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This paper proposes an in-depth analysis of Ro-Ro/Ro-Pax services in the Western Mediterranean, with a focus on Italy. Following an already consolidated research track, a database of Ro-Ro/Ro-Pax services has been built and analysed, enabling policy insights on port connectivity, market positioning of shipping companies across ports and routes, and congestion of Ro-Ro/Ro-Pax port terminals. Furthermore, an adaptation of the well-known GLS-based procedure that updates/estimates o-d flows from traffic measurements has been proposed, to estimate Ro-Ro/Ro-Pax freight flows between ports in a study area, given the total inbound/outbound port throughput and the total weekly capacity of port-to-port services. Application to both a laboratory experiment and to a real case study yielded very effective results. Overall, the presented analyses update earlier contributions in the literature and set the basis for an observatory on Ro-Ro/Ro-Pax services that might be regularly brought up to date and applied also to other countries.

This paper introduces a decision support tool for sustainable intermodal chains with seaborne transport, in which the optimization of a multi-objective model enables conflicting objectives to be handled simultaneously. Through the assessment of &lsquo, door-to-door&rsquo, transport in terms of costs, time, and environmental impact, the most suitable maritime route and the optimized fleet are jointly calculated to maximize the opportunities for success of intermodal chains versus trucking. The resolution of the model through NSGA-II algorithms permits to obtain Pareto fronts that offer groups of optimized solutions. This is not only useful to make decisions in the short term, but also to establish long-term strategies through assessment of the frontiers&rsquo, behavior obtained when a sensitivity analysis is undertaken. Thus, consequences of transport policies on intermodal performance can be analyzed. A real-life case is studied to test the usefulness of the model. From the application case, not only the most suitable Motorway of the Seas with their optimized fleets are identified for Chile, but also significant general findings are provided for both policy makers and heads of ports to promote the intermodal option regardless of their geographical locations.

Motorways of the sea operated as RoPax services are natural competitors with only-road freight haulage transportation. Cost, time and quality perceived are the determinants that make transporters and shippers use one route or another. This research considers the role that a shipping company and its ship deployment and pricing strategy has in the equation, in a quasi-monopolistic state. It is checked whereas to what extent the pricing policy helps in the maximization of the modal shift or it is detrimental for it. A model of the ships and transporter costs is developed considering different business models for the transporter (accompanied versus unaccompanied cargo) followed with a discrete choice model that, once calibrated, allows testing the influence that variables like ship size, fuel price or commercial speed might play into the competitiveness of a shipping line. As a result, different pricing strategies for the shipping line are developed and the characteristics of the optimal shipping line for each of them is found, that maximizes profit of the shipping company. The paper concludes assessing a subsiding policy based in bonus per unit transported and its effectiveness in promoting modal shift and the likely effect it would have in the profitability of the shipping line.

The maritime transport system in the Adriatic region has been developed thanks to the individual activities of ports, as well as specific strategies for the development of the countries that gravitate towards that region. Regarding its potential, this system is not sufficiently developed and there are no clear criteria for evaluating the potential for success of the future Motorways of the Sea systems and services. The solution to this problem is in the scientific point of view that should contribute to the development of the Motorways of the Sea with its systematic approach and clearly defined criteria of implementation of specific models and common activities. With this scientific article and conducted research, we tried to cover the greater part of the whole transport chain (from the departure point to the destination) which is present in the Adriatic region. It is crucial that we take into consideration the fact that it wasn’t possible to gather and analyze the data for every land direction (highways and railways) because we analyzed the infrastructure of the whole region. Thus, the research in this article is directed to the ports and their entries, where the success factor of the port is determined by the success of the direction and the Motorways of the Sea service. In order to accurately determine each of the defined success factors, it was necessary to identify all the subelements which comprise them. The research results point out the complexity of developing new or improving the existing MoS services at higher levels (administrative, infrastructural, organizational, etc.).

Motorways of the Sea present a practical example of combined and sustainable transport. With respect to the present model of functionality of the transport system in the Republic of Croatia, where the development of the port and of the gravitational transport system is left to each individual port (six independent ports), and where there is no systematic approach to specialization of each port or route, the results of the analysis are not promising. The goal of this research is to explain why the current Motorways of the Sea implementation model is inefficient and unsustainable. The analysis shows that a scientific approach to multicriteria analysis, which includes the identification of all relevant factors, the analysis of the transport infrastructure, as well as the identification of criteria which could potentially affect the Motorways of the Sea system, can correctly define the optimal model for the implementation of a sustainable Motorways of the Sea system.

