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The Colombian road freight transport sector is a major contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and plays a critical role in achieving the country’s net-zero target by 2050. While technological solutions such as vehicle electrification and alternative fuels are essential, substantial mitigation potential also lies in improving operational efficiency. A persistent source of inefficiency is the prevalence of empty trips, cargo-free freight movements that increase logistics costs, reduce fleet utilisation, and generate avoidable emissions.
This study addresses empty trips from a national, system-level planning perspective by introducing a spatio-temporal synchronisation model that identifies opportunities to coordinate independent freight movements travelling in opposite directions based on temporal and spatial compatibility. By relying on aggregated information rather than firm-level routing optimisation, the model enables scalable coordination across the freight network without requiring centralised control.
Two algorithms were developed to estimate current empty-trip rates from observed trip sequences and the minimum achievable rate under ideal synchronisation. Applied to more than 7.99 million trips from Colombia’s National Freight Registry, the results indicate that synchronisation could reduce empty kilometres by up to 39.34% for light and medium-duty vehicles and 37.37% for heavy-duty vehicles, corresponding to an estimated annual reduction of 130,470 tons of CO2e.
The study also introduces the concept of structural residual empty trip revenue (SRETR) to assess the economic potential of empty trips that remain unavoidable under optimal coordination. These insights support policymakers in prioritising interventions, addressing regional freight imbalances, and integrating operational efficiency measures into national decarbonisation strategies.
The freight transport sector is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and a central focus of national climate strategies aimed at meeting Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. The transition to electric trucks offers a viable pathway to reduce emissions; however, large-scale deployment depends on substantial planning and investment in charging infrastructure, particularly in emerging economies where freight activity is highly concentrated and public resources are constrained. This paper proposes a data-driven national framework to support policy decisions on the location, sizing, and phased deployment of electric freight charging infrastructure, using Colombia as a case study.
The methodology integrates real-world freight traffic data with network structure analysis, staged implementation planning, and capacity system modelling based on queuing theory. It explicitly considers fixed and variable infrastructure costs, charging power levels, the number of charging points, land requirements, and service reliability. Priority regions and corridors are identified according to freight flow intensity and network connectivity, enabling governments to target investments where utilisation and emissions reduction potential are highest. A phased rollout strategy supports gradual deployment, reducing fiscal risk and electricity grid pressure while maintaining adequate service levels.
Results show that strategically located, high-capacity charging stations along a limited number of high-demand, bidirectional corridors can serve more than half of national light and medium-duty freight activity while significantly reducing land use and system-wide infrastructure costs. The framework provides implementation-oriented guidance for policymakers designing freight electrification roadmaps and infrastructure investment strategies.
Global container shipping is integral to international trade, and a nuanced understanding of the role of strategic alliances and market concentration is crucial for the continuous and secure functioning of global logistics across different trades. We investigate the spatio-temporal evolution of alliance deployment and market concentration in the container shipping industry. This study introduces an innovative methodological approach - clustering trade routes using Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) based on alliance deployment and market concentration metrics rather than relying on predefined geographic boundaries. The approach uncovers previously unexplored structural relationships between alliance strategies and market dynamics, providing a more nuanced understanding of the container shipping industry's competitive landscape and potential vulnerabilities. We address important questions on how alliance deployment, market concentration, and inequality correlate or differ across global trade lanes and the implications for a potential threat of market power or collusive behavior for international trade and market accessibility. Our findings reveal that extensive alliance deployment does not inherently lead to a heightened market concentration or inequality. On major East-West trade routes, high levels of alliance deployment correspond with relatively low market concentration and inequality, indicating competitive environments where multiple carriers actively compete for market share. Conversely, niche markets exhibit higher market concentration and inequality, with increased potential for collusive behavior, especially where alliance deployment is minimal or absent. Our results underscore the need for regulatory bodies to foster fair competition, mitigate anti-competitive practices under a differentiated approach, and enhance market accessibility in the context of global trade flows. Finally, our research reveals the risk of power imbalances between regulators of small countries and leading global shipping lines.
