Port Economics, A comprehensive analysis of the

port industry
Management and Policy

CONTENTS ‣ III.
Chapter 3.4 – PORT TERMINALS ‣
Chapter 3.4 –
Container Terminal Container Terminal
Design and
Design and Equipment

Equipment
CHAPTER CONTENTS

Authors: Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue and

Dr. Theo Notteboom 1. The Design of
Container Terminals

Container terminals have design 2. Container

considerations and use equipment that Terminal Equipment

3. Maritime
vary according to their function.
Operations
4. Yard and Auxilliary

1. The Design of Operations

5. Hinterland
Container Terminals Connectivity
6. Conventional vs.

Container terminal. A terminal facility Automated Terminal

Configuration
specializing in the transshipment,
7. Terminal Capacity
handling, and temporary storage of
Use and
 containers between at least two Optimization

transportation modes. They have a Related Topics

footprint including quays, yard areas,

equipment such as cranes and other
support facilities, including administrative
and maintenance buildings and
warehouses.

O nce they started emerging in the 1960s,

container terminals brought an entirely
new era in port development and terminal design. Theo Notteboom,
One of the first impacts concerned the required Athanasios Pallis
footprint, which expanded. A large container and Jean-Paul
terminal occupies a substantial area, mainly Rodrigue (2022) Port
because of storage requirements, even if this Economics,
storage is short-term, usually 3 to 5 days. Where Management and
possible, early container terminals were created Policy, New York:

by converting existing general cargo terminals by Routledge, 690

tearing down on-dock warehouses to provide pages / 218

stacking yards. The outcome has been a wide illustrations. ISBN

9780367331559.
variety of terminal configurations and a diversity
between the available nautical profile and the yard
footprint.
doi.org/10.4324/978
Many ports did not have enough available space 0429318184
to accommodate the footprint for container
terminal operations, which required the setting of Follow @pemp2021

new facilities and new port areas. This gave

opportunities to experiment with container
terminal designs to improve its operations. The
design and operations of container terminals take CONTENTS
into consideration the following constraints:
 The available land footprint that will limit I. PORTS &
terminal capacity, particularly yard storage. MARITIME SHIPPING

The nautical profile of the site that will II.

command the maximum ship size and the CONTEMPORARY

PORTS
number of ships that can be serviced at a given
III. PORT
time.
TERMINALS
The needed infrastructures and
IV. PORT
superstructures and their capital investments.
GOVERNANCE
The available transport infrastructures
V. PORT
supporting the connectivity of the terminal with
COMPETITION
its hinterland.
VI. PORT
PERFORMANCE
VII. PORT
Terminal Footprint Selected
Port Terminal POLICIES &
Infrastructure and
Container Ports DEVELOPMENT
Superstructure
VIII. PORT
MARKETS
2. Container Terminal IX. CASE STUDIES

Equipment
A container terminal relies on an array
of intermodal equipment to perform its
operations, including straddle carriers, gantry
cranes, and portainers (ship-to-shore cranes). The
choice of equipment and its mix is related to a
number of factors in terms of capital investment,
volume, stacking density, and productivity.

