A framework for sustainable port planning in inland ports: a multistakeholder approach

In the European Union, all levels of government are convinced that an accelerated development of a modal shift towards inland navigation is one of the key requirements for reducing congestion and environmental externalities. This is becoming increasingly important, given the fast growing (road) transport needs at the macro-economic level. It is expected that inland ports can play a crucial role in achieving such a modal shift. However, many inland ports are confronted with important spatial, socio-economic and regulatory constraints as, historically, they have been located in the centre of large (capital) cities and other high density urban regions. As a result, they face constant pressure from a variety of stakeholders (urban residents, leisure industry, ecological movement, ?) and they must continuously defend their right of existence. The aim of this paper is to present a conceptual framework for inland port planning that builds upon a multistakeholder ? multicriteria approach, which takes into account all the short-term and long-term stakeholder preferences and objectives, in order to realize sustainable port development. This framework will also deal with the complexity of the port function in urban regions, as these ports/activities are in most cases dispersed over the urban region, whereby each port ?zone? has its own specific spatial, socio-economic, and regulatory characteristics. The combination of existing literature in the fields of (urban) port development and multicriteria analysis, and empirical evidence, gathered during the development of a strategic masterplan for the inland Port of Brussels, will permit the formulation of a new approach to inland port development.

The importance of stakeholder analysis in freight transport

In this paper the multi actor, multi criteria analysis method or in short the MAMCA method is presented for the evaluation of transport project. In this method stakeholders are explicitly taken into account which is very important in the freight transport sector. Starting from an overview of evaluation methods, the paper comes to the integrated MAMCA approach. Several applications of this method are discussed

Proactive stakeholder management in the port planning process: empirical evidence from the Port of Brussels.

Port planning and port management are increasingly influenced by a variety of external stakeholders, each pursuing specific strategic objectives with regard to port activities and port development. A greater focus on external stakeholders may increase the port activities’ legitimacy at the city and regional levels, and may also contribute to sustainable development. In this paper, a new port planning methodology is designed within the context of the development of the Port of Brussels (Belgium) Master plan, time horizon 2015. This new planning methodology describes the port planning process, building upon the decomposition of the total port area in several distinct port objectives were taken into account in this planning process, and how this multi-zone, multi-stakeholder approach can be generalized to improve upon conventional strategic port planning processes. Keywords: Port planning, stakeholder management, evaluation methods

A framework for sustainable port planning in inland ports: a multistakeholder approach

In the European Union, all levels of government are convinced that an accelerated development of a modal shift towards inland navigation is one of the key requirements for reducing congestion and environmental externalities. This is becoming increasingly important, given the fast growing (road) transport needs at the macro-economic level. It is expected that inland ports can play a crucial role in achieving such a modal shift. However, many inland ports are confronted with important spatial, socio-economic and regulatory constraints as, historically, they have been located in the centre of large (capital) cities and other high density urban regions. As a result, they face constant pressure from a variety of stakeholders (urban residents, leisure industry, ecological movement, ?) and they must continuously defend their right of existence. The aim of this paper is to present a conceptual framework for inland port planning that builds upon a multistakeholder - multicriteria approach, which takes into account all the short-term and long-term stakeholder preferences and objectives, in order to realize sustainable port development. This framework will also deal with the complexity of the port function in urban regions, as these ports/activities are in most cases dispersed over the urban region, whereby each port ?zone? has its own specific spatial, socio-economic, and regulatory characteristics. The combination of existing literature in the fields of (urban) port development and multicriteria analysis, and empirical evidence, gathered during the development of a strategic masterplan for the inland Port of Brussels, will permit the formulation of a new approach to inland port development

Het intermodale transportsysteem vergeleken met het unimodale wegvervoer

The intermodal transport sector faces several bottlenecks, which often prevent it from operating as an alternative to unimodal road transport. In this paper, the bottlenecks preventing a further growth of the market share of the inland waterway/road transport are identified in terms of both financial and quality related parameters. The price of intermodal inland waterway transport as compared to road transport is analysed. A critica1 threshold distance is identified for the location of inland terminals. The bottlenecks related to poor intermodal quality are identified through a survey conducted with 45 sectorial experts. ANumber of policy measures that could eliminate these bottlenecks are identified.

