Quinwalo Plus - Transfer of Inland Waterways Transport Knowledge
In 2020 the European Commission issued a Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy that envisions a shift from trucks to sustainable modes of transport such as rail or inland waterways. However, a modal shift only succeeds with a shift in the mindsets of leading staff in key positions. It has, however, been observed, that these staff currently lack the requisite knowledge of inland navigation to master the high complexity involved in organising freight transports including first and last mile. Unfortunately, inland navigation is a topic that is underrepresented, if covered at all, in both school curricula and teacher education in German speaking countries and thus hardly addressed in lessons.
Quinwalo Plus fills the knowledge gap for teachers
And this is where the project Quinwalo Plus, which stands for Qualification Inland Waterway Logistics, of the Schifferbörse zu Duisburg-Ruhrort e.V. comes in. Funded by the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport, Quinwalo Plus serves to create teaching materials on inland waterway logistics and aims to raise awareness of inland navigation as a sustainable alternative to freight transport by truck. The academic staff entrusted with the project at the Logistikum in Steyr have recently completed the survey phase of the project, which served as a solid basis for later creating target-group oriented teaching materials. These materials are aimed at vocational schools with a logistics focus, but also at vocational and general schools without a logistics orientation in German-speaking countries. The hope is that teachers will increasingly dare to include inland navigation topics in their lessons if attractive materials are available.
Teaching inland waterway logistics helps reaching climate goals
The inland waterway vessel is significantly more environmentally friendly than the truck, especially due to its high transport capacity - a so-called push barge combination can replace up to 280 trucks. The cost to the environment per tonne-kilometre, including climate gases, air pollutants, noise, and accidents, can thus be reduced to a quarter of that of road freight transport. Nevertheless, the truck still offers the advantage of flexibility and is simply more visible than an inland vessel, which is thus often not considered as a means of freight transport despite its potential. Thereby, with sufficient expertise, the inland vessel also offers enormous savings potential in terms of transport costs, but above all in terms of environmental costs.
Because transport by inland waterway vessel is comparatively complex, it requires more in-depth knowledge, which is best acquired at school. At present, this is not the case. Trucks play a much bigger role in the training of freight forwarding and logistics services agents than rail or inland waterways. Interviews conducted with teachers at general and vocational schools as part of the Quinwalo Plus project show that the main obstacle to including more inland navigation topics in lessons is that inland navigation is not part of the curriculum. Even in freight forwarding education, where it is at least mentioned in the curriculum "as another mode of transport" next to the truck, it is covered superficially because it is not relevant for exams. Accordingly, textbooks also focus on other topics. If students with a background in logistics or economics have hardly heard of inland waterway vessels by the time they enter their profession, let alone what needs to be considered when transporting goods by inland waterway, they will continue to prefer trucks in the future.
Curricula changes for supporting the modal shift
Shifting transport to sustainable modes such as rail or inland waterways is a declared political goal of the EU. It is therefore all the more surprising and a sobering realisation that in Germany, logistics matters and in particular inland navigation are either not part of the curriculum or are not relevant for examinations. Teachers are therefore left to their own devices to recognise the importance of these topics and to include them in the curriculum. Fortunately, projects like Quinwalo Plus, which try to make teaching materials accessible enough to be used despite their absence from the curriculum, are supported. This is important because only if the managers of tomorrow, in the fields of both logistics and economics, have the knowledge to plan and carry out transport by inland waterway vessel, can the modal shift succeed and the ambitious climate targets in the transport sector be achieved.
In conclusion, the hope remains that not only will more innovative research projects be funded, but that education policy will also reflect the high relevance of the modal shift and adapt curricula to the declared political goals.
