Trans-Asian Railway in the Indo-China and ASEAN Subreflion: Volume 3. Section 6

6. SPECIFIC CONTAINER TRANSPORT ISSUES

This section has a specific focus on the status of, and requirements for,container transport in the nominated TAR corridor in the greater Indo-China. Theserequirements, while being prerequisites for the transport of containers by rail in the TARCorridor, are additional to requirements which the railway organizations themselves cansatisfy and include the provision of adequately equipped rail served port and inlandcontainer handling terminals. Other requirements which are within the capability of therailway organizations themselves to provide, such as an adequate fleet of specializedcontainer carrying wagons and an adequate locomotive fleet, are addressed in this section.

6.1 Current Development Status of Ports in the Subregion

6.1.1 Cambodia

The Pon of Sihanoukville, 263 km by rail and 226 km by road from PhnomPenh handles more than 95 per cent of the containers entering and leaving Cambodia. Thepon is connected to Phnom Penh by National Road 4 and by the "new" railway linecompleted in 1969 and in this study designated TAR Link C2.

The pori is currently served by two feeder ship calls per week, both providedby the Maersk subsidiary, C.M.C. One vessel is of 247 TEU capacity and the other of81

TEU, and the average exchange (lift on/lift off) per vessel call is only 50 TEU.

The port comprises two wharves, one of 350 m length dedicated to containervessels and another of 300 m length for general cargo vessels. All container vesselsserving the port have their own lifting gear, there being no shoreside facilities for the liftingof containers to/from vessels. The berth backup area comprises a container yard of about17,600 square metres with a current capacity for 144 TEU (two tier stacking) and a total offive warehouses serving both wharves. The berth backup areas of both wharves are railconnected. The CY has the possibility of providing a future capacity of up to 400 TEU, orup to 600 TEU with three tier stacking of containers.

Two reachstackers, each of 45 tonne lifting capacity work the container yard.In addition, small forklifts and mobile cranes of limited lifting capacity are used in the CYand other berth backup areas.

The ADB is funding the resurfacing of the CY (to accept the wheel loadingsimposed by the operation of reachstackers) and repairs to three out of the five warehousesas part of its Special Rehabilitation Assistance Programme (SRAP) which commenced inmid 1993.

6.1.2 Viet Nam

Since the Port of ..io Chi Minh City is not expected to generate containertraffic for the railway I the development of container handling facilities in this port has notbeen considered here.

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Trans-Asian Railwav in the indo-China and ASEAN Subre~ion: Volume 3. Section 6

The Port of Haiphong, on the other hand, might be expected to provide themain potential for rail-borne container traffic, and the development of this port's containerhandling capacity is therefore of importance to this study, as is the longer term project toconstruct container terminal facilities at the port of Cai Lan.

The Port of Haiphong is located on the Cam River, 103 km by road to thesoutheast of Hanoi. The port handles import and export traffic for 24 provinces (out of a totalof 53) in Viet Nam.

Draft available at low water is only 7.3 metres, restricting the size of vesselswhich may be handled to 7,000-8,000 OWT. The largest container vessel which may beaccepted can carry 400 TEU. Six shipping lines serve the Port of Haiphong.

Three 40 tonne poria! cranes manufactured in Russia (with containerspreaders attached) are available for working vessels at the container berth. For loads ofgreater than 40 tonnes, vessel gear is used. It was claimed by an official of the Port ofHaiphong that the shore cranes had the capability of loading and unloading a 400 TEUvessel in 20 hours (20 TEU per hour).

The shore cranes are backed up in the container ~tacking area by twoSwedish built toplifter trucks each of 40 tonne capacity. Road prime movers and chassis areused to transfer containers between the berth and the stacking yard. However, railwaysidings run along the entire length of the berths and are straddled by the shore cranes,thereby providing the basic infrastructure for shipside loading and unloading of railwaywagons, once suitable wagons are acquired for the operation of container block trains..There appeared to be sufficient clearance to permit flatcars conveying super high cubecontainers to run through the portal of each crane. The sidings along the container berthcan accomodate 20 bogie wagons at anyone time and are connected to a marshalling yardwithin the boundary of the port, as well as to the main marshalling yard at the HaiphongStation, two kilometres from the port.

The container stacking yard has an area of 60,000 m2, which with 3 tierstacking of containers, gives a capacity of about 3000 TEU.1

There is a Container Freight Station (CFS) inside the port, but there is someoff-port stuffing/unstuffing of containers. If a container is required to be transported toanother province, it must be customs inspected and have all taxes paid in the port before

being transported.

The vessel draft limitations at the Port of Haiphong, coupled with theunlikelihood that these limitations can be eliminated by further dredging, have encouragedthe development of a new port facilities at Cai Lan on the shores of Halong Bay, about60 km from Haiphong. Initial work at Cai Lan (from 1987) involved the construction of onegeneral purpose berth of 160 m length (completed in September 1993). Further

'. With a current throughput of 90,000 TEU, this would suggest a stack turn of 30 times per year and an

average container dwell time in the port of about 12 days.

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Trans-Asian Railway in the Indo-China and ASEAN Subre2ion: Volume 3. Section 6

development of the port was to have included the construction of two berths with a dredgeddepth of 14 metres (to accomodate vessels of at least 10,000-15,000 OWT), resulting in anoverall port capacity of 2 million tonnes per year. However, recently submerged rocks werefound at a shallow depth in the access channel to the port, calling into question theenvironmental and economic justification for the further development of Cai Lan as adeepwater alternative to the Port of Haiphong. At the time this report was prepared, thisissue had been unresolved.

