High-level executives from business and government gathered in November 1998 to examine methods to enhance intermodal freight operations between Europe and the US. This second meeting of its kind was sponsored by the European Commission and the US Department of Transportation. The participants are uniquely positioned to see strategic possibilities due to their active responsibilities in supplying and directing multimodal transport services. For increased efficiency in the economy and environmental protection, multimodal transportation must be used more frequently. It is expected that the regulation will have a positive impact on the growth of intermodal transportation in both the European Union and the United States.
To begin with, it is crucial to understand the mechanism of using freight transport. An agreement between a buyer located in one location and a seller located in another results in a generated need for freight transport services. The agreement is to sell or purchase items under specific terms (such as price, quantity, and time) for either commerce or end consumption (Wiegmans and Janic, 2019). It is a derived demand since it is produced only when there is a requirement for the movement of the product from one place to another. The product may be purchased by the buyer for additional value addition, for resale on the open market to other parties, or for consumption by the buyer.
Trucks now account for more than 70% of all commodities moving inside the European Union, up from 50% 35 years ago (Wiegmans and Janic, 2019). In the European Union, this growth is causing significant issues, such as intolerably high levels of environmental degradation, safety-related costs, and productivity losses as a result of congestion. To accommodate such an increase in freight, additional roads and trains simply cannot be built in the available space. Intermodal transportation promises to rebalance the system in a way that still meets needs while lessening environmental impact.
Governments in both Europe and the United States are aware that they cannot develop their way out of traffic. But there are significant differences between the two places. The location of the United States makes it easier to mix train and road travel (Heinold and Meisel, 2019). Due to the smaller physical distances for transportation within Europe, problems with uninterrupted rail communication across international borders and the impossibility of double stowage of containers (on many routes), the effective combination of modes of transport in Europe is more difficult (Wiegmans and Janic, 2019). Finding methods to utilize existing facilities more effectively is a significant difficulty shared by both areas, while the conditions vary.
Operators of intermodal transportation might benefit greatly from a worldwide tracking and tracing system. A system like this might combine the essential components of any transport contract and place them on a single platform. All of the movement’s tracking and tracing data would be integrated into this system, which may be an online database of intermodal shipments. It is essential to link the systems that business has created commercially (Janić, 2020). The European Commission has already made some progress in this area. For instance, the European Commission is looking at how seamless intermodal applications may be created and promote the interconnection and interoperability of port community systems (Janić, 2020). Through the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, American businesses have set up a program to improve in-transit visibility for cargo and transportation assets both domestically and abroad. The draft modifications to the U.S. Carriage of Goods by Sea Act (COGSA), which are now being considered by the U.S. Congress, were created with the interests of the country in mind.
However, this act’s range of application is more expansive. This obligatory regime would apply to every shipment of commodities to or from the United States that included a marine leg. It is not necessary for the sea leg to be transatlantic. If an airfreight consignment to the United States included a maritime leg across the Mediterranean, U.S. COGSA would be applicable (Zgonc et al., 2019). According to this suggestion, even if a European shipper is suing a European carrier, all claims might be heard in the same U.S. courtroom. Any carrier taking part in a shipping leg would be subject to this required regulation. The original statute, which dates from 1936, appears to have given rise to the proposed revisions to U.S. COGSA; liability was fixed at $500 per box (Zgonc et al., 2019). Although it is obvious that this amount is insufficient, carriers and shippers have been unable to come to an updated agreement.
In order to bring the various stakeholders together and work through the challenging process of establishing a mutually acceptable solution, the U.S. Maritime Law Association established a study group. The drafters saw the benefits of expanding the idea to cover all intermodal travel rather than simply maritime unimodal carriage throughout this phase. What started out as a national plan for the maritime regime’s reform has developed into a worldwide, multimodal concept that unilaterally extrapolates U.S. law outside of its borders. It is desirable to reduce differences across modes and nations, particularly within the European Union. It seems desirable to have an intermodal data standard that might be used in contracts for door-to-door transportation by unidentified modalities. Other current standards and this intermodal standard might coexist.
References
Heinold, A., & Meisel, F. (2019). Emission-oriented vs. time-oriented routing in the European intermodal rail/road freight transportation network. In Logistics management pp. 188-202. Springer, Cham.
Janić, M. (2020). Multicriteria evaluation of intermodal (rail/road) freight transport corridors. Logistics & Sustainable Transport, 11(1), 1-23. Web.
Wiegmans, B., & Janic, M. (2019). Analysis, modeling, and assessing performances of supply chains served by long-distance freight transport corridors. International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, 13(4), 278-293. Web.
Zgonc, B., Tekavčič, M., & Jakšič, M. (2019). The impact of distance on mode choice in freight transport. European Transport Research Review, 11(1), 1-18. Web.