In the last years the containerized maritime freight transport has significantly increased. The phenomenon had also interested Italy, through dominant roles assumed by Gioia Tauro and Genova harbours, but also through the revival of many other harbours. A rearrangement of the international system is in progress and seems to assign to national and Mediterranean portuality new opportunities of development. In this paper the attention is addressed to the analysis of the maritime transport costs faced by a transport operator (shipowner, charterer, liner). The transportation of containerized freights depends on the generalized cost, which results from the sum of monetary costs, taxes, travel times, waiting and intermodal exchange times, guarantees in terms of respect of the scheduled programs and service reliability. The model calibration presented is based upon data referred to single ships, which carry out a feeder service in the Mediterranean basin. They have been opportunely organized and elaborated in order to define the structure of a complete model, which can be an useful tool for scenario evaluations.

A general description of container traffic relationships, that involve the European area, constitutes a fundamental element for the evaluation of actual and potential traffic flows through Gioia Tauro hub port. According to many researchers, container traffic volumes via sea concerning the European continent have increased from 11.3 to 15.8 million of TEUs (around 40%) during the period 1991-'96. European traffic travels through two separate port systems: the first one corresponds to the coastal range from Le Havre to Hamburg, known as 'Northern Range'; while the second, denominated 'Southern Range', includes ail Mediterranean ports from Algerians to Piraeus. This paper firstly illustrates the traffic dynamics of container freights in the European context and secondly presents the container traffic flow through the port of Gioia Tauro. The spatial, temporal and modal split of arriving and departing containers to/from Gioia Tauro are considered. Finally, the development perspectives of traffic volumes are outlined, in relation to the forecasted growth of the European port system. Analyses have been conducted during a two-year research project, whose title is: ".Evaluation of the potentialities of the Gioia Tauro intermodal terminal for the development of the Calabrian economy and role of minor Calabrian ports". The research was supported by Calabrian Region Administration (RO.R European Program).

This paper analyses three different approaches of supply representation for intermodal nodes and proposes some functional and topological models for the representation of ports and Freight Villages. Besides in the paper functional and topological representation of container port and freight village are proposed. Further research is directed to the specification and calibration of cost functions, useful for cost estimation for different components of node network, with a view to facilitate the analyses of freight mobility on multimodal large networks.

In the last decade a relevant expansion of traffic by sea occurred, not only on the long distances, but also on the middle-short distances; on coastline urban areas and particularly on neighboring urban areas, but separated by the sea, the increase of the flows often involves greater risks of accident for the navigation (Lewison, 1978; Merrick et al., 2001; van Dorp et al., 2001). The risk of maritime accident results particularly high for the ro-ro ships. This papers clarify some aspects concerning the concept of risk and safety at sea dealing with some literature models. An application is proposed to the Messina Strait context that is the crossroad of elevated flows of traffic along two directions. The navigation safety in the Messina Strait has been analyzed with the support of a micro-simulation approach.

The present condition of freight transport system, unbalanced strongly toward the road transport, with remarkable costs both in terms of environment impact and of safety, pushes a relaunching of the combined road-sea transport and so of the maritime way. The paper proposes a methodological approach, founded on theoretical models, for feasibility studies of new cabotage lines, useful to orient the sector operators in the identifying efficient and effective sabotage services. After a short recall to the problems concerning the sabotage, some transport supply models are illustrated for sea and road transport as alternative modes. As concerns the transport demand, an estimation procedure based on RP/SP surveys, is suggested. The proposed models are applied for a comparative analysis of the road, railway and maritime transport alternatives between two Italian regions, taking into consideration also two different charge units: lorry with tractor and lorry without tractor. The analysis is made both according to a MTO and a Maritime Operator. Some feasibility studies of new sabotage lines in the Mediterranean Sea are under widening. The research can turn out a valid tool to orient the sector operators and contribute to avoid failures such as some recent cases in the Mediterranean Europe.