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Inland waterways play a much greater role in inland freight carrying in the United Kingdom than is generally realised. The purpose of this article is to show the extent of the underestimation of water transport and to outline the potential for future development and the problems which will have to be overcome to realise that potential.

Inland shipping has been extensively recognised as a sustainable, efficient and good alternative to rail and road modes of transportation. In recent years, various authorities and academic researchers have advocated shifting from road to other sustainable modes like inland waterway transport (IWT) or rail transport. Academic work on modernisation and technological innovations to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of waterborne transportation is becoming apparent as a growing body of literature caused by the need to achieve a sustainable transport system. Thus, it became apparent to explore the research trends on IWT.

A systematic and structured literature review study was employed in this paper to identify the challenges and concepts in modernising inland waterways for freight transportation. The review analysed 94 articles published in 54 journals from six well-known databases between 2010 and 2022.

The key findings of this review are that despite various challenges confronting the sector, there have been successful cases of technological advancement in the industry. The main interest among scholars is improving technical and economic performance, digitalisation, and safety and environmental issues. The review revealed that most of the literature is fragmented despite growing interest from practitioners and academic scholars. Academic research to address the strategic objectives, including strengthening competitiveness (shipbuilding, hydrodynamics, incorporating artificial intelligence into the decision-making process, adopting blockchain technology to ensure transparency and security in the transactions, new technologies for fleets adaptation to climate change, more effective handling, maintenance and rehabilitation technologies), matching growth and changing trade patterns (intermodal solutions and new logistics approaches) are major causes of concerns.

By employing the approach of reviewing previously available literature on IWT review papers, this review complements the existing body of literature in the field of IWT by providing in a single paper a consolidation of recent state-of-the-art research on technological developments and challenges for inland waterways freight transport in the intermodal supply chain that can act as a single resource to keep researchers up to date with the most recent advancements in research in the domain of inland waterway freight transport. Additionally, this review identified gaps in the literature that may inspire new research themes in the field of IWT.

In the UK there have been some recent signs that the inland waterways can play a role in meeting the nation's transport needs. The author discusses the progress already made and what still needs to be done so that the country's canals can once again take up their position in the transport scene.

The Incheon Region has numerous assets that fall within a Pentaport model.' These include the Incheon International Airport, the Port of Incheon, a coastal industrial park, free economic zones, a leisure port, and Songdo new town designed to be the future Silicon Valley of Korea. This paper looks at how Northeast Asia trade flows between China and Korea might be enhanced by application of the Pentaport model in making the Incheon region a North East Asian Hub. It looks also at their trade and logistics systems as well as their water borne commerce. It proposes an integrated transportation system for the Yellow Sea Region being beneficial to the economies of the Northeast Asia. It also stresses that innovative technologies for ships, terminals and cargo handling systems should be introduced to develop a competitive short sea shipping system in the region and cooperation among the regional countries will be essential to achieve the final goal. The potential of methods of container shipping is discussed as it might apply to short sea shipping in the Yellow Sea Region that could greatly facilitate Incheon's situation with respect to the broader region in application of the Pentaport model.

It should be noted that the (inland waterway transport) IWT in Ukraine currently is in its infancy in comparison with other land based transport means (rail and road) and with other countries that possess navigable rivers. This paper is an extension of the research initiated by Grushevska and Notteboom (2015) where the concepts of intermediacy and centrality were introduced in order to assess the role of Ukraine in the global and regional transport networks. The list of key obstacles for Ukraine’s intermediacy function included IWT related barriers such as: (i) deficient inland waterway infrastructure, (ii) high IWT costs (fees for bridges, locks etc.) and (iii) pilotage charges. To date the transportation to/from ports is mainly fulfilled by road or by rail based multimodal transport solutions. We present the unutilized potential of Ukrainian IWT that needs to be efficiently exploited for the benefit of the national economy and national transport system. This study intends to enrich the limited academic research on IWT systems in a transition stage, as exemplified by the case of Ukraine.

The purpose of this research paper is to understand the major factors considered before choosing the mode of transportation for the freight movement in India by different stakeholders and look into the future prospects on each of these sectors, i.e. railways, roadways and inland waterways.

This paper collected the primary data from the various stakeholders in the transportation sector and the secondary data through websites and various ministries of each of the sectors. The various factors are then determined by thoroughly analysing the responses by performing factor analysis in SPSS.

Earlier railways were the preferred medium of transportation, but the dynamics shifted during the 90’s to roadways, and now, it is responsible for nearly 60% of the freight traffic with waterways slowing increasing its share of the pie. Also, there are a lot of factors which stakeholders consider, but the major factors that came out are cost, sustainability, timing, government initiatives, visibility and performance.

The result of this study implies that sectors should create a robust network for easy reach of the customers and try working in conjunction to create an efficient, affordable and highly connected network. This study will also help in taking vital decisions regarding the future planning of transportation sector.

The findings help in improving the transportation network and help in better decision-making by various stakeholders while choosing the mode of transportation.

The British Waterways Board are a public corporation, set up by the 1962 Transport Act, to administer some 2,000 miles of Britain's inland waterways. Consequently, the Board have a wide range of interests, ranging from freight transport and warehousing to water supply and leisure activities. A Division of the Board, the Freight Services Division, is responsible for the promotion and development of traffic and facilities on the Board's commercial waterways (i.e. those designated as “Commercial” under the 1968 Transport Act) and the management of the Board's warehouses and depots, docks and freight carrying fleets.

In the last two decades, different policy initiatives have been set up to increase the share of intermodal freight transport through a modal shift. In the design of these policies, often critical break-even distances are set, showing the cost or price competitiveness of intermodal transport to delineate transport routes that qualify for such a modal shift. In this chapter, we discuss to which extent such break-even distances can be generalized on a larger scale and how they are calculated.

We use two price-based models to calculate break-even distances for an intermodal rail and an intermodal barge transport case. General break-even values do not show the price variation in the transport market and vagueness in the calculation of these values adds to this problem.

We find that for the inland waterway case, intermodal barge transport shows potential on shorter distances as well. In addition, different ways to lower the break-even distance are discussed and a framework for calculating break-even distances is suggested.

The research elaborates on break-even distances in a European context using price data which are fluctuating over time, location specific and often not publicly available.

Policy initiatives promoting intermodal transport should not focus solely on long distance transport. Moreover, evaluating the competitiveness of the intermodal sector solely on a price comparison dishonours its true potential.

This chapter challenges the current European policy on intermodal transport by showing the price competitiveness of intermodal transport in two cases.