This study introduces a simulation-based analysis of the decarbonization options for the road freight transport sector. It focuses on exploring the impact of operational and management measures on fleet renewal strategies aimed at achieving net zero goals by 2050. The proposed approach integrates current and planned future policy changes, operational practices, and technology renewal into the modeling process to offer a macro-level perspective on the decarbonization challenge. Specifically, the proposed modeling approach takes into account the reduction of empty trips, the optimization of cargo consolidation, and the promotion of eco-driving practices based on national freight transport data (i.e. covering more than 7.99 million trips). The proposed approach examines the effect of introducing contemporary vehicle technologies, such as new diesel vehicles (EURO VI or higher), new natural gas vehicles (EURO VI or higher), electric vehicles and hydrogen vehicles, as feasible replacements for aging vehicles powered by conventional fossil fuels. The adoption of these cleaner and newer technologies demonstrates the potential for emission reductions of up to 13% (2,070,000 tons CO2e) by 2030 and 47% (13,232,000 tons CO2e) by 2050. In addition, the results obtained from this research can serve as an exemplary case study for other emerging economies.
The port governance literature has charted the trend towards devolution of port services to the private sector, also showing how the increasing influence of external private actors such as shipping lines and global terminal operators affects decisions on expansion and service provision, producing a more multifaceted and polycentric kind of port governance. In this paper we extend these notions to cover both mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. A growing body of literature on green ports discusses the various actions that can be taken to limit emissions in the port area, while another body of literature is growing on climate change adaptation measures, including the uncertain risks and rewards. Both mitigation and adaptation actions are partly linked to the commercial decisions of port actors but also partly driven by external actors (e.g. society, government, regulators). The analysis produces an updated conceptualisation of port governance under climate change, based on four stakeholder groups (public policy, commercial actors, indirect actors and international shipping governance) and produces three key conclusions. First, concession contracts and commercial relationships will need to change, with a more integrated vision and approach to sharing future (sometimes undefined or uncosted) costs and benefits between the port authority and commercial partners. Second, diversification of the port business model will see a larger focus on energy production and provision, requiring the more explicit inclusion of external stakeholders, particularly energy companies, in port governance. Third, port governance will see a return to prominence of the public dimension, both in terms of national decarbonisation plans and particularly regarding adaptation to an uncertain and turbulent future. As ports are both commercial activities and national infrastructure, these different identities will need to be united in a joint vision.
Quantifying greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of logistics hubs such as warehouses, transshipment sites or terminals enables understanding the use of resources and improving the efficiency of operations. Thus, it supports decision-makers on their roadmap to climate neutrality and within the transformation towards sustainable logistics hubs. This research provides an overview of relevant indicators that can be used for measuring the sustainability performance of hubs, along the full life cycle from construction, operation, through to renovation and end-of-life management. Current approaches for the quantification of embodied and operational carbon are summarized. Results of the international market study on energy efficiency and GHG emissions at hubs are outlined and an initial set of GHG emission indicator values for European hubs provided.
This case study addresses the problem of empty container repositioning (ECR) in the Colombian context at a regional scale. The research was motivated by the massive empty container congestion in 2022 in specific nodes of the logistics network. A Mixed methods approach is proposed in this research applying qualitative and quantitative methods that aim to clarify the causes of inefficiency in empty repositioning and to formulate improvement strategies. Street-turn has proven to be a strategy to increase the efficiency in the ECR system. A matching algorithm is developed to pair empty containers in inland destinations with export loads, to achieve a more efficient utilization of trucks in the network. Despite the significant container trade imbalance, the optimization model results confirm significant cost savings and reduction of empty trips of up to 50% for RFT between Colombia's two main ports and their principal hinterland regions. The research also identifies that the actors involved in the ECR system lack incentives to deepen their collaboration, which represents a significant barrier to the implementation of street-turn.
This study examines the concept of transparency as practiced (or not) in ports. It explores the availability of information to the general public and port stakeholders through the ports’ most public face—its website, studying public ports in North America, Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean. This exploratory research centred on identifying the parameters that would be useful for the general public to have sufficient information to monitor, review and in many cases, participate in the decision-making processes carried out by the port authority, irrespective of whether or not laws mandate such disclosure. Fifty-one items were identified for the examination of each port’s website, focusing primarily on four major categories: decision-making governance, port communications and accessibility, transparency in reporting and in port operational activities. Using nine items as proxies for the 51, the research reveals uneven levels of port transparency both regionally and by governance model. The study reveals a need for increasing and differentiating the existing levels and standards of transparency in the governance of the port industry, and for greater consistency between ports within and across regions. The study concludes with a research agenda for future research.
