European Transport / Trasporti Europei (1998) 08/09

Traffic flows are no longer appropriate indicators for ports impact on local economies: containerisation, footloose industries, growing port competition, surplus transfer from ports to MTOs, cause gaps between port performances and local benefits. These changes witness a vertical and horizontal integration turning into a global market structure, where returns on port investments may well be lost locally. While growing external costs suggest concerns about "sustainable ports" for general and local economic systems. An economic-territorial trade-off is needed, where benefits and costs are optimised at all scales, and each local system decides its level of involvement in port facilities.

The article presents an analysis of the current situation of the Italian transport system and of its possible developments. The analysis, with reference to the data from the latest edition of the "Conto Nazionale dei Trasporti", defines the impact of the system of transport on public spending and on the formation of added value in the Italian economy. The analysis of the distribution of demand for transport among the different modes shows the dominant role of road transport both for goods and passengers. Once the single European market is a reality it will be necessary to reform the Italian transport system so that the Italian economy can compete with the economies of other countries.

Every decision-making process is concerned to a certain degree of risk. In fact, the information necessary to take decisions are often beyond the human knowledge. The article deals with the methods of investment decisions. Such methods often imply asymmetry and lack of equity and they highlight the central role of ethic in the choices involving men, environment and safety.

The debate in course between the problems of the conservation of the environment and of the territory present itself particulary binding when it is evident the contrast between the oneness of environmental facilities, like the Alps, and the consequences, partially only avoidables or mitigables, caused by the realisation of infrastructure between two of the more seattled and productive areas of the planet. Is a debate which, for useful being, implicates the availability to accept the reason of the parts and of advantage on data and common perspective like the increasing availability of conventional comforts are tied of the growth of the conventional mobility that the free exchange of the goods is carrier of balance in the availability of facilities and the law of people exist of hope and of operate for an amelioration of the condition if life. These reasons find in the estimates (still in course) on the mobility of the goods and in the convenience of long terms programs for the continental nets, in the logic of environmental sustainability, the necessity that is proceeded with recognised informative clarity

The service offered by a harbour is determined by the aggregation of more parameters than are, with the efficiency of the harbour, operationally apparent. The efficiency of the harbour depends on the possibility of offering an adequate maritime transport system to its hinterland in terms of frequency of departures, number of ships berthed, number of maritime links, good connections with the hinterland and the unhindered movement of the goods in the port itself. In this article the service offered by the harbours in the so called Upper Adriatic area are evaluated on the basis of an analysis of the respective sailing lists.

The paper aims at pointing out the role of maritime and port industries of European Countries. A particular attention is paid to Italy within the global economic competition context. Moreover, the paper stresses the importance for merchant fleets in running intermodal ports and terminals. In Italy, the lack of an important fleet is the reason why almost all terminals containers are run by foreign company (e.g. Genoa, Trieste and Taranto). In this context, the recent law that establishes an off-shore register seems to result rather ineffective due to the choice of a fiscal discount based on taxable income and not on a more objective base (for all actors playing the global competition) such as the registered tonnage.

The globalisation of the markets and the increasing need for technical and managerial flexibility have led to changes and be4havioural innovations in the structure of shipping companies. This work aims at illustrating and analysing, within a framework based on localisation and trade theories, the evolution of the sector and, in particular, the proliferation of ship-management companies. Particular relevance is given to the role played in explaining the growing trend towards vertical disintegration and de-localisation of maritime activities by the stage, in its life cycle, reached by the "product" shipping. Furthermore, attention is drawn to the influence that, the so called "shipping milieu", might exert in the operators’ evaluation of the comparative advantage of different geographical contexts with respect to localisation and organisational decisions.

The present work analyses and classifies the most relevant external costs produced by urban transportation and relates these to the various forms of internalisation through the payment of a tariff. The objective is to confront the theoretical suggestions and the philosophy adopted in the practical implementations in various countries. We conclude that the present technological level available allows both a strong correlation between instruments and objectives as well as a substantial flexibility of the tariff charged so to overcome some of the informational gap concerning the estimation of external costs. The limited application of these systems may probably be due to their distributional effects.

The diffusion of electric vehicles represents one of the possible strategies in order to reduce air pollution caused by road traffic in urban areas, but the purchasing cost of an electric car is still considered too high, especially taking into account their performances, and therefore such vehicles result to be not competitive. Alternatively, an urban transport policy based on the rent of electric cars could be addressed. This solution has been adopted by several cities and analysing the different initiatives we can identify two kinds of rent: one granting to a single user an electric car for a period of one or more months, and the other one based on the creation of multimodal parkings reachable on foot or by a public transport service where the occasional users can rent a car for some hours. This allows the entrance in areas where no private traffic is normally admitted, such as historic centres. This paper describes the experimental electric car rent started in some Italian and foreign cities. In particular, the analysis of the service started in Turin is useful to investigate the feasibility of introducing a similar facility in other cities.

Standardisation is actually one of the most important factor to improve company performance, for every branch of industry, to define functional features of a product and interchanging protocols with other systems. This report describes the standard adopted by European Committee for Standardisation for the Reference Data Model for Public Transport (TRANSMODEL) and its implementation by the Trieste transit company ACT. TRANSMODEL, describing the data of interest to public transport companies in a standard way, will considerably facilitate the design of integrated information handling systems in the public transport domain. This standard is open to any hardware platform. ACT is the first Italian transit company that have chosen TRANSMODEL like a backbone for his company-wide information system renewal.

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.

This research focuses on Great Britain’s experience with deregulation of urban bus transit services. In the first part of this study the market organisation after deregulation is examined. The article discusses the causes that, after ten years of deregulation, permit the author to declare that the "social" market is a competitive and contestable market while the "commercial" market doesn’t present these characteristics. The second part of the article presents the effects of deregulation on producers, Governement and consumers. Service providers’ operating costs fell much more sharply than the opponents of deregulation expected. The British Government emerged as a clear winner, with reduced bus transit subsidies. Real fares and service instability rose for the consumers. As a result patronage fell drastically with deregulation.