Recently, Union Shipping Minister GK Vasan released a pre-feasibility report titled ‘Logistics Collaboration between Ennore and Chennai ports’, prepared by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII).
The report calls for setting up a ‘marine highway’ to ferry containers by barges between Chennai and Ennore ports. The highway is intended to decongest the road highway.
The report proposes that containers coming to ChennaiÂ’s two private container terminals be taken by barges to Ennore via the sea. From Ennore, the containers can be taken to an off-dock container freight station for customers to take delivery of the cargo.
Container terminals at Chennai are currently handling 1,200 trucks every day against the road handling capacity of 1,700 trucks because of congestion delays.
The remaining 500 trucks are parked on city roads. At least 2,000 container trucks wait for a minimum of 24 hours on a daily basis on Chennai port access roads from S.N. Chetty Street up to Central Warehousing Corporation, Madhavaram, the report prepared by Athena Infonomics says.
If a private operator constructs the civil infrastructure and operates the barge, the potential saving per container could be Rs 1,600.
However, if the port sets up the civil infrastructure and allows a private operator to run the barge operations, then the potential saving could increase to around Rs 2,500 per container.
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