ABSTRACT
Center for Maritime Economics and Logistics, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
1 INTRODUCTION
Until recently, short-sea shipping (SSS) was largely a forgotten component within the European transportation system. Intra-European transportation,
especially freight, was dominated by unimodal means, notably road vehicles. Nevertheless, with changing circumstances since the mid-1990s, SSS has experienced a change in fortune. Attention to the sector increased and the EU intended to alter SSS’s image from being slow, worn-out, poor quality and only for transporting low value large bulk products to being efficient and competitive which would form an integral part of the future integrated multimodal logistical supply chain which complements the objectives of transEuropean transport network (TEN-T).
