Ports and Short Sea Shippng - Conditions for development of intermodal sea transport

Main objective for the project has been to study the impact of Short Sea Shipping and port structure on sea freight services and which challenges regional planners and ports are facing when they try to establish new sea-based freight services. The analysis are based on literature studies and a regional case-study on port structure and demand for new Short Sea shipping lines to and from the county of Møre and Romsdal.The results show that especially Denmark and Norway have a public port structure with many and small ports. Need for investments in modern port equipments are suffering from this, and the efficiency in freight transport services are reduced. On the other hand today’s port structure secure competition between ports. In Sweden there are a strong concentration of Short Sea Shipping to a limited number of ports.