No, these are tug-masters, what you call Zugmaschienen (on the first picture with a piggy-back on it, I believe the German word is Sattelschlepper?
Obviously the ship companies are not prepared to pay for more than ten tug masters, the port of Trelleborg has more than 40 of them available. You get what you pay for. But it's not only an organisation problem – until the new port of Trelleborg is fully established there simply isn't room for parking piggy-backs closer to the ferry berths 9, 10 and 13.
Well, at least in Trelleborg the buses from the terminal drive the passengers on board, and the check-in time for gangway passengers is only 30 minutes to TT-Line (1 hour for Stena Line). Unity Line don't take gangway passengers at all in Trelleborg (and in Ystad you have to walk and and walk and.........)
I'm extremely glad that a bus takes me to the ferries in Trelleborg and hate those loooooong tubes in f.x. Stockholm Värtahamnen, Ystad, Visby or Frederikshavn. And being the biggest ro/ro port in Scandinavia it would be impossible to get walking distance to the ferry berths in Trelleborg! Buses is also used in some airports like Frankfurt/Main, again much better than the loooooooong tubes of f.x. Kastrup/Copenhagen. At the Viking Line ferry terminal in Helsinki they at least have rolling pavements. Walking distances doesn't disappear just because you're inside a tube.
Don't see the point with "last minute boarding" – 30 minutes shouldn't be a problem for anybody.
The problem is leaving the ferry, you'll have to wait till the car deck is emptied. It's much worse in Świnoujście, where there is no bus at all, nor a gangway to he terminal for the TT-Line ferries, and in Travemünde, where you have to walk the entire car deck and link-span after the car deck is emptied, to the bus. But there should absolutely be gangways, so that the passengers wouldn't have to use the car deck; that you only have for HUCKLEBERRY FINN and TOM SAWYER in Trelleborg, berth 2, and Rostock, and for NILS HLGERSSON in Travemünde.
Small waiting-hall with ticket-office and 2 cheap bridges for 4 RoPax-ferries / fast ferries flexible use. Parden me, bullshit! 1) Trelleborg has more than 4 ro/pax ferries at the same time. 2) You can't have
cheap bridges for 5 ro/pax ferries with 30000-4000 lane meters each to unload and load, unless you expect the passengers to walk miles (like in Frederikshavn). Repeat: Walking distances doesn't disappear just because you're inside a tube.
Arriving by ferry is not the responsibility of the town (city). I think the port definitely takes it's responsibility, by taking the passengers to a centrally situated ferry terminal, one block from the town centre and one block from the railway station (unlike Travemünde, where the ferry terminal is within a closed ISPS port, only reachable by an irregular town bus). But there could have been gangways to the ferries, like in Rostock and Trelleborg's berth 2 for HUCKLEBERRY FINN and TOM SAWYER.
Your links to the ports on the Canary Islands and Greece, and my own experiences as gangway passenger on the ferries in the Greek archipelago, or between Italy snd Corsica do in absolutely now way impress me, when it comes to port facilities, but I agree that the escalators up to the reception is something the TT-Line should have as well
.
But I fear this correspondence long since has lost its interest to anybody but us two, so I think we should end it here.