Part two: Critique

Identify and elaborate the weakness/limitation and also the strength

of the multimodal transport directive. While doing so it is also
important to answer the following questions.
 Is the purpose of directive clear? 
Does the entire directive is clear to understand?
 Are all of the discussion/descriptions relevant? 
Relevance of the directive?
Multimodal is a transportation term. Multimodal transportation
includes public transportation, rail and waterways, bicycle and
pedestrian. Multimodal access supports the needs of all users
whether they choose to walk, bike, use transit or drive. It means
more connections and more choices. Multimodal transportation is
designed to be affordable and efficient.
The Directive seeks to promote Combined Transport operations through
the elimination of authorisation procedures and quantitative
restrictions for Combined Transport operations, it clarifies the non-
application of road cabotage restrictions on road legs, and provides
financial support
The multimodal transport services are being recognized for their
dominant role in the globalized economy, and the operation will
continue to affect the current international trade environment.
Multimodal transport service commonly known as combined transport is
the transportation of goods using at least two different means of
transport from the point of receipt to the recipient's destination
under a single contract. The carrier is legally liable for the entire
carriage process, even though it is performed by several different
modes of transport (Spanjaart, 2017). According to (UNCTAD, 1981),
the notion of multimodal transport services encompasses the door to
door movement of goods under the responsibility of a single transport
operator. According to the information revealed by the ESLSE,
Ethiopia as one of IMO (International Maritime Organization) members
multimodal transportation system has been implemented since 2012 and
currently near to 70 percent of imported cargoes is transported
through multimodal transportation system (ESLSE, 2016). Hoeks (2009)
states that through time shipping and logistics had shown remarkable
improvement and continued to play its vital role in the development
of international trade.
Multimodal transport brings with it a series of advantages that
make this system one of the most used systems in the world, and these
advantages are:

Reduce congestion, sea ports are congested due to the chain of ships
and small vessels.
Reduces costs in monitoring goods and provides greater security in
tax collection.
Reducing customs costs and increasing smuggling control.
Reducing the prices of imported goods.
Improving the competitiveness of national products in the
international market.
Allow scheduling of activities and control of compensation goods.
Reducing cargo transportation time.
Reducing transportation costs.
Reducing the risk of loss due to theft or looting.
Advantage of Multimodal Transport
• Reduce Complication of Liability of Intermodal Transport
• Dealing with one operator for contract of carriage
• Fix the limitation of liability of operator
• One single contract of carriage for entire routes
• Door-to-Door Deliverable
• National Wealth as Hub of Transit Somsak Wisetruangrot Copy Right
2020 23 Advantage of Multimodal Transport
• Reduction in the costs and time for coordination and operation of
logistics.
• Increased monitoring of shipments from stage to stage.
• There is only one company in charge of meeting the shipment
deadline; therefore, there is better control on management and less
risk of merchandise theft or loss while responsibility lies on just
one entity.
• Scheduling routes, costs, staff, and logistics becomes easier.
• The FBL document has preference to enter and go through customs.
Disadvantages of multimodal transport

Despite the many facilities and advantages represented by the use of

multimodal transport, it has some disadvantages, as:

High requirements to ensure security due to constant inspections by

the authorities at stations or other roads.
Certain restrictions of a legal and operational nature due to
differences in international standards.
A certain ignorance of new technologies may occur in the
transportation region.
Disadvantage of Multimodal Transport
• The merchandise may encounter legal and operational limitations
when international standards are applied.
• For safety reasons, inspections in terminals are frequent, which
limits operations.
Part three: Recommendations

