Investment dynamics for a congested transport network withcompetition: application to port planning

摘要

Containerization has caused a revolution in design and operation of freighttransportation modes and cargo handling facilities. Ports, as important nodes in anextensive network of transport facilities, have to make strategic decisions in the face of astrongly growing market and volatile demand. The investment decision making has toincorporate scale effects, congestion, competition, and a financing and pricing which hasto account for an increasing privatization of port operations. Such port planningrequires to address the development aspects of the transport network as well as theinvestment dynamics of the development of the port node(s). A dynamic investmentmodeling is proposed in this paper which addresses congestion, scale effects, competitionand self-financing, and which can be linked (at a later stage) to a specific freighttransport model.