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If you had dared to argue twenty years ago that in
2008 barges would sail carrying more than
500 containers, equipped with transponders for
automated identification, you would have been called
a dreamer. Nowadays this is business as usual. The
cutting edge of inland shipping technology has
advanced by leaps and bounds over the course of the
last two decades.
Cabin of a modern inland barge
Photo: Arie Jonkman
AIS (Automatic Identification System) will be required
by law within a matter of years. The Dutch government
will subsidize the purchase of transponders. Soon
traffic controllers will be able to monitor inland
shipping on their displays, as they already are with
seafaring traffic. Information broadcast by the AIS is
purposely kept to a minimum and limited to the so
called Europanummer (Official Ship number), cargo
and the number of people aboard. This is the result of
a compromise between the government and the
inland shipping sector offering some protection of
privacy to the passengers. Initially the introduction of
legislation requiring the installation of transponders
met with a lot of resistance amongst inland shippers.
Nonetheless, the data transmitted are of the utmost
importance to the traffic controller and shipping lane
management. In case of an emergency, knowledge of
the nature of the cargo and the number of passengers
can be a matter of life and death. The continuous
broadcast of this information means that any vessel
equipped with AIS can easily access it. This means
that once this technology has become ubiquitous, a
lot of valuable data will be added to the radar display
in any given ship's cabin. Radar will remain the most
important navigational aid out of safety concerns
however, since a vessel carrying a deactivated
transponder would be invisible to an AIS sensor.
When it comes to the sensory data available aboard a
barge little has remained the same in recent years.
Not only does the skipper have access to radar and
AIS feeds, he has an electronic chart at his disposal
and uses ECDIS: Electronic Chart Display Information
System. The skipper receives current data
augmenting his electronic chart from the shipping
lane manager through an internet connection. This
allows changing environmental factors, such as water
depth, bridge height, waterside construction activities
and water level to be fed into the ship's computer
almost instantaneously. An incredible development
when compared to the state of affairs twenty years
ago when skippers had to jot down the current water
levels every morning at nine 'o clock, when a special
broadcast crackled through the static on their radios.
The largest inland shipping tanker in the world: the Vlissingen of the Verenigde Tankrederij
Photo: Arie Jonkman
The ship's computer is used for other purposes as
well. In tanker and container shipping electronic
transmission of cargo data has already become
commonplace. Relaying information concerning
hazardous materials aboard to the shipping lane
manager has been required by law for years. The
legislature never specified however, how these
declarations were to be conducted. The marine
telephone, operating on a VHF wavelength, is still the
most commonly used method. This analogue process
can be somewhat elaborate and prone to error. In
addition, privacy concerns are ill served by a public
broadcast on VHF radio. A superior method of
communication would be the transmission of
standardized data packets by the ship's computer. In
this way privacy concerns would be addressed and a
certain amount of human error would be eliminated.
A new computer programme, BICS (Inland Shipping
Information and Communication System), developed
by the Dutch ministry of Rijkswaterstaat makes all of
this possible. It will be distributed to skippers free of
charge. Relaying data concerning several different
cargoes spread out over numerous containers in an
analogue manner has become nigh on impossible
already for those in the container shipping industry.
The sheer volume of data leaves ample room for
error. This is not in the interest of safety, since
emergency services have to be able to ascertain the
exact nature of a ship's cargo in case of an
emergency. Not only does this concern the ship and
its crew, but said information is especially important
for communities surrounding a waterway that might
be at risk of exposure to a drifting toxic cloud or an
imminent explosion. European governments
acknowledge this potential risk and in May 2007 the
Central Commission on Rhine Shipping in Strasburg
decided to make electronic declaration of hazardous
cargo mandatory for inland shipping. This means an
enormous shift in business practices for the inland
container shipping industry, because it implies that
any barge sailing or crossing the Rhine (effectively
almost all barges) will have to have be properly
equipped to communicate electronically with shipping
lane managers, including Rijkswaterstaat and the
Port of Rotterdam and similar agencies in Germany,
France and Belgium as well. Before 2007 a mere
twenty percent of all declarations of cargo were
conducted electronically. This amount will have to be
increased by a factor of five within a year.
Obtaining digital cargo data constitutes a major
obstacle for inland shippers. A lot of shipping agents
and terminals are not yet willing or able to provide
this data digitally. In the inland shipping sector it is
generally expected that problems will arise when this
requirement is introduced in 2008.
