Are maritime transportation loosing out its competitive advantage over Essay

Are maritime transportation loosing out its competitive advantage over other modes of transportation like air and road transportation Justify your views - Essay Example The existence of maritime routes or in other words the fact that regular itineraries are existent is said to be the concept of maritime transportation.1 There have been quite a few technological transformation which have had the potential of affecting water transports, the most recent one is that of the modification of water canals, increasing the size as well as the automation and specialization of vessels. However it has been noted that the increase in maritime traffic has had the consequences of major ecological disasters.2 It needs to be pointed that the bulk of circulation that takes place through maritime transportation is limited along coast line and further three continents have limited fluvial trade. The majority of maritime infrastructure requires a huge maintenance cost for the modification of waterways or investments on the expansion of capacities of ports, which is very expensive and on the other hand takes a lot of space.3 It needs to be pointed out at this point that not every country has direct access to the ocean, these countries are better known as the maritime enclave that is they have difficulties in undertaking maritime trade since they are not part of what is called the domain of maritime circulation. So it requires agreements between neighboring countries to have access to the facilities of port via road, rail line or any other possible alternative. It is important to keep in mind that the countries which are enclave are not excluded from international trade or in other words it can not be implied that they can not take part in international trade, but the problem that they face are that they face higher costs which might lead to weakening of economic development.4 It has been proved that due to the establishment of commercial linkage between continents, maritime transport has been able to sustain a substantial amount of traffic which covers approximately 90% of intercontinental transport demand of