Forklift. Can be considered the most basic

piece of intermodal equipment but has
limitations and can handle only loaded 20-foot
containers or empty containers of other
dimensions. This is not a piece of equipment
suitable for intermodal operations but can be
occasionally used.
Holster truck. Designed to move containers
loaded on chassis or bomb carts within
terminals. A chassis is a trailer designed to
carry a container securely with twist locks,
allowing for road transportation outside the
terminal. A bomb cart is a heavy trailer
designed to hold containers with side guides,
allowing for quick yard operations, but it
cannot be used to carry containers outside the
yard. Although it represents a low capital
investment and can move containers at high
speed, a holster truck is restricted to moving
containers already loaded on chassis or bomb
carts and therefore requires other handling
equipment.
Straddle carrier. A flexible piece of equipment
that can be used for all intermodal operations,
such as loading/loading railcars and trucks and
stacking containers up to three in height,
depending on whether the straddle carrier is a
3-high or 4-high. So, depending on the straddle
carrier type, the stacking density may vary
between 500 and 700 TEU per hectare.
Straddle carriers are often used to move
containers from piers to stacks.
Front-end loader. A more restricted piece of
equipment that can reach stacks of up to three
full containers and can be used for double-
stack intermodal rail operations. It can also be
used to manage empty stacks by reaching up to
eight empty containers in height.
Reach stacker (also known as a side loader). A
flexible piece of truck equipment performing
intermodal operations for rail and trucks as
well as the stacking of containers. Since reach
stackers are limited to stacks of three full
containers (four or five empty), they can
support a stacking density of 500 TEU per
hectare. They are often used in intermodal rail
terminals and maritime terminals for
specialized moves (e.g. reefers).
Rubber-tired gantry (RTG). A fixed intermodal
piece of equipment that is used for loading and
unloading railcars from trucks in high-density
terminals as it can span over up to four rail
tracks or six containers. It is also used for
stacking operations to manage densities of up
to 1,000 TEU per hectare with stacks of up to
four full containers or five empty containers. It
can service eight to nine trucks per hour, which
involves 30 to 40 container movements since
containers need to be reshuffled within their
stacks. The RTG has higher acquisition costs but
lower operational costs and fits well into
regular container yard operations.
Rail-mounted gantry (RMG). A fixed piece of
intermodal equipment that is widespan and can
be used for intermodal operations over six to
ten rail tracks, or 8 to 12 containers. While they
tend to be mostly used at port terminals for
operations over large container stacks, new
intermodal rail terminals are increasingly
relying on RMGs to perform intermodal
operations over a series of train tracks, often
with some below-crane space for track-side
stacking. Several RMG models can swivel,
allowing for perpendicular crane side loading
and unloading. An RMG used solely for stacking
can accommodate densities above 1,000 TEU
per hectare (four full or five empty containers).
Portainer or ship-to-shore crane (STS). A
gantry crane strictly used to load and unload
containerships and comes in different sizes
based upon the ship class they can
accommodate. While a Panamax portainer can
accommodate ships up to 13 containers in
width, a Post-Panamax portainer reaches up to
16 containers alongside each other. The latest
class of portainers is dubbed “Ultra Post
Panamax” and can handle the latest generation
of containerships of 24,000 TEU by spanning
up to 24 containers. The latest cranes can lift
more than 150 tons at a time. Containers have
to be brought to the portainer by holsters using
chassis, bomb carts, or straddle carriers.
Portainers are equipped with spreaders that
have twist locks on each corner to secure the
container during hoisting. Spreader technology
has evolved, with quite a few portainers now
able to perform twin and tandem lifting.
Equipment manufacturers have also tested
triple lifting and systems that can handle even
more containers in one move.
The ongoing automation of intermodal
terminals is replacing the manually operated
conventional equipment with semi or fully-
automated improvements. This is particularly the
case for portainers, gantries, and straddle carriers,
which can be remotely controlled.

Conventional Stacking Bomb Carts

Intermodal Port Density of Yusen
Terminal Container Yard Terminals Port

Ship to shore Spreader Automated

cranes technology Guided
Vehicles and

3. Maritime
Operations
Handling container movements at a terminal
involves three segments. The first segment of the
container terminal concerns maritime operations.
Ship turnaround times are expected to be short,
and the terminal must accommodate the schedule
integrity of shipping lines. The docking area is a
berth where a containership can dock with
technical specifications such as length and draft.
These specifications have been under pressure in
recent decades as the size of containerships
increased, demanding longer piers and deeper
drafts. A standard post-Panamax containership of
8,000 TEU requires about 325 meters of docking
space as well as a draft of about 45 feet (13
meters).

Ships of the Neo-Panamax class (12,500 TEU)

require 370 meters and a draft of 50 feet (15.2
meters). Thus, a pier length of 400 meters is
expected to be the right size to accommodate the
largest containerships. The largest container
vessels have a length overall (LOA) of some 400m,
requiring a berth length of 450m. Some terminals
have separate facilities for handling barges (such
as Antwerp and Rotterdam), although most barges
can be handled alongside the deepsea quays.

