The East-Mediterranean land-sea network

In this paper the problem of establishing an integrated intermodal system among the motorways of the sea and the East-Mediterranean land transport system is investigated. First of all an overview of the main features of the Italian motorways of the sea system and the East-Mediterranean land transport system is carried out. Italian trade access to the Balkan Area takes place through: a land route and a land-sea route. The first segment of the land route is made up by Pan-European Corridor V; the second segment is constituted by the “trans Balkan way” (corridor X). The sea route is fundamentally based on ro-ro shipping which links regularly the two Adriatic shores. In this context, some segments of the Pan-European Corridor VIII and the Via Egnatia project may give to the Italian ports the opportunity to develop new motorways of the sea services, particularly to/from Albania and Greece, that could be integrated in the new land-sea intermodal axes. In the article the Via Egnatia project is described: the modern Egnatia highway crosses North Greece linking Igoumenitsa, on western coast of Greece, with Alexandroupoli and Kipi on eastern border of the country; the travel time is expected to pass from 11.5 hours to 6.5 hours after the complete construction of the highway. In the second part of the paper the trade exchange between Italy and Southern Balkans is examined, by distinguishing different transport modes. The analysis has taken into account the import/export volumes among Italy and: Greece, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, FYROM, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo. Ten classes of goods have been considered. From the data analysis it can be noticed that: Turkey and Greece are the major Southern-Balkan trade partners of Italy; trade volumes show an increase in 2006 compared to 2001 values. As far as the transport mode used is concerned it can be observed that: sea dominates, in terms of tonnes transported, the traffic between Italy and Turkey; road-only transport is predominant for traffic to/from Romania and it corresponds to almost half the maritime transport volumes to/from Greece. On the other hand, if the value of transported goods is taken into account, road dominates the other transport modes, with the exception of export/import with Turkey and Albania (where maritime transport prevails). Ro-ro traffic data, for the years 2002-2007, have been collected for the two major South Adriatic ports: Bari and Igoumenitsa. With respect to passenger, car and bus traffic, no dramatic increase has been observed. A more significant increase in traffic flows can be appreciated with reference to ro-ro freight traffic, but this increase has not been uniformly distributed. Bari port has consolidated its role as the major door of Western Europe to/from Southern Balkan region for ro-ro traffic. On the other hand the market shares of Brindisi, Ancona and Venice have declined (particularly for Brindisi). It has to be underlined that the most relevant infrastructural intervention that is about to be completed and that can effectively improve the level of service and the connectivity of the East-Mediterranean land transport network is Via Egnatia: the transnational rail-road Corridor VIII, in contrast, appears to be far to be implemented. Via Egnatia project is therefore likely to produce a twofold impact on the development of new motorways of the sea lines in the East-Mediterranean area: it may limit the development of new direct ro-ro freight links between Italy and the Black Sea ports; it may strengthen the short-haul ro-ro sea lines between Italy and Greece. Finally, it has to be highlighted that the full deployment of the motorways of the sea system requires some interventions at port nodes to be exploited. The quality of port services and hinterland connections represents the basic condition to create a fully integrated intermodal land-sea transport corridor