News
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) on Dec. 5
convened the first meeting of its committee for promoting railways in the domestic transport of export and import container cargo. At the meeting, academic experts and parties from the public and private sectors that are concerned with logistics, including shippers, exchanged views on challenges to overcome and measures to take when railway services are used for the carriage of containerized shipments.
In 2010, ports in Japan processed a total of 250 million tons of export and import container cargo, of which more than 90% were moved domestically to and from the ports by trailer. Today, however, due to eco-friendliness, a labor shortage, traffic congestions near terminal gates and other factors, a modal shift to handling export and import containers in other transport means is an important task to tackle for the MLIT.
As such, the MLIT had decided to promote modal shifts more powerfully by finding demand and challenges to overcome from hearing sessions with shippers and other occasions and by discussing specific ways to promote railway transport. During the first meeting, the committee exchanged opinions on the current state of domestic container carriage to and from ports as well as challenges to overcome before containers are transported by rail.
