The intermodal project for river-sea-river trailer transport which aims to develop ro-ro vessels to sail on various shortsea routes and which would also be capable of navigating up important inland waterways. Various routes have been identified as suitable, including Paris (France) to Southampton or Portsmouth (England), UK East Coast to Duisburg (Germany), and Lake Vanern (Sweden) to Duisburg. A prototype study has centred on the difficult Lake Vanern route, where hull dimensions are limited to 88.00m length and 13.40m breadth by the Trollhattan lock flight. Into such a hull, the design team is proposing to load 48 trailers. The access arrangement for three cargo levels have been developed by TTS; this will use straight-line kerbs and trestles, both developed under the EU sponsored IPSI and INTEGRATION projects. Access gear includes a novel folding stern ramp that can be hoisted to connect with part of the upper deck that can be lowered to provide access to that level, also an enterprising box-shaped hoistable ramp to the lower hold. Trucks can be stowed there to maximize loading, while the top of the “box” forms the main-deck ramp cover. Although trailers are the primary envisaged cargo, cassettes and swap-bodies could be loaded in future, using the automatically-guided vehicles (AGVs).