This paper considers two current challenges in the governance of maritime transport, specifically container shipping. The first is the oligopolistic market structure of container shipping, the downsides of which became evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. The second challenge is climate change, both the need to reduce emissions to zero by 2050 and to adapt to effects that are already locked in. The paper reviews the academic and policy literature and unveils a link between these market and environmental challenges which result from a focus on efficiency without considering negative effects such as diseconomies of scale and induced traffic, leading to a continued rise in total industry carbon emissions. The review likewise identifies links in how policy-makers react to the two challenges. Regulators could remove anti-trust exemptions from carriers, and policy-makers are being pushed to provide strict decarbonisation targets with a coherent timeline for ending the use of fossil fuels. Recent thinking on ecological economics, degrowth and steady-state economics is introduced as the paradigm shift that could link these two policy evolutions.
It details the progress of the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN) Global Port Integrity Platform (GPIP) and how it contributes to lower corruption-related risks in maritime transport and, thus, better maritime supply chains. Its' sections elaborate on the endorsed approach in measuring the current port integrity commitments as a concerted effort to create a dialogue between stakeholders, governments, and other institutions on progressing a related agenda and corrective actions that would enhance the integrity of the entire system. The importance of two interrelated concepts, namely transparency and integrity in transactions associated with the realisation of maritime trade, sets the scene dedicated section. Thus, the document details how the MACN GPIP was developed, how it monitors the integrity commitments of ports, and how the findings on port commitments and the reporting of corruption incidents are visualised and dis- seminated to the members of MACN. This section also discusses the experiences, the challenges realised, and the potential identified during the data collection for building the GPIP port commitment database. It concludes with a discussion of the next steps for the MACN GPIP initiative and how its expansion would further contribute to a global approach and a better understanding of port integrity, thus, better maritime transport and trade.
This paper addresses the question whether energy consumption variables and the disaggregation of output matter in the context of efficiency analysis of container terminals. While it is obvious that the energy consumption of refrigerated cargo is higher than the energy consumption of non-refrigerated cargo, this work investigates whether those differences show in an overall efficiency analysis of terminals. This would point to a potentially important input for efficiency measures, to be considered in future productivity and efficiency analysis of terminals. Starting with a discussion on theoretical concepts and variable selection for measuring the energy dimension of terminal efficiency, this is the first paper that applies data envelopment analysis (DEA) comparing results with and without energy consumption, as well as differentiating productive outputs (dry and reefer container handling). The results reveal how the output disaggregation leads to substantially different efficiency scores and are a first step to show the relevance of output disaggregation and the inclusion of the energy variables as inputs in container terminal efficiency studies.
Transparency remains an under-analyzed topic in port research, and previous research has shown that port decision-making and governance reporting are inconsistent across countries. While transparency might be imposed through legislation or voluntarily adopted, effective transparency also includes (a) an organization’s willingness to consistently communicate and make transparent information available to internal or external stakeholders and (b) the stakeholder`s expectations on the visibility and verifiability of information. This paper focuses primarily on the second of these, extending an earlier study that explored the availability of information accessible to the public and port stakeholders through a port’s most public face—its website (Brooks et al. 2020). This research examines a subset of 27 governance variables from Brooks et al. (2020), who explored 59 separate items to identify transparency practices by ports, revealing uneven levels of port transparency. The scope is to identify what different port stakeholders expect to be visible and readily available in terms of board meeting openness, board director conflict of interest, board provided information, and board reports/publications. Stakeholders also provided their perceptions of how trustworthy board reporting was perceived. The data set includes 134 usable responses from 38 countries and this paper analyzes similarities and differences across stakeholders and countries. The responses from the survey are also considered in the light of the results from Brooks et al. (2020) and the extent that ports currently make these variables visible and available. The study concludes by discussing a further research agenda towards a more transparent and thus better port industry.
