An Empirical study on improvement of operation for feeder vessel route between Busan and west coast of Japan

In this paper, practical problems for current feeder service between Busan port and west coast of Japan were extracted through in depth interviews with Japanese feeder vessel companies, shippers, and port authority based upon which major criteria (elements) for improvement of the feeder network are structured in hierarchic order and weighed relative importance through AHP method. From the questionnaire answered by Korean and Japanese port users and experts the weights of criteria were calculated and the shipping service was ranked the first by both parties with 0.235 and 0.217, respectively. The port service and support system ranked the second and the third, whereas the port marketing was shown to be the lowest of all. Considering the overall weights, the increase in a port loading and unloading speed of port service was followed by provision of dedicated deck for feeder vessel of port facilities for Korean respondents. Therefore, speed up of the port operations and providing docks for feeder vessel are to be firstly provided for more efficient feeder operations, which would be the basis for the construction of optimal transportation network.