Background and aim The paper focuses on the methodology for assessing Sustainable Mobility (SM) at the neighbourhood scale, and pays attention to two different ex-ante evaluation approaches: the Multicriteria Analysis (MCA) and the Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA). If MCA is an acknowledged technique for the assessment of sustainability at neighbourhood level, CBA is mainly used for infrastructure and large transformation projects. The aim of the paper is twofold: (i) highlight strengths and weaknesses of the two techniques, especially when assessing SM at the neighbourhoods scale; (ii) investigate the applicability of MCA and CBA to evaluate some relevant SM strategies and policies at the neighbourhood scale. To do so, a detailed description of MCA and CBA is presented and, when it exists, a review of their application to assess SM at neighbourhood level is described. Strengths and weaknesses of the approaches are, therefore, highlighted and their applicability to some specific SM measures are examined. Results and conclusions It results that the joint use of the two methodologies could overcome their mutual weaknesses, providing a coherent methodology for assessing both efficiency and effectiveness of SM policies and projects

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The paper presents the results of a research on railway regulation and liberalisation in Italy, France, Germany and Spain. The analysed fields of regulation are the relationship between the State and the rail companies, network access conditions by operators, slot allocating and pricing schemes and how public service obligations are defined, paid and regulated. The aim of the paper is to give a comparative overview of the rail regulation from a critical point of view, rather than descriptive. The regulatory frameworks are outlined and then assessed according to their implications on the liberalisation level and on the effective market opening. The conclusions are that the actual level of liberalisation is still scarce and only in some cases the opening level is increasing. Market penetration of newcomers is significant only in niche markets. An issue emerging from the work is the opposing attitude of incumbent railways against liberalisation and the role of decision makers in backing this behaviour. The strategies followed to limit the outcomes of the liberalisation process are different across the country sample. However, all the incumbents argue with the self-referential declaration of efficiency, public service obligations and they claim to be under an excessive and unfair foreign competition. These arguments are yet embedded in legislative, organisational and economic settings supporting these positions like the common ownership of network and services, the permanence of dominant positions and favourable financial conditions.

Mismatches between forecasted and actual costs and traffic figures are common in transport investments, especially in large scale ones, and so are delusions on future demand. High-speed rail project are often among the worst practices for cost overruns and demand overestimation, even where traffic figures may tell a history of apparent success. In the paper, we analyse two significant cases of delusion of success, namely Italian and Spanish HSR programmes. The Italian one shows excellent demand performances, but is among the continental worst cases for construction costs. The Spanish one, recognised worldwide as one of the most successful cases, is the one where potential demand estimations was systematically neglected and the planned network appears largely out-of-scale compared to actual traffic. The two cases show that the core of the problem does not lay in the wrong estimations of costs and demand, but on deliberate choices of overinvestment, overdesign and overquality.

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Long-distance accessibility is a crucial element for economic development and for territorial cohesion. However, an accurate and realistic measure of accessibility must consider not only the distance or travel time of a single mode, but also the fare levels, the frequency and the interchanges of all modes available. The paper aims at answering at the question whether and where there is a problem of accessibility to Italian regions, thanks to a comprehensive measure of accessibility of the entire Italian territory. The measure used in the paper is potential accessibility, with exponential decay impedance function. Differently from similar studies, we go more in detail in the definition of impedance parameters, thanks to the availability of a transport model, including the entire Italian long distance supply (roads, coaches, long distance rail services, air services, ferries). The opportunities at destination are proxied by population, private and public sector employees. The main paper outputs are detailed maps of accessibility, much more realistic than using simple infrastructure indicators. Modal maps clarify also the different roles of the modes in the different areas of the country. Finally we draw some policy conclusions, in terms of past and future investment policies. In particular, we show that the geography of inaccessibility is more complex than the expected one, based on the rough North/South opposition.

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Despite its importance, the analysis of long-distance transport dynamics and policies has not reached the same understanding of local transport services. One reason is the market-driven nature with respect to the planningdriven one, which makes the most important planning decisions taken internally to the firms.The aim of this paper is to discuss quantitatively the main characteristics of long-distance transport in a liberalised environment (Italy) in terms of market concentration levels, fares and product specialisation. We will consider rail, coach and carpooling services, which are not fully separate markets and interact in terms of supply, prices and groups of customers.The paper also discusses one of the main remaining regulatory issue, in Italy but also in other deregulated markets, which is the potential distortions due to the overlap of subsidised and planned Public Service Obligations with market services.