Investigating the impact of greening harbor trucking initiative on port sustainability performance

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Sustainable maritime supply chains are essential to promote modern business growth and ensure healthy market environments. Ports being a major player in global supply chains contribute vitally in the area. In this project, we are investigating the greening harbor trucking initiative recently implemented by the Montreal Port Authority to improve the turnaround times for drayage drivers at Port of Montreal. The initiative involves deployment of communication technologies such as Radio Frequency Identification Tags for trucks and various points of entry and exit at port terminals, and traffic data collection and communication of traffic conditions to drayage drivers by means of an online portal to help them better organize their trips. Reduction in turnaround times will not only result in increased productivity but also minimization of trucking related green house gas emissions at the Port of Montreal. The key objectives of this project are to a). assess the impact of the greening harbor trucking initiative on sustainability performance of the port of Montreal, b). benchmark its performance with other comparable initiatives implemented at ports worldwide and c). identify the barriers and enablers in making it a success and generate recommendations. Efficient methods for sustainability performance evaluation of ports and benchmarking of the greening harbor trucking initiative will assist decision makers at the Port of Montreal in planning initiatives for achieving overall port sustainability performance, thereby bringing larger economic (by minimizing turnaround times and increased productivity), social (by reducing congestion and driver stress), and environmental benefits (by minimizing green house gas emissions from idling trucks) to the Canadian community. The project will also train three Highly Qualified Personnel in the areas of sustainability performance evaluation, simulation, benchmarking, and data mining in the context of sustainable maritime supply chain planning to build the technical strength of Canada in this domain.