The capability of Motorways of the Sea of being competitive against road transport. The case of the Italian mainland and Sicily

Abstract

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.

Addressing the Passenger Transport and Accessibility Enablers for Sustainable Development

“…The geo-spatial data of the Mediterranean ferry network, which connects the insular maritime nodes identified in this study and is provided by the European Atlas of the Seas (Figure 9), supports our findings that satisfactory levels of insular regional accessibility exist. More detailed individual studies on the level of connectivity have been carried out for the Greek [40], Croatian [39], and Italian (only Sicily) [72] insular regions in terms of the number of ferry operators, ship calls, voyage times, distances, seasonality, and fares. On such study, carried out by Stupalo et al [39], identified 94 Croatian passenger ports from the islands (73 ports) and mainland (21 ports) and suggested a satisfactory level for their port infrastructure and hinterland accessibility, as most of the island ports are located close to the city centers.…”

An Analysis of the Italian Ro-Ro and Ro-Pax Network in the Years 2008-2015

“…Trieste and Venice. An essential factor of MoS is the reliability; furthermore, the interviews with trucking firms, reported in Lupi et al [11], show that a relevant modal split increase could be achieved by a reduction of MoS ticket prices.…”

Instruments Used in Short Sea Shipping Research between 2002 and 2019

“…Subsequently, the next popular SSS research area is on the attractiveness and competitiveness of SSS in a multimodal transport chain ( [39], [131], [68], [35], [71], [114], [77], [66], [120], [34], [27], [37], [42], [87], [78], [20], [62], [95], [19], [103], [8], [21], and [9]). This is followed by research on policy, subsidization, funding and government assistance in SSS and multimodal transportation network as the third most popular area ( [132], [44], [59], [60], [82], [114], [112], [12], [51], [81], and [92]).…”

“…This study concludes that SSS in North Europe tends to divide into two different ways, participating in competition as a logistics provider, or strengthening their own position as a pure carrier. With the same approach, [68] investigate the analysis of SSS container routes in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Their study revealed that the Italian foreign trade is becoming more oriented to high value goods.…”