[SchumiFan]

If this means lesser trailers on the Sriperumbudur area near the Chennai - Bangalore highway, I am all for it.

Considering our infrastructure, by all means please get more vehicles off the road. That seems the only way to make things safe for road travelers.

Now if Ford can do the same, the highway headed for South Chennai will see some much needed breathing space especially during office hours.

[apachelongbow]

Originally Posted by phamilyman

This makes good sense. However, if it takes off in a big way (multiple routes / multiple manufacturers) , it has a direct impact on us motorists.

Taking thousands of trailers off the arterial highways can reduce congestion on busy stretches like NH8 / Ankleshwar, but on other sections, it can throw the operator into losses - such multi-axle trucks are often a mainstay of toll tariffs.

That only means that tariffs go up for car owners. Personally I'm all for that - but many of us may not. Especially in more politically charged states, substantial toll rate hikes are not palatable.

True!! That is one more way of looking at things. But the future is in greener cleaner and sustainable transport and the sea is the future. Trailers are useful as long as the rail/sea infrastructure is not built up. Otherwise trailers are too costly, when compared with unit cost.
BTW one more information which will make most of us angry. This feature of coastal transport always existed. However the previous government threw in a skulduggery of rules which prevented local/coastal shipping from becoming mainstream. Thanks to the current administration, that the idiotic rules were cleaned up.

[RSR]

I heartily welcome Hyundai using the sea route to transport cars within the country! This is not just a milestone for Hyundai and a welcome new avenue of transport for the Indian automobile industry, but also a huge step forward for the Indian logistics industry!

Before 1947, coastal shipping routes played a big role in domestic trade and travel. Even inland routes were quite well-developed and used to efficiently transport goods and passengers.

The cursed economic direction the country took after 1950 led to the slow, but sure & steady decline of India's coastal & inland shipping routes. The economic policies of crappy central planning & gross state ownership modelled on those of a failed totalitarian empire (that couldn't even last for three-quarters of a century) sounded the death knell of India's domestic shipping routes.

I was told by old-timers that the Buckingham canal was not just a major irrigation canal, but also a well-developed inland waterway along its entire length. Today, it's nothing more than an open sewer within Chennai city limits. Scientific research has found that this wonderful man-made canal-cum-waterway actually saved parts of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu from experiencing the worst effects of the deadly Indian Ocean tsunami. It makes perfect sense when one considers that this wide canal runs quite close & roughly parallel to the coastline and links several rivers & inland water bodies, and hence acted as a mitigating factor when the murderous tsunami struck, possibly saving hundreds (if not thousands) of lives and millions (if not billions) worth in property!

Instead of realising the importance of this canal and strengthening it, typical hare-brained policies led to the construction of the MRTS right over it. A marvel of civil engineering that saved a large part of the East Coast from the deadliest tsunami of this century now cannot even act as a flood channel for Chennai city. As a result the entire city drowned under heavy & incessant rains in November & December.

Forget domestic & inland shipping routes, even the ports of India were on a death spiral due to the rubbish economic model of the four decadent decades (1950 to 1991). Who in the world would have wanted to buy the archaic, outdated, low quality stuff (in terms of cars, think Hindustan Ambassadors & Premier Padminis in the 1980s) that was being churned out in India? It would be funny to look at the export numbers of cars from India during the four decadent decades (and compare them with the numbers post-1991). Forget RoRo vessels on domestic routes, I doubt if Indian ports even exported cars in meaningful numbers during the four decadent decades.

When one idolises a good-for-nothing failure and models oneself on that utter failure, one is doomed to become a miserable failure oneself! This is what India should have learned in 1991. At least the country was set upon the correct path in 1991 (after coming perilously close to economic collapse).

It's quite normal to take a long time to recover when failed rubbish economics held a country back for four long decades. It has taken two-and-a-half decades after 1991 for the first major & regular transport of goods along a domestic coastal sea route. And that is why something as routine as this RoRo shipment marks an important step forward for Indian logistics!

