A terminal is defined as the end or end part. In the case of transportation, a terminal

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A “terminal” is defined as the end or end part. In the case of transportation, a terminal exists at either end of a railway line, an airline route, or any shipping route where sheds, hangars, garages, offices, and stations to handle freight and passengers are located.

Traditionally, ports were developed in natural harbours, and they became the hearts of many a city:

 Terminals originally appeared in the centre of an urban settlement and were designed to service that settlement, e.g., London.

 Terminals developed in ports that offered good protection for ships to shelter from storms, e.g., Vancouver, San Francisco.

 The terminal consisted of a wharf or wharves built in line with the local waterfront.

 In the 19th century, “finger piers” were developed. These took up less space along the waterfront and took advantage of the deeper water away from the shore. Such piers are uncommon today, although an example of one that has survived and been improved is Canada Place in Vancouver. Originally, this was Pier B & C, owned and operated by the Canadian Pacific Railway to handle general cargo, but it is now a cruise ship passenger terminal (complete with hotel and convention centre).

 Some older terminals have been converted into large areas of open land. In the Port of Vancouver, Centennial Pier was extended westwards by landfill, creating the port’s first container terminal, Centerm. This happened in the late 1960s. In the 1990s, the facility was extended eastward to link up with a much older finger pier, Ballantyne Pier, to create a large storage area for cargos such as steel or lumber, or for increased container storage.

 Specialized terminals have been developed. Westshore Terminal in the Port of Vancouver was built at Roberts Bank, about 40 kilometres from the main harbour, specifically to provide a facility to load coal into deep draft vessels. This included a four-kilometre-long causeway to carry road and rail traffic to the site. The location served to keep air pollution created by coal dust and the noise of machinery away from residential areas.

 New terminals in nonurban areas have been developed. Delta Port Container Terminal was built adjacent to the Westshore Coal Terminal. It sits in a rural agricultural area, 30 or 40 kilometres from urban industrial areas. The site is advantageous to ships and can save four hours in their transit to the Port of Vancouver. It also is beneficial to rail traffic that does not have to be routed through congested railyards and thus gains valuable time in the movement of freight across the continent.

 In Europe, most of Rotterdam’s terminals are along either side of the River Waal, including plenty of adjacent harbor basins with additional finger piers. The demand for more container terminals, especially for the ever-increasing large container ships requiring deeper water, has prompted the Dutch to build a huge container terminal complex at the Maasvlakte, where the river empties into the North Sea, called Europort. Deep water and unique fully automatic terminal operations can accommodate the latest and biggest container ships with ease.

Part of the Maasvlakte is also the biggest bulk terminal in Western Europe. Many say that the Vancouver Roberts Bank coal and Delta Port container terminal was based on the Dutch Maasvlakte concept.

Ships are usually loaded and unloaded at marine terminals in the port. In some cases, where the water draft at the terminal in the port is too shallow for the ship to dock alongside, cargo may be discharged from the ship offshore from the port onto lighters,1 and then the lighters are towed into port to the terminal. The problem with lightering1 is that sea swells quite often make it a very dangerous and unstable discharge or loading operation.

Certain marine terminals are purposely built to suit the efficient handling of a particular commodity.

GRAIN TERMINALS

Grain terminals have large silos called elevators near the water’s edge to store the grain. A flexible spout is used to blow the grain from the elevator directly into the ship’s hold. Most grain terminals have several spouts and can load different holds simultaneously.

Discharging bulk out of a ship is done either with large vacuvators and sucked directly into elevators or by conventional large grabber buckets into shore hoppers, from where the grain is either bagged immediately or carried by conveyor belt to a place of rest away from the ship at the terminal.

Grabbers and conveyor belt systems are also the most popular way to load or discharge other bulk goods such as coal, iron ore, or other similar cargo.

CONTAINER TERMINALS

Container terminals usually have multiple large gantry cranes on special rail tracks alongside the water’s edge. The gantry cranes reach over the docked container ship and can load and/or discharge containers directly from any position inside or on deck of the ship. The gantry’s operator has an unobstructed vertical view above the container.

On the land side, the gantry operator places the container onto specially designed trailers that are then moved to the designated stack area. The reverse process applies for loading the vessel.

Some smaller ports that do not have a gantry crane system use standard swivel cranes to load and unload containers instead.

In some small ports (without any container lifting cranes), container ships use their own onboard cranes for lifting containers from ship to shore or vice versa.

Container terminals have certain areas reserved with electrical plug-ins for temporary reefer container storage. Reefer containers with temperature-controlled diesel generators are usually stored in the same general area so terminal workers can check and monitor the temperature-controlled units.

