Landbridge. This is a concept that is particularly applicable to multimodalism in which a combination of land and sea transport modes is used.
With a landbridge, the cargo is brought to a coastal port by sea, transported over land by road or rail to the opposite coast and then loaded on board another vessel for oncarriage. An example is where the North American continent is used like a “bridge” to link the Far East with Europe. The Trans-Siberian Railway is another example. If the goods move by sea to a coastal port and then inland to the same continent, this system is called a “mini-landbridge” or, for shorter distances, may be called a “microbridge”. Such a meails of transport could be, for example, where an exporter in the United States Gulf whished to send goods to Japan. He could ship the cargo on board a vessel in the Gulf but carry the risk of delay while the vessel transited the Panama Canal. Alternatively, he could send the cargo by rail to a Unites States West Coast port, and ship it there.