Types of Terminal Depth Depth and

Container at Selected Surface

Container cranes represent the interface between

the containership and the dock. Cranes have
technical specifications in terms of the number of
movements per hour, maximum weight, and
lateral coverage. A modern container crane can
have an 18 to 24 wide coverage, implying that it
can service a containership having a width of 18 to
24 containers. A gantry crane can perform about
one movement (loading or unloading) every two
minutes. The larger the number of cranes assigned
to the transshipment process, the faster it can take
place. However, significant portside capabilities
must be present to accommodate this throughput.
Aprons (Loading/unloading areas) are directly
adjacent to the piers and under the gantry cranes
(portainers). They are the interaction between the
cranes and the storage areas where containers are
either brought in to be lifted on the containership
or unloaded to be immediately picked up and
brought to storage areas. This is mainly done with
straddlers or holsters. In the case of straddle
carriers, the containers are left on the ground,
while with holsters, the containers are loaded
from or unloaded to a chassis or bomb cart. The
usage of straddle carriers is more common as it
enables the movement of containers directly from
the dockside to the stack (or vice versa). Still,
terminal automation has seen the introduction of
automated holsters that carry containers from the
dockside to stacking areas.

Floating container cranes are occasionally used,

particularly in the context of port capacity
constraints and the importance of barges for
hinterland transportation. A floating crane allows
for the direct transshipment from seagoing ships
to barges or smaller inland or coastal vessels. This
is particularly the case for the port of Hong Kong
which has relied on such cranes to handle
operations within the harbor. The floating crane
concept has been expanded to the floating
container port concept, but has not taken a
concrete form. Like floating cranes, the floating
container port has the advantage of locational
flexibility. However, it only allows transshipment
over one mode and has a fixed footprint.
4. Yard and Auxilliary
Operations
Container storage represents a temporary buffer
zone where containers are left while the assigned
containership is available to be loaded or while
waiting to be picked up for inland distribution. The
larger the containerships handled by a port, the
larger the required container storage yard.
Container storage can be arranged by shipbound
(export) and landbound (import) stacks of
containers. For shared terminal facilities, stacks
can even be subdivided according to shippers. The
stacking density of container storage varies
depending on the selected equipment and the
yard configuration.

For linear layout configurations, containers are

either stored on a chassis (rare for port terminals
but more common for rail terminals) or on linear
stacks of two or three containers in height that
straddle carriers can circulate over. Block
layouts are serviced by rubber-tired gantry
cranes or by rail-mounted (wide span) gantry
cranes, enabling a higher storage density of at
least four containers across (seven or eight for a
wide span crane, if not more) and five full
containers in height. However, higher stacking
densities are linked with additional repositioning
and rehandling of containers, requiring effective
yard management systems. Rows of containers
can be parallel or perpendicular to piers
depending on the configuration and operations of
the terminal.

Most terminals have dedicated reefers

(refrigerated containers) storage areas where they
can be plugged in, representing, on average,
about 5% of a terminal’s stacking area. Specific
storage areas are also assigned to empties, which
can be stacked up to seven or eight containers in
height due to less stringent weight
limitations. Empty container stacks are easily
distinguishable from loaded container stacks
because of different stacking configurations;
empty stacks are higher and denser. For terminals
facing capacity pressures, the tendency has been
to have empty container depots outside terminal
facilities. The majority of container yards also have
storage for refrigerated containers, which requires
specialized equipment, namely electric plugs.

The Configuration of
Container Yards Rubber Tired Gantry Crane

Empty Containers Stacking

Stacked Reefer Storage Area Maher Container
Maher Terminal Newark Terminal Newark
A series of on-site activities support a container
terminal. The management facility
(administrative building) of the terminal often has
a control tower to ensure a level of visibility of the
terminal area. This is where many complex
logistical functions are performed, such as the
assignment of delivered containers to a storage
space location as well as the location and the
loading or unloading sequence of containers by
straddlers and holsters. Additionally, the complex
task of designing the loading and unloading
sequence of a containership is performed. To do
so, the container weight must be verified to ensure
a safe load configuration aboard containerships,
particularly those of very large size. Further,
container weight must not exceed the operational
requirements of handling equipment and lashing
systems aboard ships. With digitalization and
automation, the administration building has
become the information and telecommunication
nexus of the terminal.

