European Regional Science Association
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European Regional Science Association
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The abstract for paper number 111:
Bart Jourquin, Chrystelle Lapierre, FUCaM - GTM, Mons, Belgium
Post-deregulation aspects on Belgian Inland Waterways Network Impact on activity chains and modal choice
The recent liberalisation of freight transport on the inland waterways had an immediate negative impact on transport prices. The new economical and commercial conditions imposed to the actors on the market were an important organisational issue to implement in order to successfully enter into the 21st Century.
Initially planned by the European Observatory for the Inland Waterways, a detailed travel survey has been organised by the Belgian Institute for Inland Waterway Transport. The main goals of this survey were twofold : the in-depth understanding of the conditions under which the Belgian barge's fleet is now used and the collection of observations that describe the Belgian market. The survey gives quantitative information for the year 2000, mainly for dry bulk transport.
The first section of this paper, based on the collected data, tries to set-up the most relevant quantitative indicators that describe typical chains of activity observed during the year 2000, taking into account the different types of barges, travel distance and groups of commodities, helping in a better understanding of the adapted behaviours now adopted by the operators on the Belgian waterways.
In a second section, the results obtained by means of a network model are discussed in order to give an estimation of the impact of these new economic conditions on the modal split.
Unfortunately full paper has not been submitted.