Freight volumes are increasing worldwide, following almost the same growth rate as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This has resulted in congested sections of the road system and increase of traffic accidents. Consequently, several governments in Europe are promoting alternative modes of transport. Besides the use of railways, the European Union is promoting the use of maritime transport for short distances. This initiative, ‘Motorways of the Sea (MoS)’, aims at the establishment of more efficient and competitive maritime services between different countries. The present paper analyzes the development of an MoS network in the East Adriatic area, linking the Greek Ports of Igoumenitsa and Patras in the Ionian Sea. This is done by identifying financially viable MoS corridors, servicing the freight and passenger demand of the area. Initially, the freight and passenger flows of MoS in the East Adriatic/Ionian Seas region, based on the application of the four-step methodology for transport planning, are estim...

Despite European Union (EU) political support to identify the most feasible Motorways of the Sea, the final decision can only be made by Private Shipping Companies, which are operators of a unique stretch of the intermodal chain. This paper provides a multi-criteria decision method to identify the most suitable Motorways of the Sea taking into account the competitiveness of whole intermodal routes versus the alternative of road transport from the loader’s perspective. The analysis is carried out assuming a ‘many-to-many’ transport model. Firstly indexes of time and cost were defined and evaluated for every available route in the model in accordance with a multi-criteria decision matrix. Secondly, through a Monte Carlo simulation a sensitivity analysis was carried out in order to evaluate the influence on the results of the forecast assumed to construct the matrix. The results obtained are not only quantitative, but also qualitative. The development of intermodal routes via Motorways of the Sea is especial...

The paper deals with a quantitative analysis on the competitiveness of intermodal transport, based on Motorways of the Sea (MoS), in comparison with all-road transport. This analysis is applied to MoS routes connecting the Italian mainland with Sicily. The study involves: a detailed intermodal network model which compares monetary costs and travel times from all relevant origins in the mainland to all relevant destinations in Sicily; and a survey carried out at some representative trucking firms operating to/from Sicily. The aim of the interviews has been: on one side to make a comparison between the theoretical and actual mode of transport and routes taken, and in case they are different, to understand the reasons of the discrepancy; on the other side to determine what are the main aspects taken into account by trucking companies in their modal choice, in order to understand how the competiveness of MoS against road transport can be improved. The results of the analysis show that the modal choice is affected by several elements: monetary costs and travel times; reliability of MoS routes; availability of MoS routes; MoS routes frequencies; but it resulted from the interviews that monetary costs and travel times are the most important factors considered by trucking companies in the modal and route choice. This study has also shown that an improvement of MoS routes on the Italian Adriatic side is necessary: actually, a strong reason for which in Italy MoS traffic is still a small percentage of road traffic is the low number of MoS routes currently in operation and their low frequency. This analysis could help decision makers, and maritime operators, to efficiently invest in the improvement of MoS routes. Moreover, this analysis, developed for an Italian case study, can be applied to other European and Mediterranean scenarios.

Over the last decades, the European Union (EU) has devoted a large amount of effort and money to projects aimed at boosting some of its maritime corridors as a modal alternative to road or rail freight transport. However, the overall design of most of these programmes has ex post revealed as very ineffective. This paper suggests that promoting port efficiency might be a more suitable target to increase the modal split of Short Sea Shipping (SSS) than subsidizing firms to transfer cargo from road to sea. But defining ‘port efficiency’ is a complex task and, therefore, granting money directly to port authorities could also generate perverse moral hazard effects, particularly when the improvements are difficult to monitor and many investments are non-refundable. The European Court of Auditors points out that millions of EU public port finance was wasted on empty terminal and other unused infrastructure. The objective of this paper is to design a proper subsidy to promote SSS by encouraging port improvements ...

This paper analyzes how the strategy taken by the cargo carrier when using motorways of the sea (understood as regular roll on/roll off short sea shipping lines) affects the competitiveness of the shipping line. Five different strategies were analyzed and grouped into three main types: road door-to-door transportation, road and sea transportation combined with a driver always accompanying the cargo and road and sea transportation where the cargo travels unaccompanied. The analysis provides formulae to calculate the economical and temporal cost differences from using a sea link in distribution and assesses the risk and investments necessary to maximize the profit for each strategy. The paper ends identifying the critical points affecting the competitiveness of short sea shipping roll on/roll off lines and proposes policies that could help in its development and success.

This paper explores Motorways of the Sea (MoS) policy in Europe. The major objective of MoS policy is to shift freight from long-distance road transport to sea transport. The paper first analyses maritime and transport policies, and associated public financial support regulations concerning MoS at European Union (EU) level. Examples are provided of Member State funding schemes intended to help further develop MoS services. The paper discusses MoS as an economic concept, outlining the processes involved in securing funding for what are private transport infrastructure initiatives (i.e. MoS), unlike road and rail infrastructure which are for the most part provided and maintained by the public sector. The findings suggest there is a need to reconsider MoS initiatives and interventions in future in order to bring about sustainable and timely MoS solutions, to help overcome the challenge of road freight transport and to meet EU environmental commitments. As a consequence, a simpler and more realistic approach ...

