集装箱环球航线的枢纽区位优化

Optimization of the Locations of Hub-ports in Round-the-world Container Service

集装箱航运业中规模经济较为明显。集装箱船舶不断地大型化,加上巴拿马运河的改造,在不久的将来环球航线这种充分利用船舶规模经济的航线形式将会重新出现,最终使世界集装箱航线形成一个全球范围的轴辐网络。以Ashar提出的赤道环球航线为基础,通过分析航运成本来作一些修正,寻找最佳的枢纽港口区位。优化的结果与Ashar的赤道环球航线略有出入,例如中国台湾港口具有明显的区位优势。中国港口尤其是黄海、渤海沿岸港口地理位置条件相对较差,因此急需加强港口建设以应对未来的挑战。

Under the background of economic globalization, container shipping, which has the character of pronounced scale economy, is an indispensable link of a modem economy. Since the container ships become larger and larger, the expansion of Panama Canal has been put to agenda, therefore ＂round-the-world service＂, which can exploit economy of scale most, will reappear soon, hence forming a world-wide hub-spoke network eventually. This study analyses shipping cost to find the best locations of hub-ports of the container service which is based on Ashar＇s Equatorial Round-The-World Service （ERTW Service）. How to choosing hub-ports en route will affect the world regional economic development in the future, so this study is quite meaningful. The result of this study differs slightly from Ashar＇s ERTW Service, for example, the locations of ports of Chinese Taiwan are quite superior, while those of Chinese Mainland, especially those along the coast of Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea, are not so good comparatively. Although this study is from a new aspect which is pure economical and makes the result somewhat deviate from the status quo, it introduces a new quantitative method to analyse transportation geography. The result of this study reveals the disadvantages of the locations of ports of Chinese Mainland. The emergency is to reinforce the construction and management of these ports to attract more container services to meet the future challenges.