Analysis of applicability of innovative systems for transport of marine containers

New Jersey ports have been experiencing tremendous growth in container volumes in recent years and it is anticipated that this trend will continue in the future. This presents a serious challenge for the transportation network supporting the traffic related to port facilities'operations. Currently most of the containers (around 90%) are transported to and from the port by trucks, while approximately 10% of containers are handled by rail. The projected growth in container traffic along with the expected growth of commuter traffic in the region will cause a significant increase in congestion which will ultimately completely deteriorate performance of the regional transportation system as well as the performance of the transportation network around the port and within the port terminals. In this situation, the port authority and port operators are seeking innovative ways to improve land access to and from New Jersey's principal port terminals. One way to do so is to apply new, innovative transportation systems as an alternative to existing rail and highway modes. The research presented in this paper had three main objectives: to identify and describe innovative technologies that can be used to transport marine containers, to develop a methodological framework for evaluation and comparison of the innovative technologies, and to apply the evaluation framework and test feasibility and applicability of selected innovative technologies using case studies in New Jersey. Once the technologies have been reviewed and the most promising ones selected for further consideration, the multicriteria evaluation and decision making model has been developed that allows for the analysis and evaluation of alternative technologies over multiple objectives using different decision criteria. The methodology considers direct financial effects as well as external effects such as pollution, reduction in congestion, landuse disruption, socio-economic effects, andimpacts on transportation system performance. The case studies were developed in order to test the applicability of proposed methodology and feasibility of implementing alternative technologies in the New Jersey port region. The analysis showed that some of the innovative technologies are very competitive with existing rail and truck service, and even perform better, especially in case of increased container demand.