The Motorways Of the Sea (MOS) have been defined by the European Commission as follows: “existing or new sea-based transport services that are integrated in door-to-door logistic chains and concentrate flows of freight on viable, regular, frequent, high-quality and reliable short sea shipping links”. Motorways of the Sea (MOS) are ro-ro Short Sea Shipping services aimed at: constituting a valid alternative to all-road transport, and integrating inland transport where geographical constraints exist. The European Commission strongly supports the Motorways of the Sea policy: the 2001 White Paper considers intermodal transport based on MOS as a transport mode which can develop an effective competition compared with all-road transport. Several authors strongly outline the competitiveness of MOS. On the other hand, MOS show some disadvantages. In particular the target characteristics of MOS: frequent, fast, reliable, short sea shipping link, integrated in door-to-door logistic chains, are not often achieved, specially because of the high transit times at ports. In this paper a comparison between intermodal transport based on MOS and all-road transport is carried out with reference to the applicative case of the trips from the Italian mainland to Sicily. The paper tries to determine the critical reasons affecting the competitiveness of intermodal transport based on MOS respect to all-road transport. Different strategies have been considered: all-road transport; intermodal transport based on MOS, with the driver accompanying the cargo; intermodal transport based on MOS, in which cargo travels unaccompanied. The results show that MOS are integrative to road transport rather than competitors, therefore the best path is not the one which minimizes the road transport part of the intermodal path, but the one which integrates, in the best way, road transport and MOS. Furthermore the results show that: intermodal unaccompanied transport registers lower monetary costs, but higher travel times than all-road transport; intermodal unaccompanied transport registers lower total costs (monetary cost directly incurred plus the monetized cost of time) basing on a monetary value of time taken from the literature. But a problem arises because there is much disagreement in the literature about the VOT to assume: It depends on the type of freight shipped and on the type of logistic chain in which the transport is integrated. Actually, as the value of time increases, the all-road alternative may result more convenient.
A study on the capability of the motorways of the sea of being competitive to road transport
LUPI, MARINO;FARINA, ALESSANDRO
2014-01-01
Abstract
The Motorways Of the Sea (MOS) have been defined by the European Commission as follows: “existing or new sea-based transport services that are integrated in door-to-door logistic chains and concentrate flows of freight on viable, regular, frequent, high-quality and reliable short sea shipping links”. Motorways of the Sea (MOS) are ro-ro Short Sea Shipping services aimed at: constituting a valid alternative to all-road transport, and integrating inland transport where geographical constraints exist. The European Commission strongly supports the Motorways of the Sea policy: the 2001 White Paper considers intermodal transport based on MOS as a transport mode which can develop an effective competition compared with all-road transport. Several authors strongly outline the competitiveness of MOS. On the other hand, MOS show some disadvantages. In particular the target characteristics of MOS: frequent, fast, reliable, short sea shipping link, integrated in door-to-door logistic chains, are not often achieved, specially because of the high transit times at ports. In this paper a comparison between intermodal transport based on MOS and all-road transport is carried out with reference to the applicative case of the trips from the Italian mainland to Sicily. The paper tries to determine the critical reasons affecting the competitiveness of intermodal transport based on MOS respect to all-road transport. Different strategies have been considered: all-road transport; intermodal transport based on MOS, with the driver accompanying the cargo; intermodal transport based on MOS, in which cargo travels unaccompanied. The results show that MOS are integrative to road transport rather than competitors, therefore the best path is not the one which minimizes the road transport part of the intermodal path, but the one which integrates, in the best way, road transport and MOS. Furthermore the results show that: intermodal unaccompanied transport registers lower monetary costs, but higher travel times than all-road transport; intermodal unaccompanied transport registers lower total costs (monetary cost directly incurred plus the monetized cost of time) basing on a monetary value of time taken from the literature. But a problem arises because there is much disagreement in the literature about the VOT to assume: It depends on the type of freight shipped and on the type of logistic chain in which the transport is integrated. Actually, as the value of time increases, the all-road alternative may result more convenient.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