Repair and maintenance areas are where the

regular maintenance of the terminal’s heavy
equipment is performed. Chassis storage areas
are where empty chassis are stored while waiting
to be allocated to a truck or a holster. While in
North American terminals, chassis storage can
take a notable amount of space because chassis
are owned by pools, trucking companies own the
chassis and bring them to the terminal in most of
the world. The outcome is less space allocated for
chassis storage. Usually, chassis are stored outside
the terminal facility since chassis storage is a poor
use of valuable terminal real estate.

The container freight station (CFS) can be an

important auxiliary operation within the terminal.
It allows for the consolidation or deconsolidation
of containerized loads, with direct interaction with
the container yard. Accessing empty containers
and providing loaded containers are among the
key benefits of having CFS within or adjacent to a
port terminal. They have become a common
element of port logistics.

Container Freight Station Shenzhen China

5. Hinterland
Connectivity
Port terminals are connected to their hinterlands
through inland transportation modes. The gate
represents the terminal’s entry and exit point,
handling up to 25 trucks at once for a large
terminal facility. Truck drivers present proper
documentation (bill of lading) for pick up or
delivery. Most of the inspection is done remotely
with cameras and intercom systems. An operator
can remotely see the container identification
number and verify if it corresponds to the bill of
lading. Modern management systems no longer
require paperwork since all the documentation is
kept in an electronic format that is transmissible
through secure connections. With appointment
systems, the priority is to verify the identity of the
truck driver, the truck, the container, and the
chassis, which are all registered.

For a delivery, the truck is assigned to a specific

slot at the truck drop/pick up area where the
chassis holding the container will be left to be
picked up by a holster, a straddle carrier, or a
gantry crane for more recent terminal designs. For
a pickup, the truck will be assigned to a slot in a
waiting area while the container is being picked up
from a storage area, put on a chassis (if the truck
does not bring its own chassis), and brought to the
proper slot. The truck will then head out of the
terminal, be inspected to ensure that the right
container has been picked up, and head inland. If
this is well managed (such as by use of an
appointment system), the container will already
be available for pick up (on a chassis in the truck
drop/pick up area). However, pick-up delays can
sometimes be considerable (hours) when a large
containership has just delivered a significant batch
of containers, and there is a “rush” to be the first
to pick them up. Therefore, terminal operators
have made substantial efforts in recent years to
improve the throughput of terminal gates through
better design and the application of information
technologies, including appointment systems.

Remote Verification of
Container Identification at a On Dock Rail Maher Terminal
Port Terminal Gate Newark

Many large container terminals have an adjacent

rail terminal to which they are directly connected.
On-dock or near-dock rail terminals enable the
composition of large containerized unit trains that
reach long-distance inland markets through inland
ports. An important advantage of on-dock rail
facilities compared with near-dock rail facilities is
that the container does not have to clear the gate
of the marine terminal. In North America, since
container unit trains can be very long (longer than
the container port terminal facility), segments are
assembled in the port on-dock rail facility and
brought to a near-dock facility for full unit train
assembly.

6. Conventional vs.
Automated Terminal
Configuration
There are two major port container terminal
configurations; conventional and automated. The
impacts of automation are not fully implemented
in terminal operations, leading to changes in
terminal configurations.

Although the function of both conventional and

automated container terminals is the same (ship-
to-shore transfer), their operations differ. In
a conventional terminal, containers are brought to
a pickup/drop-off area, where they will be moved
to the stacking area by a holster truck or a straddle
carrier. Then, they will be brought quay-side by
another holster truck or straddle carrier when
ready to be loaded unto a ship. The
emerging automated container terminal paradigm
relies on block layouts that are perpendicular to
the piers. These stacking blocks are serviced by
automated stacking cranes (ASC), allowing quick
storage and retrieval. On the gate side, stacks are
serviced by trucks that have their containers
picked up by an ASC. On the pier side, containers
are retrieved by straddle carriers or automated
guided vehicles (AGV; for fully automated
terminals) and brought to the end of a stack. The
main differences between conventional and
automated container terminal configurations are
that the latter reduces horizontal ground
movements and removes vehicles from the
stacking areas, enabling a higher stacking density.

