Intermodal Transport System Design in Egypt
Research of Intermodal Transportation
System Design in Egypt
Master thesis by:
Rui Wang; 1333585; R.Wang-2@student.tudelft.nl
Graduation Committee:
Chairman: Prof.dr.ir.P.H.L.Bovy
Supervisor in TBM faculty: Drs.J.H.R.van Duin
Supervisor in CITG faculty: Dr.Ir.R.van Nes
Ir.A.Clijncke
Supervisors in Royal Haskoning: Ir.T.Elzinga
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Intermodal Transport System Design in Egypt
Summary
In order to establish a reliable and efficient intermodal transport system in Egypt, the
current situation of all the transport modes in this country need to be studied which could
be summarized as follows. Firstly, at present the road network is very congested and
already leads to some other serious problems like road safety, noise, and pollutions
within cities; secondly, although the Rail-Road transport is already in operation, the
operational capacity is very limited due to the fact that in Egypt the priority of track use is
given to passenger transport; thirdly, the Government of Egypt are making efforts to
promote the River-Road transport in Egypt, especially between the seaports and Greater
Cairo area since these routes account for a large percentage of the cargoes transported
in Egypt. Up to now, a lot of projects are already completed or in process by River
Transport Authority (RTA) to improve the navigation condition of the Alexandria—Cairo
waterway (NCC, 2003).
In this study, the transport axis Alexandria—Cairo is selected as the target project area
because it accounts for more than 60% of the container transport in this country
according to the historical data and the Government of Egypt is also focusing on
developing the cargo transport in this axis recently (Ministry of Transport, 2006).
Afterwards, a Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA) for all the transport modes, namely RiverRoad, Direct Road, and Rail-Road transport is carried out taking the consideration of
different criteria: transport time, transport cost, reliability, policy influence, environment
impacts, etc. The results show that there is a promising future for River-Road transport
in Egypt in the container transport market between the seaports and Greater Cairo Area.
After making sure of the feasibility of this project, the design requirements for the RiverRoad transport system are put foreward based on an actor analysis and a problem
analysis of the current inland waterway transport. All these requirements lead to a same
goal: to set up a River-Road intermodal transport system for container transport between
Greater Alexandria Ports and Greater Cairo Area in Egypt facing the severe competition
of direct road transport and Rail-Road transport.
In this study, the future container forecast, the intermodal transport system design, and
the financial analysis are integrated together. The reason for that is the tariff setting of
each transport mode will determine the modal split of the container transport, and the
modal split will influence the system design and the financial analysis which will
determine the tariff setting as well. As a result, it is an iterative process. In order to make
the intermodal transport system more competitive, the influence of competition from the
direct road transport and rail-road transport are considered in the design. All the
operators involved in the river-road transport, namely seaport operator, barge transport
operator, river port operator, and local truck operator, as well as direct road operator,
rail-road operator are predefined a financial target. Their Financial Internal Return Rate
(FIRR) is assumed to be 14% according to the previous experience of transport projects
in Egypt (Theun Elzinga, 2008). The iterative process of the system design will be ended
only until all the operators reach their financial target.
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Intermodal Transport System Design in Egypt
For the future container forecast, a top-down method is used to predict the container
volume from the whole Egypt to the target project axis between Greater Alexandira Ports
and Greater Cairo Area. Afterwards, the logit modal is used to predict the potential
container flows for all the three transport modes. According to the result of the forecast,
the potential container flow for River-Road transport in 2018 will reach more than 300
thousand TEU.
For the intermodal transport system design, it mainly consists of four parts: seaport, IWT,
river port, and local truck transport. For each part, both the infrastructure design and the
operational service design are considered.
1)
2)
3)
4)
Seaport: The expansion work of the seaport to establish a container barge terminal
is studied at first, including the berth dimension, berth number, and total required
quay length. Then service design is analyzed which means the required kind and
number of container handling equipments at the seaport are decided;
IWT: The improvement of Alexandria—Cairo waterway to ensure a safe and efficient
barge transport all the year around is discussed at first, including the required water
depth, water width, bottleneck lock, bottleneck bridge, and necessary navigation
aids. Then barge service design is analyzed. Firstly, the conceptual design of the
new container barge is conducted. Since it is not possible to dredge a new canal to
connect Dekheila Port with the waterway due to the high intensity of citizens in
between, it is suggested to set up two kinds of container barges: river barge for
Alexandria Port and coastal-going barge for Dekheila Port which can navigate on
the open sea area of 5 km between Dekheila Port and Alexandria Port. Afterwards,
the number of required barges, the frequency, and the waterway capacity is
considered separately;
River port: Firstly, the potential site for the new river port is selected based on a
study on the five candidate sites in Cairo Area. In this project, it is decided to set up
the new river port at Qayub in the north of Cairo according to the results of the score
card under several criteria. Secondly, a short-term master plan of the new river port
is carried out. It includes the quayside design and the landside design. Finally, the
layout of the new river port is presented. After the infrastructure design of the river
port, the operational service design is studied. It mainly consists of three parts: at
the quay, between quay and storage yard, and within the storage yard. For each
part, the required kind and number of container handling equipments are decided. In
the end, other considerations for the situation in case the increasing demand
exceeds the designed capacity are put foreward.
Local truck transport: As the last part of the inland door-to-door transport system,
local truck is responsible for delivering/picking up the containers to or from the end
customers/shippers within Greater Cairo Area. It is also a critical step to ensure a
safe and efficient container transport between the seaports and Greater Cairo Area.
In this study, the required number of local trucks is clculated.
As to the competitors of River-Road transport, the operational service design of Direct
Road transport and Rail-Road transport are also considered. Hence, the required
number of trucks, locomotives, and flat cars are all calculated simultaneously.
For the financial analysis, all the main operators involved in the container transport
between Greater Alexandria Ports and Greater Cairo Area for River-Road, Direct Road,
and Rail-Road transport are considered. All of them are assumed to reach the
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Intermodal Transport System Design in Egypt
predefined financial target, i.e. 14% of FIRR. The financial analysis is carried out based
on the predicted revenue and possible investment cost and operational cost. According
to the results of the financial analysis, the project of River-Road transport system design
is financially feasible. Afterwards a sensitivity analysis is conducted. The results show
that the change of investment cost and the subsidy by the government will have a big
influence on the financial performance. As a result, it is suggested that the Government
of Egypt should provide sufficient subsidy especially at the beginning of the project in
order to attract more private actors to get involved in the River-Road transport market.
In all, there are huge possibilities to establish a River-Road intermodal transport system
in Egypt for the container transport between the seaports and Greater Cairo Area. And it
is also recommended that this new system could be introduced to other transport axes in
Egypt 3-5 years later if this project turns out to be a success.
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