Can the Brazilian National Logistics Plan Induce Port Competitiveness by Reshaping the Port Service Areas?

Brazil’s transportation infrastructure did not follow the country’s agricultural development and the macro-logistics operations still rely on trucking. Even with a lack of roads, the service areas of the ports on the Atlantic coast, particularly the port of Santos, expanded to central Brazil, the country’s most productive agricultural area. Recently, the Federal Government released mid-term plans to build railways to reduce transportation costs until 2035. However, no simulation about port regionalization and competitiveness was performed. This research evaluated the effectiveness of the proposed transportation infrastructure regarding transportation cost and new routes that can reshape the ports’ influence areas. Our geographically explicit model used the Dinamica_EGO modeling platform and PostgreSQL, fed by official public data from transportation and agriculture authorities. Considering the hypothesis that new railways can increase port competitiveness, we computed scenarios considering the planned 2035 infrastructure and compared them to the current situation. The findings showed that the Ferrogrão railway can effectively reduce transport costs, therefore changing the spatial configuration of macro-logistics basins. In conclusion, a geospatial model can predict short-cheaper routes, port regionalization, and competitiveness regarding the geographic aspects of the supply chain. The long-distance and importance of Brazilian agriculture exportation justify and value the investigation.