Container terminals are usually described for their capacity to handle certain ship categories:

1. Panama type vessels

2. Post Panamax vessels

3. Super Panamax vessels

4. 12–13 container rows wide 5. about 18 container rows wide 6. about 22 container rows wide

RO-RO TERMINALS

Depending on the ship’s configuration, RO-RO access to ships is via a quarter ramp (the ship can berth alongside the quay), and most PCCs (pure car carriers) also have midship side-loading ramps to facilitate additional simultaneous loading and unloading. The RO-RO automobile terminals also have special drive-in ramps to access the railcars; many double ramps are for two-tier railcar loading or unloading. Designated automobile terminals usually have a large vehicle parking area nearby with facilities to get the newly discharged vehicles dealer ready, i.e., removing any protective plastic protectors, washing them, prepping the inside, etc.

GENERAL CARGO AND MULTIPURPOSE TERMINALS

Many terminals are equipped to handle a variety of different ship types and cargos. Container terminals often have RO-RO ramps (some with adjustable ramp heights), allowing simultaneous discharge of containers while at the same time moving rolling stock in or out of the ship via a stern or quarter ramp. This is especially handy for the large CONRO liner vessels.

Other general cargo and multipurpose terminals are set up more for the handling of conventional lift-on/lift-off cargo and special overdimensional and/or heavy lift cargo. Movable heavy lift cranes on tracks or rubber wheels are used for the lift-on/lift-off operation. These multipurpose terminals often also have RO-RO ramps (stern and quarter ramps) to accommodate a variety of vessel types depending on the particular ship’s configuration.

Fraser Surrey Docks began life in 1914 as a grain elevator. Grain moved through the elevator to 19 ships in the mid-1960s, but by then the terminal was inefficient and unable to handle the large volumes being moved by sea. At the same time, a small operation was developed on adjacent land to handle packaged lumber. Soon, general cargos came to the dock, as well as steel cargos to serve a nearby industry. Gradually, the site grew. The volume of steel cargos increased. Next, a shiploader was erected to handle wood chips. Wood chips were delivered to the dock by road and rail. This operation continued until the early 1990s when it became no longer economical. Between 1965 and 2000, the terminal grew from a site with just one acre of outside storage and no covered storage to a complex covering one hundred and thirty acres, including 380,000 ft2 of covered storage and with three container cranes. Thus, the terminal is well placed as a multipurpose terminal to handle a diverse range of cargos including steel products, lumber, wood pulp, newsprint, and general and project cargos, plus containers.

Both Fairview Terminal in Prince Rupert and Lynnterm in Vancouver were designed as dedicated forest product terminals but have had to diversify when the throughput of lumber and wood pulp fell. On general cargo terminals, cargo is handled in differing forms. It may be in the form of cartons, cases, drums, sacks, packages, bundles, pallets, or units. The ships that are engaged in such trades are relatively small freighters. They will be equipped with derricks or cranes with sufficient capacity to handle most of the cargo that they are required to carry.

TANKER TERMINALS

Tanker terminals are strictly purpose-built to accommodate loading or discharging liquids by means of large pressurized flexi-hoses as a connecter between the ship and fixed shore pipeline to the large liquid storage tank farm at or near the terminal. As tankers are usually large and therefore require substantial water draft, tanker terminals usually have a pier-type causeway reaching out away from the immediate shoreline into deeper water. Thus, no dredging for a dockside seawall is required.

FERRY TERMINALS

Common in Northern Europe, the Baltics, and the Mediterranean, ferry terminals can take driver-accompanied tractor/trailer units, where the drivers can stay in a limited amount of cabins during the crossing. Many trailer ferries also offer unaccompanied trailer services, in which the driver drops the trailer at the ferry terminal, and the ferry operator uses specially built terminal tractors to pull trailers on and off the ship. The driver then picks up another trailer coming off the ferry going back in the inland direction he came from.

REEFER TERMINALS

Reefer terminals are purposely built and offer temporary temperature- controlled transit storage. Inside rail tracks and truck bays on the land side allow for loading or unloading inside the temperature-controlled environment.

TERMINAL WAREHOUSE AND STORAGE AREAS

Warehouses are mostly used for general cargos, paper products, and other products that may perish if exposed to rain. Protection is also required from vandalism, pilferage, the weather, and contamination from any source, including birds or animals.

The size and type of warehouses will be determined by the volume and nature of the cargo, which the port is expected to handle.

Other factors to be considered include the following:

 Unit size of the product

 Rate of receiving in relation to rate of shipping

 Space required for mobile handling equipment, traffic flow, aisles, turning circles

 Sprinkler system

 Landside receiving and delivery bays

 Road and/or rail access

 Peak requirements

 Special storage requirements

 Dwell time of cargo

 Cargo separation

 Ventilation

 Lighting

 Doorways, closed or open

 Secured areas

Port terminals are transit terminals and rarely offer any long-term storage, either indoor or outdoor. Terminal storage space is at a premium, and the idea is to move cargo on and off ships quickly. Large warehouse and outdoor storage areas are often found only a short distance away from actual port terminals.

1 Lightering (also called lighterage) is the process of transferring cargo between vessels of different sizes, usually between a barge and a bulker or oil tanker. Lightering is undertaken to reduce a vessel’s draft in order to enter port facilities that cannot accept very large ocean-going vessels. Lightering can also refer to the use of a lighter barge for any form of short-distance transport, such as to bring railroad cars across a river.