The Felicitas: one of the three identical ships owned by Megabarging
Photo: Arie Jonkman
The fact that electronic declaration of cargo has
become mandatory signifies yet another passed
milestone for the inland shipping industry, but the
sector is moving swiftly onward. It is remarkable that
the latest advance has been one in the field of data
transmission, since the last ten years have mainly
seen the industry reaping the benefits of the
economy of scale. During this period barges were
constructed that were twice as large as those
constructed during the last building boom. In the '80s
the size of ships slowly increased until the legal
maximum for Rhine shipping was finally reached:
110 by 11.45 metres. The last five centimetres were
added to reserve an adequate amount of space for a
boardwalk while simultaneously maintaining enough
space to stack four containers over the width of the
ship. Over the course of the following decades a new
standard was set in inland shipping. Barges grew to
135 metres in length and seventeen metres in width.
While in the past a maximum load consisted of
205 containers, now a total cargo of 500 TEU became
possible. Bunker tankers in the Port of Rotterdam
became even larger, with the Verenigde Tankrederij's
(VT's) Vlissingen having being the largest amongst
them for five years already, measuring 135 by
22 metres: large enough to carry 10,000 tons worth
of cargo. Recently VT announced that in 2009 it will
launch a tanker measuring 150 metres in length.
The bunker tankers serve a market of their own,
occasionally sailing between the seaports of Antwerp,
Rotterdam and Amsterdam but mainly navigating
within the port's boundaries, since their main cargo
consists of fuel for large seagoing vessels loading or
unloading cargo in port. Even the humongous
Vlissingen is dwarfed when docking next to the Emma
Maersk, the world's largest container ship. Container
barges serve a different market altogether, but this
sector has seen a number of 135 metre long ships
join its ranks as well. In a seaport they are easily
overlooked, but they rise majestically above their
peers when docking at an inland port, drawing
crowds from portside offices on arrival.
Cargo handling facilities used at inland ports have
already been partially adapted to these huge barges.
Ships measuring 135 metres cannot navigate beyond
the larger rivers however, and even here, their range
is limited, Strasburg being an example of an off-limits
port on the Rhine. Even though these big barges are
permitted to sail the Upper Rhine, and no technical
objections exist to their doing so, operators aren't
very enthusiastic about the prospect. Water locks on
the Grand Canal d'Alsace, a parallel canal of the
Upper Rhine, consist of a larger and smaller set of
gates. If one of these larger gates were to fail, these
barges would find themselves trapped on the Upper
Rhine. Considering the money invested in these big
ships - amounts that can easily exceed six million
euros - leaving them idle for even a moment can be
very costly. In 2008 three inland shippers and a
loading office are launching a joint venture dubbed
Megabarging. The three shippers will be operating
three identical ships, measuring 135 by seventeen
metres, and will offer their services jointly. A unique
and innovative cooperative enterprise in the inland
shipping industry.
The United: another Megabarging ship
Photo: Megabarging
Inland shippers have always been able to boast that
shipping lanes are blessedly free of traffic jams. For
the time being this advantage over other forms of
transport persists, however, when docking at seaports
inland shippers now find themselves confronted with
congestion and hold ups. Waiting times at larger
container terminals for inland shipping can
occasionally exceed a number of days. This fact does
little to increase the port's popularity and everything is
being done to combat these growing pains. Sadly, the
'magic bullet' that would solve this problem and
eliminate hold ups at terminals once and for all
remains elusive, while the numbers of containers
passing through port continues to increase.
True innovation still exists in inland shipping however,
in spite of the lukewarm reception the cleverly
designed pallet ship (now carrying standard
containers) received recently. Its initiator, Mercurius
Scheepvaart, located in Zwijndrecht, has introduced
numerous new logistic technologies for smaller ships
and now uses the former Neo Kemps for transporting
containers over short distances. Mercurius will
celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2008 and will be
introducing a new innovation with the name
Smartbarge that year.
The Favoriet: a double-hulled tanker
Photo: Arie Jonkman
As is the case in all branches of maritime industry,
the inland shipping fleet is constantly expanding.
Every month at least ten new barges are launched.
Apart from the aforementioned bunker tankers and
container barges many double-hulled tankers are
joining the Rhine and general inland shipping fleets.
Even though it is currently thought that legislation
requiring transport of petrol and liquid gas will not
be introduced before 2018, the industry wide shift
towards double hulled tankers will take place
ten years earlier.
Oil refiner BP has announced that from January 2008
onward it will not accept ships older than 35 years.
That would eliminate about eighty percent of the
current single hulled fleet. From the beginning of
2010 only double hulled ships built less than thirty
years ago will be allowed to load at terminals in which
BP participates. The fact that 'BP alone' is introducing
these guidelines does little to diminish their impact,
since BP is a shareholder in most Dutch terminals.
The industry will be preparing for this radical change
over the course of 2007. Still, the number of double
hulled tankers remains far from sufficient to
transport the vast majority of cargo until now. The
inland shipping industry has a rocky road ahead.
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