I hope other automakers also make use of domestic & inland shipping routes, so that this efficient and cost-effective mode of transport slowly gets restored to its pre-1947 glory days.

Originally Posted by Rajeevraj

This is a part of the Government and Port Authority initiative to encourage using the coastal sea route for transporting cars.

Chennai Port Chairman M.A. Bhaskarachar said: "To encourage the OEMs to use our services, we have announced a flat wharfage rate of Rs.500 per small car and Rs.2,000 for big cars. Also the wharfage for RoRo vessels using coastal route has been reduced by 40 per cent of normal tariff. This decision was taken within a day”.

This is welcome!

The Government has promised an incentive of Rs 3000 per car (pending approval) for cars transported using the Sea Route.

But this is not!

I don't see why the government should provide a subsidy for every car transported through the sea route. At best, it may only lead to marginally less traffic on certain highways, thereby sparing towns/villages on those routes from noxious diesel fumes emitted by car-carrying trucks.

Yes, it does help to adopt more efficient and cleaner modes of transport (be it of goods or people) wherever possible. But this should be driven by purely intrinsic natural economic factors, and not by extrinsic artificial unsustainable subsidies.

Subsidies (or whatever such external monetary inputs are called) are a shabby, artificial, unsustainable, distortive and ultimately destructive tool that shouldn't be used in a sound economic model. If at all subsidies are to be used, they should be used only as inputs to create/increase social wealth (quality of life of citizens), and that too only on a sustainable, accountable basis.

Just look at the state of India's economic sectors & industrial units that have benefitted from undeserved & unsustainable subsidies. They are either dead, or are on artificial life support, or have become highly inefficient & incompetent, or are a continuous unaccountable drain on taxpayer money.

In some cases, artificial subsidies & despicable cross-subsidies have led to not only grotesquely distorted economic sectors, but have also led to huge social losses being borne by everyone. Case in point - the dirty fuel (diesel obtained from crude oil) being sold for ~ 25% less than petrol (PSU oil cabal's prices in Chennai), despite diesel costing a few paise (per litre) more to refine. This is after the supposed "de-regulation" of prices of both fuels.

This is the situation where subsidies and cross-subsidies eventually lead to. It's not as if these RoRo vessels are huge wind-powered sailboats that completely negate the need for car-carrying trucks.

This is just a more efficient way of transporting new cars on certain routes. The economic efficiency alone should be sufficient to encourage this method wherever feasible. The government should only encourage competing logistic methods for domestic trade by cutting red-tape and creating/improving infrastructure. The market will find eventually find the best method(s) to move goods on particular routes.

The government should refrain from distorting this sector with artificial subsidies, and companies should also refrain from asking the government for such subsidies.

[Mithrandir]

Originally Posted by MunnabhaiMBBS

Govt should gear up for another Andolan by the Trailer owners association in future

Yep. That's really on cards. Truck and trailer lobby is really big here in south India. This is partly a reason why southern states like Karnataka doesn't have enough interstate or intrastate rail routes. When mining at Bellary was at its prime, every big truck operator in the region made a fortune, completely ruining the coastal highways and creating an unprecedented amount of traffic jams and pollution in the coastal region. We still remember those hot, sweaty, dust filled trips on highway, tailing a fleet of overweight trucks. Transportation through railways and ships could greatly reduce the traffic on highways; provided, the Governments have the will power to withstand the truck and trailer lobby.

[urzdeepu]

Great initiative by Hyundai.

I wish Hyundai also venture by utilizing the Indian Railway tracks too. Almost equal number of cars may be marginally less can be transported using the stocks of Indian Railway. A standard BCACBM approximately can be loaded with 10 small cars and around 8 sedans. In that case one rake can take around 450 cars.

Result : Revenue for Indian Railway, Lesser Carbon footprint than a ship, No port charges and faster delivery from point A to point B and ultimately good amount of money will still remain in Hyundai's pocket.

