Italian Motorways of the Sea: When Great Expectations turn to Lost Occasions

Starting with a review of the current organisation of the Italian system of the Motorways of the Sea (MoS), the major aim of the paper is to describe several political tools and discuss how they can stimulate the usage of the Short Sea Shipping (SSS). It is a matter of fact that the increase of the road congestion could affect the economic growth of Europe as well as worsen the environment. One of the most important means to reduce the environmental impact of the road transport is the increasing of the SSS as a substitute of the road transport for the medium distance trade. After almost a decade since the introduction of the Motorway of the Sea in Europe, several problems have affected the development of this modal solution. The major undermining criticalities against the development of the MoS are the reluctance of the truckers to use a different modal solution from the road transport and the absence of a real Short Sea Network that can provide alternative routes to the road ones. After a description of the European situation and of the general problems which could slow down the development of the SSS, the paper investigates how different tools could have an impact on the current situation through a case study of the Italian MoS organisation. Before this research no study were made to draw the current Italian MoS network focusing on domestic services and trying to connect the current road transport with the potential demand for maritime (Ro‐Ro) services. The implications related with different policies and reforms on the current MoS system are discussed, calculating the effects on the current organisation and on the forecast demand distribution. To analyse different situations and the impact of different policies, this paper used direct information collected from interviews, specific database; while for the elaboration, specific software and different statistic tools are applied to generalize the conclusions on the current EU SSS system. The paper is structured as follow: Section 1 gives a short description of the major aims of the Motorways of the Sea following the European wills, while Section 2 describes the current organisation in Italy. Section 3 underlines the problems in Italy and it compares the current Italian situation with the one of Europe. Section 4 is focused on possible solutions to improve the usage of the Motorways of the Sea, while Section 5 is dedicated to conclusion and suggestions for further studies.