Title: Impact analysis of the traffic convoy system and toll pricing policy of the Suez Canal on the operations of a liner containership over a long-haul voyage

Authors: Yuquan Du; Qiang Meng; Wenming Shi

Addresses: Department of Maritime and Logistics Management, Australian Maritime College, University of Tasmania, Launceston TAS 7250, Australia ' Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore, 117576, Singapore ' Department of Maritime and Logistics Management, Australian Maritime College, University of Tasmania, Launceston TAS 7250, Australia

Abstract: This paper takes an initiative to quantitatively assess the impact of the traffic control scheme and the stepwise toll pricing policy of the Suez Canal on the optimal sailing schedule of a liner containership. We develop a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model for the optimal sailing schedule of a containership over a long-haul voyage via Suez. A case study on a 13000-TEU containership running on the LP4 service of APL shows several managerial insights: a) ignoring the traffic control system at Suez in ship speed optimisation may lead to an infeasible sailing schedule, and underestimate the operating cost (even the bunker cost) of a containership on a long-haul voyage via Suez; b) the optimal ship recovery plan in terms of its sailing speeds is mainly determined by the predefined port time windows, delay situation and Suez-clock time, but not pretty much affected by the levels of bunker price and transit due.

Keywords: Suez Canal; transit due; containership; speed optimisation; second order cone programming; SOCP.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTL.2019.099276

International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics, 2019 Vol.11 No.2/3, pp.119 - 144

Received: 25 Aug 2017
Accepted: 30 Mar 2018
Published online: 24 Apr 2019 *

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