Green corridors are a European concept denoting long-distance freight transport corridors where advanced technology and co-modality are used to achieve energy efficiency and reduce environmental impact. Green corridors consider all types of agents acting in the door-to-door co-modality chains, including ports. Carbon footprints (CF) provide companies, customers and other agents with information related to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the supply chain of products, identifying key points, potential risks and opportunities for improvement. Its application in both the logistic networks and all modes of transport would allow for the creation of green corridors and sustainable motorways of the sea. This paper describes the method which is composed of financial accounts (MC3) used to estimate the CF of a port. It shows the effects of the method on the Port of Gijon (PAG), which steers the existing Gijon/Nantes/Saint-Nazaire motorway of the sea. The extension of the system to all nodes of the shipping line...

Establishing a European wide high-quality shipping links and integrating them with the trans-European Transport networks has been the vision of the European Commission (EC) to reduce land transport congestion under the Motorways of the Sea (MoS) concept. However, in spite of strong political backing and favourable policy initiatives, MoS projects have met with limited success. Establishing MoS is complex because of its international scope and involvement of a number of public and private stakeholders with conflicting objectives and goals. The paper attempts to identify critical factors for establishing viable MoS projects. The paper reviews the development of the MoS concept to understand the expectations of the EC and the concerns of the important stakeholders. The present status of these policy actions is reviewed and their possible effect on the performance of MoS projects is estimated. Case studies of short sea shipping initiatives in different parts of Europe and the world are reviewed to learn from ...

This paper introduces an Agent based modelling approach to model inter-urban freight transport between two or more trading regions. The use of the model is to ascertain the modal share of competing transport modes (road and intermodal) while taking complex transport service supply–demand dynamics into account. It is structured by modules describing company generation, supplier choice, modal competition and International road freight transport market dynamics. The behaviour of individual actors is simulated using normative agent behaviour and market knowledge. Using the micro-simulation approach, shippers and carriers (primarily road hauliers and a maritime based intermodal operator) interact through simulated contracts resulting in the generation of tours. The service performance of the tours is fed back into the model for decision making during contract deliberations. Preliminary application of model to Mediterranean case study show that market share gains of around 25–30% are obtained with policy interventions of financial subsidies to intermodal services and more frequent shipping services in the intermodal transport respectively.

This paper aims to contribute towards the design of effective freight transport policy by means of empirical analysis. In order to do so, a stated preference survey is undertaken to model the modal choice between door-to-door road transport and short sea shipping in the Motorway of the Sea of south-west Europe. The proposed analysis will provide policymakers with the necessary tool to identify the critical areas that should be addressed by future policy action in order to boost short sea shipping on Spain's Mediterranean coast. By applying the proposed method, we will be able to obtain estimates of the subjective values of transport attributes – value of time, value of reliability and value of frequency – in freight transport, values for which barely any empirical evidence on a national scale exists. Quantifying such values is a key part of the cost benefit analyses performed when evaluating transport projects.

Recent trends in production such as global sourcing, just-in-time deliveries and fragmented production chains have determined clear patterns in relation to growth in demand for freight transport. Although road transport has adapted better to the needs of this modern economy, congestion threatens to overwhelm overland carriage and limit economic growth. The transportation industry faces the challenge of developing an efficient and effective complement to the existing road system. One possible strategy is to revitalize coastal shipping such as Short-Sea Shipping (SSS). The objective of this article is to carry out a literature review and show how SSS can alleviate traffic congestion and enhance economic development by maintaining freight flow efficiency. Because ship transport offers higher fuel economy and lower emissions of harmful pollutants, SSS is considered to be one of the most sustainable and economically competitive modes of transport.

In accelerating the integration of the European Union (EU) and achieving more equal modal split, short sea shipping (SSS) has become an increasingly important component in European transport planning. Despite the active promotion by the EU, however, questions have been raised on whether SSS can realistically compete with unimodal road transport as it is required to overcome considerable hurdles, notably efficiency and cohesiveness between different parts of the multimodal transportation chain. This paper attempts to address this issue by undertaking an economic feasibility analysis investigating the potential competitiveness of SSS in the Baltic Region. The generalized costs of different SSS options will be simulated and the potential of different options in maximizing SSS competitiveness will be visualized through applying geographical information system. It is anticipated that this paper can provide an invaluable insight to the development of EU's multimodal transport planning.