[rohan.xj]

Just to put things in perspective:

1. Cabotage law has been recently lifted (for RO-Ro vessel). What this implies is that international vessels can now ply along coastal routes, during the cabotage law era, only Indian flag vessels were allowed to carry coastal cargo to incentivise Indian ship owners. This is the norm for many countries! However, the law did not result in massive build up of Indian shipping tonnage ( we own about 3% of global tonnage while we handle almost 14% of global sea cargo) but did limit the coastal freight movement. Now cabotage law is being lifted in bits and pieces, expect this to provide a long due boost to coastal shipping!

2. Bellary belt has a lot of road movement because the region has a number of sponge iron players who import about 4 million ton of thermal coal annually. Since these players are extremely small and fragmented, they cannot carry rake loads (3000+ ton per trip) and therefore demand truck loads. Iron ore exporters find it economical to use these coal trucks to export to same port (Krishnapatnam and Mormugao). Couple of other reasons as well why cargo moves on road in that stretch

3. Maruti plant is landlocked, cost/time of first mile (plant to nearest port) may render coastal shipping Infeasible (they export cars in similar vessels at Pipavav Port), therefore they use rakes! Hyundai on the other hand is located next to a port, so finds it convenient to ship. However, do note that reduction in road traffic is not going to be huge because Hyundai and Maruti use the same car carriers (road based) for trunk routes, if Hyundai shifts to ship, the car carriers would still make the loaded run from Gurgaon to south and then return empty instead of carrying Hyundai cars (which means environmental cost is relatively higher since ship is causing additional pollution).

Originally Posted by urzdeepu

Great initiative by Hyundai.

I wish Hyundai also venture by utilizing the Indian Railway tracks too. Almost equal number of cars may be marginally less can be transported using the stocks of Indian Railway. A standard BCACBM approximately can be loaded with 10 small cars and around 8 sedans. In that case one rake can take around 450 cars.

Result : Revenue for Indian Railway, Lesser Carbon footprint than a ship, No port charges and faster delivery from point A to point B and ultimately good amount of money will still remain in Hyundai's pocket.

Hyundai is moving cars on rakes to Khatuwas (Rajasthan). There is a rake service running between Melpakkam and Khatuwas, about 4-5 days one way journey. Unfortunately, wagon availability is low at this point of time.

[MunnabhaiMBBS]

Originally Posted by audioholic

Ideally, if trailer owners are clever enough, this shouldnt be a reason to complain. They will still have the same business, the only change being the distance they will have to span their service.

Issue here will be apportioning the Operating costs, More you ply, more miles will be available to apportion the costs.

Trucking Operating expenses:

- Driver salary, benefits
- Fuel
- Truck Maintenance & Tires
- Toll charges
- Insurance
- Permits, Special licenses

Greater the denominator (Miles), lesser the cost per mile.

[Mithrandir]

Originally Posted by RSR

Before 1947, coastal shipping routes played a big role in domestic trade and travel. Even inland routes were quite well-developed and used to efficiently transport goods and passengers.

The cursed economic direction the country took after 1950 led to the slow, but sure & steady decline of India's coastal & inland shipping routes. The economic policies of crappy central planning & gross state ownership modelled on those of a failed totalitarian empire (that couldn't even last for three-quarters of a century) sounded the death knell of India's domestic shipping routes.

A very good point sir. It's just not the shipping, take even the railways. British left us with an extensive railway network. While I agree that we have added some more to it in the last few decades, its not even close to its full potential. The south Indian states barely have any properly functioning intrastate railways. Huge amount of burden is being put on the state and national highways. Take for example Bangalore and Mangalore. Bangalore is the state capital and Mangalore is an important port city. But until last decade, we never had a proper rail service running between the two cities. All traffic were routed through the narrow ghat section roads which were frequently blocked by land slides and heavy traffic. Be it roads, railways or Sea routes.. we made no significant improvement in any of these from 1950 to 2000. Hope our governments wake up from deep coma.

[peterjim13]

Excellent Initiative, with newer and better ports around the country, we should have more of such RORO ships to transport Cars and other hardware around.

Railways should also be used, as one of the bhpians suggested on this thread.