Areas close to container terminals tend to have a

high concentration of activities linked to freight
distribution, such as distribution centers, empty
container storage depots, trucking companies,
and large retailers. This is commonly associated
with high congestion levels around the port
terminal facilities. To deal with the issue, the
design of several container terminals has been
modified to include coordination between on-dock
rail facilities and satellite terminals as well as
container depots. The goal is to transfer a part of
the footprint to another less constrained location.

Conventional and The Insertion of a Satellite

Emerging Container Terminal in Port Operations
Terminal Configurations

7. Terminal Capacity
Use and Optimization
Terminal equipment is combined to form an
integrated container terminal system. The total
terminal capacity is determined by the interaction
between three levels, which are the quay, the yard,
and the gate system:

Ship or quay-related operational challenges

include the berth allocation problem (BAP), the
vessel stowage planning problem, and the quay
crane assignment/scheduling problem (QCAP).
In most cases, berth and quay crane planning
are combined in the integrated berth allocation
and quay crane assignment problem (BACAP).
 The yard allocation problem (YAP) involves
the design of the stacking area (in terms of
stacking height and slot capacity) or the
optimization of container storage and stacking
operations as a function of container type
(reefer, dry, liquid), container flow (import,
export, transshipment, empties) and dwell time
characteristics. Yard-related issues also deal
with intra-terminal transport, such as the
transport between the quayside and the
stacking area and the intra-terminal reshuffling
of containers. Here, the optimization of yard
operations usually involves an integrated
approach, such as by simultaneously
determining the yard crane schedules and the
vehicle parking positions.
Gate optimization deals with the connectivity
of terminals to landside transportation modes,
such as rail transport, inland barges, and
trucking. Typical operational challenges in this
field include the truck gate process optimization
problem, gate appointment systems, the
equipment assignment problem, and the modal
separation on a terminal in space and time.

The optimal container terminal design is

rectangular, but the relationship between water,
yard, and gate capacity varies according to the
terminal function. Gateway terminals tend to be
more square-shaped (more yard space), while
transshipment hubs tend to be elongated
rectangles (more berth space). Terminal
optimization is about optimizing the quay, yard,
and gate operations individually and finding an
optimal balance between the three capacity
dimensions. For example, terminal operators can
find a better balance between quay and yard
capacity by focusing on hardware investments
(infrastructure, equipment), software
(optimizations using IT solutions), and orgware
(for example, through pricing incentives).

In the past decades, terminal operators have

developed a more integrated view of container
terminal optimization, often relying on simulation
approaches to analyze terminal operations from a
system-based perspective combining
BAP/QCAP/BACAP with YAP. Discrete-event
simulation remains one of the most popular
techniques in terminal operations modeling. Other
techniques have been used, such as agent-based
modeling, network-based modeling, simulation-
based education, and web-based simulation.
These optimization techniques are incorporated in
terminal design applications and Terminal
Operating Systems (TOS). Artificial intelligence
(AI) and advanced machine learning have also
found their way to terminal optimization.

Quay and Yard Modal Balancing

Equipment Separation in Water and Yard

Related Topics
 Chapter 3.1 Terminals and Terminal Operators
Chapter 3.2 Terminal Concessions and Land
Leases
Chapter 3.7 Dock Labor
Chapter 3.8 Terminal Automation
Chapter 8.1 Cruise Ports
Chapter 8.2 Break-Bulk

References

Bose, J.W. (ed) (2020) Handbook of Terminal

Planning, Springer Cham, ISBN 978-3-030-
39989-4. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-
39990-0.
Vis, I.F.A. and R. de Koster (2003)
“Transshipment of containers at a container
terminal: An overview”, European Journal of
Operational Research, Vol. 147, No. 1, pp. 1-16.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0377-2217(02)00293-X.

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