Today the container traffic trend is such as to accumulate the boxes at a relay terminal and which are distributed later on . The specialized container vessels have become larger and more sophisticated , while the cost of building a modern container terminal is very high . So the practice have become to unload the full vessel at a well equipped modern port and then distributed to the same region ports using feeder vessels .
In order to correctly accommodate the forecast to these developments the planner will have to make detailed discussion with various prominent operating shipping lines . Even the shipping lines changes their policies suddenly from calling there mother vessels at all ports to introducing a feeder service by using a relay port . So modern container terminal planner has a tough and complicated task before him to foresee all such developments and to plane a terminal which will not be underutilized and also not having less facilities .
The equipment factor is discussed in detail in the section - container handling systems. In this context we discuss briefly how the equipment factors affects area requirement of the terminal .
The four main types of equipments are discussed under container handling systems . Major area related factors of the equipments are staking capability and spaces needed for operating the equipments .
In yard gantry system , the presence of vehicles within the operating areas does not increase the risk of accidents and so a well planned traffic flow patterns , strictly adhered to , is essential to reduce those risk to the minimum .
Land area utilization is optimum with yard gantry crane system . Next to this stands the straddle carrier system . In case of other two systems , viz . Tractor Trailer System and Front End Loader System , the area utilization is very poor . So Planner must consider this facts while planning .