This paper investigates the role of reputability and public policy on the shipper’s willingness to pay for visibility features in an emerging market. In recent years, vehicle visibility has penetrated rapidly into business thanks to geographic positioning systems (GPS) devices, which allow trucking companies (carriers) to enhance their operations while adding value to their customers (shippers). Although this trend is clear for developed nations, the level of visibility penetration and its impact on the procurement of trucking services in emergent markets remains uncertain. This research provides the first approximation towards elucidating these elements by conducting a detailed investigation in Colombia, an emerging market in the Americas where trucking is a concern. The investigation is conducted through focus-group meetings, interviews, a stated preference survey, and a discrete-choice experiment on 129 shippers. The focus-group meetings and interviews reveal high levels of penetration of visibility technologies in Colombia, mostly required due to insurability requirements. The stated preference discrete-choice experiment revealed the high impact of price over truck-service selection as well as high valuations on visibility technologies (GPS and geofencing) and carrier reputation (good/bad). Other features that are significant but provide lower value to shippers include the provision of sensors, driving reports, and security guards (armed, and unarmed). The implication of these results on business and policymaking are thoroughly discussed in the paper.
This chapter discusses the recent concepts of “deep adaptation” and “collapsology”, which argue that, rather than climate change bringing discrete challenges to which cities can adapt separately, we should rather expect “disruptive and uncontrollable levels of climate change, bringing starvation, destruction, migration, disease and war”. These perspectives are then extended via the “fragile world” hypothesis, which argues that the interconnectedness of modern systems produces a level of fragility that leads to an existential risk. It is argued that these perspectives have arisen as a response to climate mainstreaming and post-politics that have co-opted climate concerns and prevented meaningful action. While cities can adapt to individual climate change threats such as sea level rise and storms by various methods such as reinforced infrastructure, the fragility arising from the interconnectedness of modern systems leaves them vulnerable to systems collapse(s). These collapses can arise from the breakdown of global supply chains disrupting supply of food and other essential goods as well as the breakdown of global or even national energy, water and communication systems. This chapter accordingly argues that normal concepts of resilience that aim to overcome disruptions and return to business as usual are flawed. Instead, “deep adaptation” is needed, moving towards economic models based on degrowth and key systems reoriented towards localised supply and storage designed on principles of redundancy rather than efficiency.
Dry ports are one key option in effective port hinterland integration. This article discusses the development of the dry port discussion over the last three decades and identifies the current main challenges and potential to make these part of more sustainable transport systems.
Port facilities expand or are relocated from their original locations according to several factors, such as outgrowing a limited space or avoiding clashes of use with expanding cities. Previous spatial models such as the famous Anyport model imply a natural evolution in port systems which can in reality be complicated by issues of port governance and competition. The goal of this paper is to enrich the Anyport model with insights from port governance and the port life cycle model, focusing on strategies of port actors to avert a potential decline when the port reaches geographical or economic constraints.
The empirical application explores the evolution over five decades of the port of Guayaquil, Ecuador's primary port and the second-busiest container port on the west coast of South America. In the 1990s and 2000s, port governance reform introduced devolution from the national level to local port authorities, the signing of terminal concessions to private operators and competition from other ports in the vicinity. In 2006 a new deep-water port, 85 km downriver and in a different governance jurisdiction, was proposed. Continuous legal and operational challenges stalled the construction of the new port, until it finally entered into operation in 2019. Despite this development, the existing Guayaquil port decided to go ahead with more channel dredging and to extend the existing container terminal concession for an additional 20 years in order to maintain its operations.
Thus, rather than a simple port migration to deeper water based on specialisation of tasks between deep sea and feeder activities, what has emerged is a competitive situation for the same hinterland between old and new ports. The port life cycle model provides a more dynamic view than purely spatial models, highlighting governance conflicts between local and national levels, power dynamics between global carriers and port terminal operators, changes in intra- and inter-port competition and horizontal complexities arising from municipal and regional boundaries between existing and available port locations.
In recent years a significant body of work has been established on climate change adaptation by ports. Like climate change mitigation, work towards adaptation has stalled on the same collective action problem, whereby public and private sector actors avoid commitment to necessary investments. Recently the concept of ‘deep adaptation’ has appeared, which suggests that, rather than climate change bringing simply incremental challenges that can be adapted to in a piecemeal fashion, in fact, we should expect ‘disruptive and uncontrollable levels of climate change, bringing starvation, destruction, migration, disease and war’. However, current port and shipping forecasts continue to predict uninterrupted growth with only minor incremental policy changes already known to be insufficient for mitigation and adaptation. Thus, this paper argues that actors in the maritime transport sector need to consider greater threats than those currently identified and also prepare for a more advanced adaptation timetable.