At least for this, we should have used some Indian ships. Dont we have Indian companies into Ro Ro service here. In this case, we could have smaller ships and may be ones running on alternative fuel too.

[Ashley2]

Originally Posted by SchumiFan

If this means lesser trailers on the Sriperumbudur area near the Chennai - Bangalore highway, I am all for it.

Considering our infrastructure, by all means please get more vehicles off the road. That seems the only way to make things safe for road travelers.

Now if Ford can do the same, the highway headed for South Chennai will see some much needed breathing space especially during office hours.

No Way. Sreperumbuthur is the gateway for Chennai and trailers need to take the cars from Plant in Irungattukottai and need to go to chennai port. It means actually more trailers will be entering port than usual.
If you are in Chennai you will witness, even during regular night time, in the Aminjikarai road, trailers used to rash to deliver the cars in port. Now that is going to be multiplied.

Also I dont know what will happen if Hyundai new Sanand factory is up and running.

Even if Ford does it (actually their volumes are much much smaller than what Hyundai is doing), the truck movement in highways will be reduced rather in cities.

[DWind]

Originally Posted by Ashley2

No Way. Sriperumbuthur is the gateway for Chennai and trailers need to take the cars from Plant in Irungattukottai and need to go to chennai port. It means actually more trailers will be entering port than usual.
If you are in Chennai you will witness, even during regular night time, in the Aminjikarai road, trailers used to rash to deliver the cars in port. Now that is going to be multiplied.

As per the article in "The Hindu" today, Indian Railways have developed an auto hub in Wallajahpet (easily accessible from Irungattukottai for Hyundai; Oragadam for Renault-Nissan, Daimler; Mahindra City for BMW ; and Maraimalainagar for Ford) for transporting vehicles through rail. They could also use this infrastructure for transporting cars to harbor. So this might do away with trailers entering the port or reduce clogging on other roads?

[sgiitk]

Good news. Obviously, sea transport is more cost effective than land transport. Also, there is a major initiative to boost water borne transport.

See the efforts on to develop the Ganges as a transport route. At one time it was, see the colonies in Kanpur near the river, Parmat (for permit), Khalasi Lines (colony for Stevedores), to name a couple. Just see the amount of freight on the Rhine and you will know.

[vinodvayyat]

Originally Posted by swiftnfurious

While we talk about a lot of knee-jerk reactions and stupid enforcements, such initiatives comes across as pleasant surprise. While the "number # 1" (Maruti) chooses rail in order to move vehicles, number # 2 chooses, ship!

While this is a good move economically for the auto manufacturers, I don't fully buy the argument of going green argument - there are many implications and adverse impacts to ecology with respect to water transport - risk of oil spill, solid waste management, ballast water discharge etc etc. But we are mostly fine with all this due to our NIMBY (nothing in my backyard) attitude - it directly affects the marine life first and then us!!! It is definitely a good thing with respect to reducing congestion on the road and hence reducing national wastage - money, time etc. I also believe this has many implications with respect to optimizing the loads, ship legs etc etc. - for companies it is a win-win situation.

[apachelongbow]

I was thinking about this and I realized that this could be the only sustainable way to clean up and maintain our river system. Consider this. What if the entire Ganga river system was cleaned, widened and dredged to ensure all weather shipping route from Kolkatta to somewhere close to Delhi, where in a multi modal container depot was established to serve the northern cities? What if there were river ports along Patna, Kanpur and all major cities where in goods could be loaded/unloaded? Won't the commercial interest alone ensure that the Ganga remains free and unfettered by dams or rapid encroachment?
Likewise if we sustain the river systems like Godavari, Narmada or the Krishna? Imagine the immense benefit for whole of India?

[joslicx]

There was an article in economic times last year on the work being planned/done on Inland Waterways and how/why Gadkari might be the most important man in Modi government if they have to realize what they have promised in 2014:
http://articles.economictimes.indiat...s-modern-india

Quite an interesting article. I hope they can achieve at least something tangible on this. It can change India.