The Port of Rotterdam

is not only the largest harbor in the Western Hemisphere, but also a harbor that is still growing and expanding in a fast pace. This growth is little hampered by the current dip in the world economy. One sector that thrives is the shipment of containers. To accommodate that growth a new outward tongue of land is currently under construction: the second Maasvlakte. Figure 1 (left) shows how this new piece of land with terminals on it will look like.

With the new deep sea terminal Rotterdam wil enter a new stage in development. The largest ships that are being build can enter the harbor: the Post-Panamax vessels. Figure 2 (below) shows what enormous amounts will be carried in by these vessels.

The obvious problem that rises is that the flood of containers that’s coming in will completely block the one highway that is available for container transportation. Despite that a new railway line to Germany has been build and is now in operation.

New capacity to transport containers by inland barges and short sea shipping is also created. Fig. 3, (right) (Fig 1-3 are by courtesy of Port of Rotterdam, projectorg. 2nd Maasvlakte)

But even then, there is massive congestion on the already very crowded roads to be expected.

We have proposed a complete and final solution to this problem by introducing the new logistic concept of a Maglev Shuttles servicing a whole range of inland terminal and of course the deep sea terminal as well.

The type of Maglev utilized must be attuned to the purpose of the trajectory.

One type for the longer distances is projected here.
    

Another type for short distance transportation is shown below.

The most obvious way of implementing these tracks in the Rotterdam Harbor area is depicted in the map below.

The red line is the first part, connecting the deep sea Terminal (T) to various already existing inland terminals. The pink line further extends this line to a supposed new inland Barge terminal, with various options to take on or deliver containers at multi modal transfers along the highways and railway lines. Furthermore the green line indicates an already existing subway line for passenger transportation. The passenger service can be transformed in a Maglev service, reaching to the endpoint of the harbor area.

This proposal has been put forward during the 2nd international, scientific conference on Harbors, Air Quality and Climate Change. (website) The short paper describing the scientific notions behind the idea can be downloaded here.
Also a full size Poster is available describing why this by far is the best option to solve the mobility and environmental problems in the Port of Rotterdam. This download is a large file (25 Mb).