Provide your recommendations to improve the multimodal transport

directive in accordance with transport management science. Please
read different text books and journal articles while you provide
recommendations?  Have any ideas been overemphasized or
underemphasized? Suggest specific revisions.  Should some sections
of the manuscript be expanded further, condensed or omitted?  Do
you recommend additions right/restrictions to be set?
Designing a transportation network is a strategic decision and it
will affect many decision makers both from the inside and outside of
the company. Therefore, choosing the right decision criteria,
probable alternatives, and the people joining the decision process
has vital importance. The logistics sector generally has a
decentralized and hierarchical organization structure. For example,
in a LSP, the upper level managers give some strategic decisions that
can affect the transportation or warehouse operation managers who are
in the lower management level. Besides, in the lower level
management, the different geographic regions’ or different
departments’ managers can also have different ideas. As a result,
decisions given together with the upper and lower level managers may
provide a coordination in LSPs. For example, while making long-term
strategic decisions, like as constructing transshipment points and
distribution centers to the convenient places, the top level
management of the LSP should consider various conflicting criteria,
that is, customer demands, product characteristics, safety
requirements, reliability, and so forth. In the lower level,
logistics operations department would probably focus on the operation
costs, that is, transportation, transshipment, warehousing, and
facility operating and investment cost. Since the lower level
managers of these functional areas can have conflicting objectives,
the upper and lower managers should give the strategic decision
together. Due to the above mentioned reasons the problem transforms
to a multilevel structure. Steps of the proposed methodology for
modeling this problem and the used methods for solving the certain
parts of the problem are summarized in
Figure 1.

For the multilevel transportation network design problem, there are more than one objective of the
different levels tried to be optimized. Hierarchical structure of the multiple objectives can be seen in

Figure 3.
Considering the investigated problem, hierarchy structure could be established in a different manner
or the number of the objectives might be changed. The reason of placing the total efficiency of
transportation mode usage maximization at level 0 is to consider many criteria in weighting process.
Evaluating the transportation modes according to a large number of comprehensive quantitative and
qualitative criteria moves this objective to the highest level comparing with the other departmental
objectives. Considering only cost and time based objectives will prevent to take into account inherent
advantages of the transportation modes. In multimodal transportation especially, determining the
transportation modes is relatively more important since transshipment terminals, like container ports
or railroad terminals, will be chosen or constructed according to this decision. Thus, putting this
objective to the top and sorting the other objectives as shown in Figure 3 will provide compromising
solutions for the company. The reason of dividing level 1 objectives to level 2 objectives is to consider
the separate opinions of decision makers who have conflicting objectives. For example, while the
transportation operators deal with the cost and time of transportation activities, transshipment
terminal operators focus on cost or time of the terminal operations. Upper level managers (level 1)
have a holistic approach but lower level operators (level 2) take into account the tradeoffs among the
activities.
Part3
Consider import and export of different goods into/from Ethiopia. Maritime, air and road
transport are utilized to as means of carriage from Ethiopia to international market, and
importing from different part of the world to Ethiopia. Required:
 Conduct comparative analysis on d/t modes of transport using different criteria. And
recommend the best/optimal means for transport for import and export logistics.
 Identify major import and export cargoes that should be transported primarily by using
Shipping, Air, or Road transport separately for import and export in Ethiopia. Why?

The transportation branches for which data are available in Ethiopia are road transport, air transport,
rail transport and water transport. Of these four types, the biggest service provider is the road
transport branch. Accordingly, 90% of freight transportation both in the import and export sectors
and 95% of the public transportation services are provided by the road transport branch. Whereas the
majority of the urban population covers short- and medium-range distances on foot,
By this means rod transportation recommend or sewwtabl for Ethiopia because Ethiopia is a
landlocked country located in Eastern Africa bordering the Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, and
Kenya Road transport is the mode of transport that the country relies on for both domestic as well as
international transport services. Recognizing the importance of the road infrastructure, the
Government has launched the Road Sector Development Program (RSDP) in 1997 to address the 13
constraints of the low coverage of road network and standards. The network which was about 26,550
km at the beginning of RSDP in 1997 has increased to 46,812 by the year 2010
In the context of Ethiopia’s topography and pattern of settlement as well as its dependence on other
countries’ seaport for import and export, transport plays a crucial role in facilitating socio-economic
development of the country. The Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway (781 km old line of nonstandard gauge
of 1067mm) is the only railway that the country owns with Djibouti, but recently the Government has
initiated the development of railway network with the establishment of Ethiopian Railways
Corporation (ERC). Ethiopia has one of the most successful airlines in Africa providing local and
international transport services for passenger and freight.

As a landlocked country, Ethiopia relies heavily on the port of neighboring Djibouti for the import and
export of goods. Port Sudan in neighboring Sudan and Berbera in neighboring Somalia are used to a
lesser degree.
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