On the cost of road-rail combined transport /Sul costo del trasporto combinato strada rotaia

If a door to door transport is carried out by a single transport mode – by road, rail, inland waterways, sea or air – this transport is defined as uni-modal. If, otherwise, more than one transport mode is utilized in sequence, the transport is defined as multimodal. The intermodal transport is notoriously «The movement of goods in one and the same loading unit or road vehicle, which uses successively two or more modes of transport without handling the goods themselves in changing modes» [UN/ECE]. Within this paper, the cost items are analyzed for the combined transport, that is of the «Intermodal transport where the major part of the European journey is by rail, inland waterways or sea and any initial and/or final legs carried out by road are as short as possible» [UN/ECE] or, in a more extended way, the “intermodal transport where the lorry, the trailer or semi-trailer with or without motor coach, the swap body or the container cover the initial or final part of the travel, as short as possible, by road while the prevailing intermediate one by railway, sea or inland waterways”. The economic analysis constitute the premise for more extended considerations, which loom on the horizon, like the use of the trans-Asian rail connection as an alternative or in addition to the maritime transport, until now dominating and nearly exclusive in the exchanges between Europe and East of Asia. A premise is needed indeed, in the analysis of costs: the time factor is assuming much more, since a few years, a determining role in the modal choices made by production companies and transport operators. As a matter of fact, the globalization of markets and the outsourcing of productions have favored the commercialization of materials and products also at long distances, for which it becomes necessary to respect the required time-scheduling in order to guarantee the achievement of the goals of production. In the following part, the bases for the cost evaluation, regardless the required time, are set