A master plan (funded by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency)for the deverlopment of Cai Lan Port is in the course of preparation. Among the factorsbeing considered in this master plan is the construction of a 6 km railway line to connectthe port with the existing 1435 mm gauge line between Kep and Halong, as well as thepossible dual gauging of this line to enable international traffic to/from Yunnan Province tobe handled at the port. However, the subsequent announcement (during 1995) of acommitment by the Vietnamese Government to the adoption of the metre gauge as thestandard for the railway network has implied the need for the port master plan study toconsider the construction of the Cai Lan rail connection in metre gauge, as well as theconversion of the Kep-Halong line to metre gauge, in conformity with this policy.

6.1.3 China

The options of the Province of Yunnan for the movement of its export tradeto seaports were addressed in Section 3 of this report. Despite the comparative proximityof the Vietnamese ports of Haiphong and Cai Lan to the international trade sources inYunnan Province, it is likely that factors of national interest, as well as the construction ofa double tracked electrified line linking Kunming with Nanning, will operate to have aChinese port designated as the outlet for Yunnan trade.

The port of Fancheng in Guangxi Province is most likely to be designated asthe outlet for Yunnan trade. In common with the port of Haiphong and now apparently theport of Cai Lan, Fancheng has the disadvantage of shallow draft (7.5 m at low tide), butis does have established infrastructure, including 7 berths (five for bulk cargoes and two forgeneral cargo) and a rail connection, as well as an active development programme. Thelatter includes the construction of a specialized container berth and an additional bulk berth,for which the Fancheng Port Authority is seeking about US$ 50 million in funding assistancefrom the ADB.

6.1.4 Myanmar

Currently, almost all of the container trade of Myanmar is handled through thePort of Yangon. Container handling is undertaken at the 80 Aung Gyaw Street Wharf 2,which comprises two berths for geared container carrying vessels, a container yard with an

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Trans-Asian Railwav in the Indo-China and A5'EAN SubreJ!ion: Volume 3. Section 6

estimated capacity to hold 1515 TEU2 at anyone time (606 TEU ground slots, with anaverage 2.5 container stacking height), and 2 container freight stations (CFS) -one eachfor the stripping of import containers and the stuffing of export containers.

The container berth isi equipped with one 40 tonne rubber tyred gantry crane(RTG), one 40 tonne toplifter and one 15 tonne forklift (for empty container handling). Anunspecified number of 2.5 tonne forklifts operates in the CFS buildings.

The maximum realistic throughput of the container port has been calculatedat 67,200 TEU per year. The current throughput is barely one third of this figure, butthroughput growth is restricted by several factors which operate to reduce the efficiency ofroad vehicle access to the port. The Bo Aung Gyaw St Wharf 2 is located near the YangonCentral Business District and vehicular traffic in the vicinity is frequently congested.

In theory, the Port's container yard is connected to the rail network, but inpractice the rail link cannot be used for container transport. When the container port wasconstructed in 1990, two railway sidings were built, bisecting the CY itself. When the portwas inspected by the study team, these sidings were covered with stacked containers, andit was indicated that the sidings had not in fact been used for the purpose for which theywere intended since the container ~)ort has been in service.

The restricted area available for the CY would make it difficult to release thesidings for the receipt and despatc:h of railway wagons, but that is precisely what musthappen if the railway is to successfully introduce intermodal services to hinterland centres.Each siding has sufficient length to accomodate 10 bogie flat wagons at one time, and whileboth sidings together would not hold sufficient wagons to make up a block train, the vastlyinferior alternative would be to transfer containers by road to/from the marshalling sidings,some distance from the port. While the container port does not have a practical direct railaccess, the Botataung Railway GOO(js Sidings opposite the port provide facilities from whichseveral freight forwarders operate and at which limited stuffing of export containers is done.

An alternative to Ule handling of containers at the present container portexists in the form of the new port location at Thilawa on the eastern bank of the YangonRiver and southeast of the present port. The recent completion of a combined road and railbridge across the Bago River (with Chinese Government technical and financial assistance)has provided the Thilawa site with a potential land transport access to Yangon, butdevelopment of container handling facilities at this location is unlikely to proceed in themedium term (within the next ten years). In the meantime, therefore, it will be necessary toadapt facilities at the existing container port for direct rail operation.

2. With port container throughput currently at about 24,000 TEU per year, the container stack in the CY

would turn only 15.8 times per year, meanirlg that the average port dwell time for a container is as much as 23days. (This would appear to agree with the observation in the Comprehensive Transport Study that a typicalcontainer dwell time of 15-20 days is curreintly experienced in the Port of Yangon, as compared with a dwellJime

of 8.2 days required for the port to reach its estimated throughput capacity).

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Trans-Asian Railwav in the Indo-China and ASEAN SubreIlion: Volume 3. Section 6

container handling facilities and equipment, although no details of the latter were availablein advance of a feasibility study being conducted by the Pacific Transportation Company Ltd(the joint venture partner with the Government of the Lao People's Democratic Republicin the proposed Lao National Railway Company Ltd).

6.2.5 Myanmar

It was indicated to the study team during their mission that a rail servedcontainer terminal was being constructed on railway property at Mandalay. The function ofthis terminal will be to transfer corltainers to and from rail vehicles for transport betweenMandalay and Yangon port. It is not intended to provide full container handling servicesthere -ego stuffing/unstuffing would be undertaken at consignor/consignee premises. Amobile crane with 40 tonne lifting capacity would be provided at this terminal. No otherdetails of this facility were provided to the study team.

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