European Transport / Trasporti Europei (1999) 11

The recent growth of rail haulage prices has brought new life to the debate on the ideal price level for this kind of transport. On the one hand, a higher price could be considered necessary to allow higher proportion of the costs to be covered, therefore reducing the burden on the taxpayers, on the other hand the rise in price could entail a loss of competitiveness to road haulage, thus endangering the social objectives connected to the protection of the environment. There is a fundamental ambiguity in the situation describe above, that could not be solved even by an economic approach, to attempt to asses the different impacts on society of the two approaches. In this uncertainty it would therefore seem appropriate to suggest politicians (representative chosen by the public) as the most appropriate judges of welfare as far as rail prices are concerned. The point of view put forward by this article is that the rigid approach expressed in recent UE papers (July 1998) - aiming at keeping rail prices low according to the concept of marginal-cost pricing - does not allow the scope of a political decision to single member state on the value of rail transport, thus allowing for different prices in all members state. The approach put forwards by the UE, furthermore, for sees heavy subsidies for the infrastructure rather then for the rail service and does not allow the clear and democratic assessment of the cost sustained by society for each service; public subsidy of services would be more transparent and democratic.

The article presents a research on development scenarios for intermodal transport between Italy and Eastern Europe. These scenarios are examined in the whole context of Northern Italy freight transport with particular reference to West-East (Torino-Milano-Verona-Venezia-Trieste) Corridor and UE Corridor V (Venezia-Trieste-Ljubljana-Budapest) and defined by Crete Conference in 1994. Existing links are examined both under the demand and the supply side. Development scenarios are related with economic perspesctives of North-Eastern and South-Eastern European countries. Consequent trends in freight intermodal transport are confronted with present networks, leading to a first definition of infrastructural needs.

The paper mainly addresses the issue of port management by estimating a quantitative model dealing with the evaluation of the economic effects of maritime container terminals. A classification of port activities is first proposed in order to assign the different types of economic effects to them. In doing this, two concepts of "efficiency" arise, that is, a corporate efficiency and a global efficiency. The model then deals with the estimation of the corporate efficiency by highlighting the factors determining it and their specific contribution. Finally, two in-depth analyses of the model based on cluster and factor techniques are conducted and future research lines are put forward.

Analysis of the role of the water transport in the structure of Ukrainian economy is presented. Participation in the Euro-Asian line of the world trade system is considered as well as strategic priorities in the development of national transport system are discussed. Special attention is paid to the water transportation and ports of Ukraine, their technical characteristics and ways of improvement maritime transport work.

The free movement of people and exchange of goods are the mains sings for the positive future development of mutual cooperation between the individual European countries. The efficiency of this cooperation depends largely on the compatibility between the various transport systems in this countries. The development of the transport network and its transport infrastructure in Sloavakia after becomming independent in 1993, was strongly oriented to planning, construction and modernisation of the whole existing transport network to be close to the economic cooperation within the European market. The paper describes the present state and the development of the motorway and road network as a part of Pan-european multimodal corridors and as well as the main technical parameters, constructions time shedule and financing scheme, the management and maitenance operation and the situation in traffic accidents and traffic safety in Slovakia.