Using Co-Creation Methods to Solve Mobility Problems in Brussels

In recent years, urban problems such as congestion and traffic safety have jumped to the top of the political agenda in many European cities. At the same time, governments are increasingly shying away from formalconsultation methods to using more participatory methods to find solutions to urban problems. In the Brussels LOOPER Living Lab, bottom-up co-creation methods are tested in a full planning cycle, from problem identification to co-design and evaluation of alternative solutions to implementation and monitoring of these solutions. The research takes place within LOOPER (Learning Loops in the Public Realm), a JPIEurope funded research project with Living Labs running in Brussels, Manchester and Verona. The LOOPER project seeks to improve co-creation processes in urban governance and planning by building a participatory co-creation methodology and platform to demonstrate ‘learning loops’ i.e. new ways of decision-making, which bring together citizens, stakeholders, researchers and policy-makers to address urban challenges. In Brussels, offline and online co-creation methods have been used to define a problem (traffic safety), collect data on this problem, co-design solutions that solve this problem, evaluate the stakeholder support for these solutions, and implement a solution. This paper discusses how a combination of co-creation tools was used to contribute to a better understanding of traffic safety issues, led to co-designed alternatives and finally implementation overarching the full planning cycle in Brussels. Furthermore, the paper discusses how online and offline tools have been combined in the Living Lab

Multi-criteria analysis in transport project evaluation: an institutional approach

We demonstrate that multi-criteria analysis (MCA), though initially developed in the operations research field, can be usefully applied within the context of the stakeholder-driven or institutional approach to transport project evaluation. We first compare the features of the institutional and neoclassical approaches to economic evaluation. We then identify a number of conditions to be fulfilled for the institutional approach to result in a social optimum that is neutral from a distributional perspective. Such an optimum may not have been intentionally pursued, but may eventually arise as a by-product of the actions of self-interested, individual stakeholder groups. We illustrate the relevance of our approach through a number of recent case studies. Policy makers can use our findings as an input for designing formal decision-making processes, geared towards including stakeholder objectives in transport project evaluation

Enhancing Stakeholder Participation in Urban Mobility Planning: the NISTO Evaluation Framework

Public participation and stakeholder involvement have become core prerequisites of a comprehensive and fair transport planning process. In this paper, we show how the multi-actor multi-criteria analysis (MAMCA) methodology can enhance urban and regional mobility planning and decision-making by considering conflicting stakeholder objectives and helping to identify synergies and disagreement between different stakeholder groups. We suggest the application of MAMCA as part of the NISTO evaluation framework that offers tools to appraise small-scale mobility projects through a toolkit of multi-criteria analysis, MAMCA and target monitoring. MAMCA provides a tool to appraise the preferences of the stakeholders involved or affected by a project. It is based on assessing the evaluation criteria of the different stakeholder groups rather than appraising the project based on a set of common criteria agreed on with all stakeholders at the beginning of the process. Therefore the evaluation shows which implementation alternatives or scenarios each group would prefer and allows for a straightforward comparison of preferences across all stakeholder groups. The application of the MAMCA is demonstrated through the initial results of the evaluation of five demonstration projects in North-West Europe. We show that MAMCA is suitable for a range of mobility projects since it can handle the diversity of stakeholder groups and their objectives. In addition it offers the practitioner a well-structured way of carrying out the whole evaluation process. The application of MAMCA also has the added value of broadening the evaluation process to a wide range of stakeholders instead of limiting it to experts. As opposed to previous approaches, the MAMCA methodology aims to provide a balanced evaluation process where the stakeholders have equal weight, i.e. no priority is given to decision makers, users groups or experts. Our analysis of the process of the identification of stakeholders and their objectives also suggests that there is no generic recipe for the range of stakeholders to be involved in different projects, their objectives and the data that needs to be collected for the evaluation. The MAMCA methodology will be offered to practitioners as a simple-to-use web-based software tool that can collect stakeholder objectives and weights, as well as the input of experts and monitoring data for the evaluation of the alternatives and display the outcome on graphs. Therefore we hope that the tool will improve participation in urban decision-making and evaluation thorough the better integration of diverse stakeholder preferences