Finance said this phenomenon might only be temporary. Since car buyers anticipated the new law, many people bought their large saloon cars and SUVs before the law to be applicable, in December 2007. (more…)

Emma Maersk ships are presently the biggest containerships in the world, carrying up to 13,000 TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit)… Not for long! The South Korean Group STX Shipbuilding is working on the design of a 22,000 TEUs cargo… The company, which recently took over 39.2% of Aker Yards capital (European shipbuilder), also announced it will increase the production capacity of its South Korean construction plants (Busan and Jinhae) by 20%, from 50 to 60 ships delivered per year.

This new huge containership will be 450 metres long, 50 metres wide, and might, according to STX Shipbuilding, save as much as 40% of fuel per TEU transported. However the South Korean shipbuilder does not have a client yet for this new kind of boat.

Double the size: is this the way to save money?

These containerships will be almost twice the size of the biggest cargos that are delivered nowadays… I would like to raise one question: is this really the best way to reduce costs, and gas consuption? It is clear that massifying more and more transport flows allows to reduce the “per-TEU” cost but bigger ships (and 22,000 TEUs are “quite bigger”) also need bigger infrastructures: first of all, neither every port authority will be able to welcome such containerships, nor they will be able to invest in infrastructure improvements… It might be necessary to look somewhere elso for costs and fuel expenses reductions. (more…)

To which extent logistics organisations will be impacted by the oil price escalation?

This is a serious risk supply chain managers are going to face! Most of supply chains rely on road transport, since road haulers are for shippers the most trustworthy mean to ensure just in time deliveries. Yet, with the current oil price escalation, shippers will have to take a new look at their organisations.

Over the 1997-2003 period, barrel price was $30 on average. Early 2008, the price went over the symbolic threshold of $100, after a five-year, 350% increase (average 2003 price was a little bit under $30 per barrel). Fortunately, European countries have so far taken advantage of two factors that substantially reduce impacts on road transport prices: the devaluation of the dollar compared to the euro, and the relatively high level of taxation on fuel prices. In France, a financial device (the well known Taxe Intérieure sur les Produits Pétroliers or TIPP) has been set up to partially refund road haulers for every litre of oil bought. Also, another program has been set up to force hauliers’ clients to bear the overcosts due to fuel price continuous increases (with financial penalties if it is not applied): its actual success is however discussed by road transport companies. From United Kingdom’s hauliers viewpoint, this approach is even considered as a stepback to a price-controlled situation and is, as a consequence, not really welcomed. (more…)

Here are the latest U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO) reports about transportation, published in May 2008.

• Aviation and the Environment: NextGen and Research and Development Are Keys to Reducing Emissions and Their Impact on Health and Climate. GAO-08-706T, May 6, 2008 (37 pages).
  http://www.gao.gov/docdblite/details.php?rptno=GAO-08-706T
• Motor Carrier Safety: Improvements to Drug Testing Programs Could Better Identify Illegal Drug Users and Keep Them off the Road. GAO-08-600, May 15, 2008 (68 pages).
  http://www.gao.gov/docdblite/details.php?rptno=GAO-08-600
• Physical Infrastructure: Challenges and Investment Options for the Nation’s Infrastructure. GAO-08-763T, May 8, 2008 (30 pages).
  http://www.gao.gov/docdblite/details.php?rptno=GAO-08-763T
• Transportation Security: Transportation Security Administration Has Strengthened Planning to Guide Investments in Key Aviation and Surface Transportation Security Programs, but More Work Remains. GAO-08-487T, May 13, 2008 (41 pages).
  http://www.gao.gov/docdblite/details.php?rptno=GAO-08-487T