Exploring congestion impact beyond the bulk cargo terminal gate

Bulk cargo terminal congestion management, approaches have tended to bealmost exclusively focused on the sea side of bulk terminals. To-date there hasbeen very limited work on land-side approaches to mitigate congestion in bulkterminals. This research aims to address these gaps by considering the effectivenessof multiple congestion management methods across a range of throughputscenarios. This paper develops a discrete event simulation model based on datacollected from an Australian bulk wood chip export maritime terminal and analysesthe effect of infrastructure and process improvements on gate congestionand hinterland logistics chains. The improvements include: variations of terminalconfigurations, a terminal appointment system and gate automation technology.This paper argues that traditional efficiency and utilization measures fail to capturethe impact of these alternatives over the whole hinterland logistics chain.Results indicate that the gate automation technology and the introduction ofan appointment system can reduce average turnaround times by approximately20%. Interestingly additional unloading capacity has a relatively small influence(