European Transport / Trasporti Europei (1997) 05/III

This study aims to compare from the economic point of view the individual use of a heat engine vehicle to that of an electric one in specific applications. Indeed, although the cost involved in buying and keeping a traditional vehicle is widely known, the same cannot be said far automobiles that run on batteries, which are built according to specific functional, construction and legal requirements. Hence, an analysis of the costs involved in the life cycle of electric vehicles is first and foremost a quality-oriented analysis, rather than a quantitative one, that is to say, it will be aimed at identifying the new kinds of fixed and variable costs which the individual use of these vehicles entails.

The need for an urgent application of a common transport policy in view of pursuing the European economic integration is denied by no-one, Naturally, this policy cannot account for the modalities and potential of the transport sector. Hence, a number of problems arise with reference to the harmonization of the rides on competition, as well as the need for the restructuring of national transport systems; on the other hand, there is the need to adapt infrastructures to traffic requirements. Notwithstanding, at present, there still seem to be much uncertainty and severe delays in adopting adequate community transport policy measures. Hence, there is a distinct impression that decision makers are less and less inclined to press for a common transport policy. One therefore cannot help but wonder: what has happened to the idea of a common transport policy?

Attualmente, lo sviluppo della containerizzazione nel mondo è dominato dai traffici e dagli operatori del Sud- Est asiatico e dell'Estremo Oriente, aree nelle quali viene realizzato un terzo del traffico portuale containerizzato del mondo. Rispetto ai maggiori porti container del mondo, che sono localizzati nell'area del Sud-Est asiatico, il traffico sviluppato dai più grandi porti europei, e spe¬cialmente da quelli mediterranei, è di gran lunga inferio¬re. Sebbene i porti croati, allo stesso modo di tutti i porti adriatici, si configurino quali tipici porti mediterranei, i fattori che influenzano il loro sviluppo li costringono comunque ad un ruolo di secondaria importanza. Questo fatto non ha necessariamente una connotazione negativa, qualora il governo croato, stimolando lo sviluppo del sistema economico interno e dei flussi di traffico, riuscisse a risolvere il problema principale dei porti di Fiume e di tutti gli altri porti croati, cioè la mancanza di carichi.

Who turns to a port and who does a port turn to with its many and varied services? Is it enough far a port and far the community of facilities and operators it harbours to put itself up on display became potential users or, given the harsh international competitive struggle, should it not rather try to foster contacts with the outside world, develop connection facilities, and engage in promotional and acquisitive activities with regards to its operators? Moreover, within what boundaries, especially geographically speaking, can these activities be rationally undertaken? In short, which is a port's market area? This article will try to answer these complex questions although, needless to say, given the extremely dynamic and magmatic nature of the context, no reply can purport to be unambiguous and exhaustive. The author merely wishes to point out the right direction far a positive and systematic approach to the subject in question.

Although the gradual liberalisation of the European airline market is drawing to an end in a context of complete freedom of transportation, this market still features a great number of legal disparities at several levels. The ideals of the Single European Market seem to be completely absent in the airline sector: each State controls its own territory with operation systems and standards of its own, which therefore vary considerably from country to country. If globalisation is to be the challenge of the turn of the century, then mergers, buy-outs, alliances with carriers which operate in large markets, together with franchising and code sharing agreements, are undoubtedly the instruments that European airline companies will have to use in order to compete with the main carriers and remain on the market.

This study concerns the competitive advantages as the containers' traffic in the global international market. In the first part the comparative costs and the competitive advantages in the systems ' ports are examined. In the second part the variables as rates of exchange, Gross National Product, foreign trade technology, rates international of change, ports' systems, bureaucracy, and their connections are considered. Than, we have considered the growth of the container' traffic in the historical context, and its connections with the variables in the most import areas of the world.