European Transport / Trasporti Europei (2009) 42/XIV

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 objective of the paper, knowing the number of ports and ship fleet, is to optimises maritime transport routing of a containership, based on demand scheduling to each port of call ,using the expert system approach with owner utility function (McFadden D. 2000). All that need the operative cost of ships employed and their technical characteristics. The problem solution will be given, for each ship of the fleet, by routing of the ships , container movement for each port of call and transport cost. This paper proposes the use of a methodology based on an expert system computation program with a random utility function of a shipowner operating in a maritime network mapped by geographical information system GIS (Catalani M. 2001).

Over recent years Private Equity Funds (PEF’s) have found the European ferry market to represent an attractive investment opportunity. This paper explains the development and working of PEF’s, reviewing the pros and cons for this type of investment model. Over the last decade there have been 22 separate transactions completed by PEF’s involving the acquisition of 11 different ferry companies throughout Europe. Combined, this amounted to a total investment of €7.7 billion. A series of case studies undertaken by the author relating to the acquisition of individual ferry operators by PEF’s offers preliminary understanding of these transactions. The case studies highlight specific characteristics of the ferry market that private equity investors find attractive. Not least among these characteristics is: barriers to entry, long established businesses, the essential infrastructure nature of ferry services, steady cash flows, and high market share. PEF’s appear to regard ferry services as displaying characteristics quite similar to other essential transport infrastructure investments such as roads and railways. Based on this analysis, it seems that PEF’s view the ferry market as a relatively safe and attractive investment opportunity. Sellers, and regulators of ferry markets (perhaps more especially in the case of subsidized or island ‘lifeline’ services), need to be conscious of the potential opportunities, as well as the possible disadvantages of PEF investment and ownership. Buyers (i.e. PEF’s) also need to be aware of the risks involved (e.g. from over-paying, new regulations etc), as well as the rewards.

The paper analyses the potential for introducing a Park&Buy service in the city of Pesaro (Italy) along the lines of the pilot project introduced in Siena, Italy, in 2004. It attempts to empirically evaluate the preferences of the parties involved and derives some suggestions on the potential compromise solution via a specifically designed stated preference experiment, drawing from the literature on interactive agency discrete choice modelling. Although various theoretical and methodological issues are still open for discussion, the methodology proves useful in giving insights not only on the parties’ preference structure - as normally achieved by discrete choice models - but also on shopkeepers perception of customers’ preferences, on the room for bargaining, on each party’s influence on choice attributes and on the determinants of the probability of achieving a comprise solution.