The continuing growth of international container trade has created capacity problems at major US ports, and the truck-based freight transportation has caused a deterioration of traffic congestion on important US transportation corridors. Using inland and coastal waterways, short sea shipping (SSS) can provide an improvement to these problems. Furthermore, SSS offers many additional benefits for the environment, the economy and society as a whole. Both the US Department of Transportation and the European Commission actively support SSS as an alternative, environmentally friendly mode of transportation. However, there are obstacles, administrative barriers and challenges that should be addressed. Several successful operations on both sides of the Atlantic make a strong case in favour of SSS. SSS can develop customized and technologically advanced solutions that will further integrate it into the intermodal transportation chain and will improve its image among shippers as a mode that can provide reliable doo...

The last several decades have witnessed very substantial public sector investment in roadway and railway infrastructure throughout the EU. The seaway has tended not to be supported to the same degree, possibly due to the mistaken assumption by policymakers that the seaway represents some kind of free highway, and is therefore not deserving of public subsidy in the same way as roadways and railways. To a limited extent, the evolving EU Motorways of the Sea policy appears to recognize these distortions, and mechanisms are now being put in place to enable short sea shipping to develop further. Acceptance by the European Commission that short sea shipping offers the potential to hold back the dramatic growth in road freight transport throughout the EU reflects the fact that policy is now beginning to move more positively in favour of maritime intermodal transport solutions. Recent EU-funded research on the subject of Motorways of the Sea as well as increased EU grant aid reflects this shift and highlights the important role of the EU in this regard. Analysis of sea motorways in practice demonstrates the substantial modal shift that can be achieved by innovative carriers using advanced ship technology supported by appropriate policies, and/or due to specific environmental circumstances. However, there continues to be a mismatch whereby transport policy throughout Europe accepts the continued state financing of roadway and railway infrastructure but not seaway infrastructure. It is argued in this context that the seaway-equivalent infrastructure of roadways and railways is the deck of a ship. This argument is convincing for a number of reasons, not least because it is relatively easily demonstrated that the sea itself is anything but a free highway (if indeed it is a highway at all), whereas ports simply act as nodes, not as transport platforms. Acknowledgement of what actually comprises seaway infrastructure could have far reaching implications for the future attractiveness and competitiveness of maritime transport vis-a-vis subsidized land transport alternatives in Europe, and should result in more adequate policy mechanisms being introduced to help overcome market distortions and ensure a level playing field between sea and land transport.

Today, there is widespread consensus about the notable, yet simultaneously growing, negative environmental impacts generated by the transportation sector. Experts working in a number of different fields consider the current situation to be unsustainable and possible measures to reduce emissions and foster sustainability are being encouraged. The European Commission has highlighted the need to shift away from unimodal road transport toward a greater use of intermodal transport through, for example, motorways of the sea, in light of the evidence that the former makes a significant contribution to increased CO 2 emissions. However, although there is a general perception that sea transport is environmentally preferable to road transport, recent studies are beginning to question this assumption. Moreover, little research has been conducted to quantify environmental aspects and incorporate them into the decision-making processes involved in the modal shift. This study first reviews the existing literature to examine the extent to which environmental aspects are relevant in the modal choice in the case of short sea shipping and motorways of the sea. Related to this, the study also evaluates the role that different agents may play in making decisions about choice of mode, taking into consideration environmental aspects. Secondly, we use the values the European Commission provides to calculate external costs for the Marco Polo freight transport project proposals (call 2013) to estimate the environmental costs for several routes (a total of 72), comparing the use of road haulage with the intermodal option that incorporates the Spanish motorways of the sea. The results of this comparative analysis show that the intermodal option is not always the best choice in environmental terms. Consequently, the traditional environmental argument to justify this alternative must be used carefully.

Short Sea Shipping (SSS) has attracted a lot of attention in the European Union in the last 15 years. It is considered as a mode favoured to alleviate road congestion. Alas, promises have not been met and cargo transfers have not reached their objectives yet, despite strong financial will and a programme for modal shift implemented by the European Union (EU). The hypothesis raised by this paper is that Short Sea Shipping has not been well defined in the EU and market potential for modal shift from land to sea has been overestimated. Therefore, this has a great impact for policy-making. Studies have covered many topics such as its implementation using case studies, cost-benefit analysis compared to land-transport modes, general European shipping policy and its environmental contribution. Therefore, little has been written on the role of public institutions in its implementation and no critical assessment of the success of supporting public programme in the EU has been done. This paper explains how the lack of a final definition has led to misadapted public policies favouring modal transfer in the EU and how misknowledge of SSS markets has led to the overestimation of the modal shift potential.