Abstract Summary
Every year, some 4.5 million containers are being discharged in ports around the Netherlands. Most containers arrive on seagoing vessels in the Ports of Rotterdam and Amsterdam, from where they continue their journey on inland vessels, trains and heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) towards their destination, either within the Netherlands or elsewhere in Europe. To date, there is no complete overview of all this container transport. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) is studying possible ways of mapping the container routes within the country from beginning to end in a pilot study commissioned by Rijkswaterstaat (Department of Waterways and Public Works in the Netherlands, tr.) Essential elements in the process are new data from transport companies and customs data. Incomplete data CBS keeps track of both goods flows and transport flows through the Netherlands. The statistics on freight transport are broken down by mode: maritime and inland navigation, railway and road transport. For certain types of goods such as bulk commodities – e.g. coal and ore – this yields a fairly accurate picture. Bulk commodities tend to be carried by one single mode of transport (unimodal). However, the breakdown is less suited for other types of cargo such as containers: ‘Containers are often transhipped, moving from one mode to another,’ explains Mathijs Jacobs, traffic and transport researcher at CBS. ‘When you look at container transport broken down by mode, the data on transhipment movements is limited and there is a risk of double counting goods in the overall picture. Source data for the freight transport statistics include registers and surveys based on sampling, but these are incomplete. We fill the information gaps with estimation models. These are based on assumptions and they don’t cover the entire chain of freight transport. Especially data on individual container loads and the routes they travel are lacking.’
