Page 12: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (November 2002)

Investment in Design • By David Tinsley

Promoting A Modal Shift

The actual extent of European public funding to promote a modal shift from road to waterborne transportation has up until now — been far outweighed by political discourse on the subject — no doubt designed to appeal to the popular, environmentalist vote. However, a recently more pragmatic approach by government to the issue, coupled with the maritime industries' development of new technical solutions for efficient, intra-regional freight exchange, sug- gests that the tide might be turning in favor of short-sea shipping.

An appreciation that economic and environmental considerations are increasingly intertwined, and that envi- ronmental performance bears more and more on competitive position, colors new initiatives on the part of both indus- try and more enlightened or commer- cially circumspect governments.

The need to act is urgent. On current forecasts, movement of goods by road within the European Union is projected to grow by around 40-percent up to 2010. In an effort to lessen some of the expected downsides of such growth, with its implications for congestion, pol- lution and accidents, the EU has formu- lated the Marco Polo aid program. This has been designed to give financial sup- port to projects judged to potentially improve Europe's freight transport sys- tem from an environmental perspective.

The Marco Polo initiative provides an important backcloth to a new, Anglo-

Spanish project, which blends high- speed vessel design and construction know-how with powering arrangements based on the latest marine derivative of aero gas turbine technology. Acknowl- largely concentrated on ferry design families and shipbuilders with an estab- lished track record in the field.

Through legacy company Bazan,

IZAR's experience in building three

Mestral-class monohull ferries of 35 knots, plus the 40-knot monohull Ala- hambra, and a 57-knot B60-type cata- maran, stands it in good stead. The pro- posed 37-knot EHSCV, embodying all- edging the preoccupation among ship- ping service operators with running costs and dependability, the accent in the development of the European High-

Speed Cargo Vessel (EHSCV) concept by IZAR and Rolls-Royce has been on operating efficiency as well as reliabili- ty, besides power density.

There have been quite a number of innovative, fast freight carrier design proposals over the past couple of years.

However, new investment in high-speed solutions over this period has been high tensile steel construction in prefer- ence to the aluminum structures used before, offers a payload equivalent to 1,700 lane-m, or 124 trailers, with a length of 692 ft. (211 m); breadth of 72 ft. (22 m); and draft of 15 ft. (4.7-m).

The MT30 gas turbine scheduled for commercial release by Rolls-Royce in early 2004 is central to the proposition.

Two such units, rated for the application at 32,000-kW apiece, and fuelled by marine diesel oil, would drive two or four Rolls-Royce Kamewa wateijets. by David Tinsley, technical editor

Prototype testing of the MT30 started in September this year at Rolls-Royce's

Bristol premises in the U.K. Since the machine has 80-percent commonality with the Trent 800 aero engine, its pedi- gree is impressive. The Trent 800 has logged more than 2-million flying hours since service entry in 1996, and is claimed to have achieved a 99.9-percent dispatch reliability. The question now is whether the MT30, will be viewed as a viable powering option by the marine market.

Certainly, though, the figures for the

EHSCV design are appealing. Relative to road transport routings, and with ref- erence to the EU's own calculations of road freight costs per km., IZAR and

Rolls-Royce say that the new-generation freight carrier will be competitive for routes over 300 n.m. Early feedback from operators has been such that con- sideration is already being given to a possible version of the design incorpo- rating overnight accommodation for a limited number of truck drivers.

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