Development of Korea-China Train Ferry System An Example of Short Sea Shipping in Northeast Asia

The train ferry, accommodating trains roll on and off, is often called as 'Railway on the Sea' or 'Blue High-way' since she can connect the railways or roads segregated by the sea and improve the accessibility and continuity of land transport systems. The ferry is especially appropriate to the intermodal transport routes mostly passing through the land but have relatively short sea segment. As the train ferry can considerably reduce the cost and time for cargo handling and modal shift and unnecessitates excessive initial investment on infrastructures such as large harbor cranes or vast container yards, introduction of train Ro-Ro ferries lessen the total transport cost for door-to-door transportation with full exploitation of the existing railway system. All the ports placed in Shandong, Liaoning and Jiangsu provinces of China are connected to the hinterlands via well developed railway and road systems. Therefore, realization of the Incheon-Yantai train ferry system will link Korea railways to TCR and the 4,131-kilometer-long Longhai-Lanxin Railway, along the famous Eurasian Continental Bridge. In the present paper, the Incheon-Yantai train ferry will be introduced as a good example of an efficient multimodal short sea shipping system for Northeast Asia.