Transport via a terminal where transshipment between vehicles or modes is carried out is highly rational or even prerequisites in many transport solutions. Making use of transshipment facilities adds cost to the transport chain and is normally avoided if there is sufficient cargo amount. There are two main objectives for transshipment activities:

1. To enable accessibility to customer through shorter or best lead times through relevant warehousing and cross docking facilities or to enable delivery through more adapted size of vehicle or vessel according to delivery or pick up conditions.
2. To enable consolidation of cargo end thereby use larger vehicles or vessels with a high load factor. To a certain extent there are potentially a trade-off between high load factor and short lead times.

In this model transshipment activities are considered as an additional mode of traffic. The transshipment activities take place when cargo is moved from any transport/traffic activity. From above this can be described as transport/traffic going in the x-axis direction and transshipment going in the y-axis direction as described below.

Transshipment versus transport/traffic activities seen from above

By using this definition some activities taking place within the area of transshipment is considered as transport/traffic activities. Below is a port example.

Traffic and transport activities within a port i.e. the transshipment area (example)

The transshipment activities should as for transport and traffic are divided into core, upstream and downstream processes.

In order to assess the impact of the transshipment node in a transport chain there is a need to determine the operational system boundary as well as enhances a transparent and relevant allocation methodology.

For the operational system boundary we are using the model in figure 11 where only direct and indirect (supportive services) transshipment activities should be considered as part of the transshipment node activity. This means that activities such as traffic management e.g. air control; tug and push boats and shunting trains etc. where cargo remains onboard the vehicle and vessel configuration are considered part of the transport and traffic activities.

Activities within the operational system boundary of the transshipment node

Regarding allocation of resource used and linked external effects there is a need to allocate resource use:

• In nodes where cargo and passenger uses the same facilities
• Between various types of cargo that uses different amount of resources

At the moment there is no common accepted method for passenger cargo allocation within transshipment nodes as for combined air and sea transport.

The only way to allocate fairly is to agree among a large number of relevant stakeholders within this field. Furthermore should the determining allocation factor be what is delimiting the use of specific resources. Since there is no common method at present we therefore use a pragmatic approach described for each transshipment node.