Socio-economic valuation of traffic in inland ports: the development of a weighing rule for the port of Brussels

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to develop a weighing rule for the socio-economic valuation of traffic categories in inland ports. Weighing rules are tools that provide insights based on the gross and relative added value per ton for different prevalent traffic categories. While port performance indicators rather focus on throughput in absolute tons, stakeholder requests on the impact of ports on society suggest that value added of each tonne handled should also be an important parameter. While most weighing rules developed and applied during the last decades have been focusing on seaports, limited research has been devoted to inland ports and their specific characteristics. Our results show the relatively higher and lower added values for the case of the Port of Brussels, and that the trade-off with seaports and development of co-located logistical activities can be of considerable influence on the added value of an inland port.