Carriage of cargo by coastal ship has several inherent advantages over road and even rail. It conserves energy, since ships are more fuel efficient than trucks. It is safer. Ships pollute the air a lot less than trucks. Coastal shipping also reduces congestion on land and can cater to huge parcel sizes.
Unlike road transport, however coastal shipping can only be a link in a multimodal transport chain. For coastal shipping to be viable, the multimodal chain as a whole including the land legs should be efficient and cost effective too.
Movement of freight by coastal ship and integration of coastal shipping into the transport network could supplement land based transport modes and relieve the burden on them.
Land based transport modes, especially road transport typically carry huge “external costs”, hidden costs that burden not only road users but also society at large. These include accidents, air and noise pollution and climate change. On the other hand, the external costs of coastal shipping are less than a fifth those of road transport.
A workable government policy for modal shift of freight to coastal waterways is required. The policy must be aimed at removing the hurdles that impede the growth of coastal shipping and must necessarily take into account the impact of external costs of transport modes. An India specific assessment of such external costs must be made and coastal shipping incentivized suitably or environmentally harmful transport modes penalized. The use of small non-major ports more extensively for coastal shipping needs to be encouraged.
The study was released at the CII National Conference on Coastal Shipping: An Environment Friendly Alternative organized by the CII Institute of Logistics on 17 April, 2013 in Mumbai.