Financing transport infrastrucure projects in Italy: a critical analysis of the main approaches

This paper aims at analysing the methodology used for financing large infrastructure projects in Italy. In particular, it focuses on the Italian highway sector, where in the last years many projects have been launched using new financial instruments. The paper discusses three of these “instruments”. The first one is the Project Financing, discussed starting from a general review, analyzing also the different typologies used, the risks involved and their allocation among the various subjects that take part in the PF mechanism. A special case concerns the recently introduced model used for the Italian highways, known as “PF with takeover compensation”. There are two other important mechanisms used for financing infrastructure projects in Italy: the exploitation of road demand rigidity and the spreading of the investment over the entire network, favouring larger concessions. We conclude that all these three mechanisms present deep flaws in terms of transparency and of contradiction with economic feasibility criteria (that have to dominate the public investment rationale).transport; investment; infrastructure; project financing; highway.

La valutazione economica dei Piani Urbani della Mobilità Sostenibile. Il caso di Milano

La tendenza emergente nella pianificazione dei trasporti a livello urbano è quella che adotta l’approccio dei PUMS, cioè i Piani Urbani della Mobilità Sostenibile. Essi superano l’approccio tradizionale di piano, introducendo, oltre ai concetti di sostenibilità, anche quelli di una pianificazione integrata e della valutazione delle politiche di trasporto adottate. Il presente articolo intende fornire un contributo relativamente all’integrazione delle tecniche di valutazione socio-economica, quali l’Analisi Costi Benefici, nei PUMS, cioè in strumenti di programmazione complessi e formati da politiche ed azioni molto eterogenee e di articolata modellizzazione. L’articolo discute inizialmente in termini generali la complessità legata all’integrazione tra piani e valutazione, per poi mostrare i contenuti di un recente esempio, cioè il PUMS della città di Milano. Attraverso esso si discuteranno i modi con cui si è operata l’integrazione del modello di simulazione con lo strumento per l’Analisi Costi Benefici, e verranno presentati alcuni strumenti innovativi di rappresentazione dei risultati, utili alla comunicazione dei contenuti tecnici dell’analisi al più ampio pubblico dei decisori e dei cittadini

An ex-post cost benefit analysis of Italian High Speed train, five years after

The core of Italian HS rail plan is the Turin - Salerno line, in operation since 2009. The central segment Milan - Rome has been working well since the opening, with good demand figures quite in line with the later forecasts. The extremes of the line, namely the extensions to Turin and to Naples/Salerno has remained for long far less used. In 2012, unique case in Europe, a newcomer entered in the market and pushed a radical change in Trenitalia marketing, quality and pricing. This positive fact has fostered the market, with supply and demand dramatically increased, reduced fares and distributed benefits to the users, also in terms of new mobility practices. The paper aims at revising a former Cost Benefit Analysis exercise, produced just two years after line opening, in the light of the changed conditions. In particular, applying a similar methodology and estimating on the basis of third-party sources the current Origin-Destination demand matrix, we will recalculate the economic feasibility indicators. The cost-benefit analysis gives a marginally positive result in the most-likely case. To the contrary, extrapolating pre-competition trends without competition, gives a very negative result. In fact, we show that travel time benefits are a fraction of the cost. The largest benefits comes from the new demand, which in turn comes from increased frequency, from the introduction of mixed traditional/high-speed services and from the fall in prices due to the entrance of NTV

Intercity coach liberalisation. the cases of Germany and Italy

Intercity (or long-distance) coach transport has long remained a marginal mode in Western and Southern Europe. It connected mainly residual origin-destination relationships, to marginal areas without rail transport or, at best, as an ancillary mode to extend the range of rail accessibility. However, the recent experiences of German and Italian liberalisations can represent a turning point in the redefinition of the role of this industry. In particular, Germany showed that a competitive environment could foster the sector and make it a true alternative for car and rail, especially in the low cost demand segment. In Italy, instead, the liberalisation effects are appearing more slowly, also due to the fragmentation of the sector and to the relative maturity of the historical market, but more and more pervasively. While it is clear that a favourable legislative context and the limitedness level of entry barriers are necessary conditions for liberalisation, other elements appear to have a profound influence to explain the important differences between the two cases of Italy and Germany. The paper aims at discussing the role of two further aspects: i) the characteristics, and in particular the dimension and concentration, of the before-liberalisation market, and ii) the geography of the countries. When considering these elements, it becomes clearer why the processes ran at very different speeds north and south of the Alps and why the two markets still appear different

Integration between Transport Models and Cost-Benefit Analysis to Support Decision-Making Practices: Two Applications in Northern Italy

Decisions on transport plans and projects involve relevant public investments and may also determine radical changes in users' costs. Unfortunately, it is not rare that - especially at the strategic planning stage - decisions on alternative projects or scenarios are made on a qualitative basis or, at best, by setting some indicators and verifying how much they reach the politically decided targets (e.g., "increasing the use of bicycles by 10%"). In order to reduce subjectivity, a more quantitative and comprehensive approach to the evaluation is needed. A Cost-Benefit Analysis is a tool commonly used to assess public expenditure, but its application to mobility plans introduces further practical and theoretical complexities. In this paper, we will thus try to contribute to the topic of the assessment of both sustainable mobility transport plans and infrastructure projects by presenting the operative application of a CBA methodology that is, at the same time, theoretically coherent and rich in outputs to support the decision-maker. Moreover, we will discuss the possible use of GIS software in order to provide to the decision-makers a clear and immediate "picture" of the effects on the network linked to different scenarios. The structure is as follows. Firstly, we discuss the complexities involved in the evaluation of plans with respect to a single infrastructure. Secondly, we introduce the available approaches for the assessment of consumer surplus, namely, the Rule of Half and the logsum function method, which allow the perfect integration between CBA and transport models. Thirdly, we present, through some operative case studies, the methodologies applied to the assessment and the network effects visualization of the urban mobility plan and new infrastructures. Finally, we underline how we can make the results more understandable to politicians, policy-makers, stakeholders, and citizens and in general improve the transparency and the awareness of the choices

The big acceleration in digital education in Italy: The COVID-19 pandemic and the blended-school form

This article deals with the COVID-19 pandemic as a point of acceleration for the emergence of a distinctive and yet unstable problematization of the 20th-century school form. Focusing on the Italian public and policy debate on education and adopting an archaeological analytics, it explores what ‘other’ coordinates for the forms of schooling are emerging through the encounters, clashes and co-options between different epistemological standpoints. Mapping the knowledge production about the space(s), time(s) and subjectivity(/ies) of schooling, we discuss the emergence of a problematization of the school form articulated around the concept of ‘blending’ and unfolding around a distinctive set of organizing dualisms: developmentalizing/securing, normalization/pluralization and individual/population. We offer a preliminary sketch of the contours and tensions that constitute the epistemic space where this problematization unfolded. First, we show how medical, economic, digital and educational knowledges converge around the imperative to blend the school form and make it secure and productive through the ‘digital’. Second, we describe the paradoxical traits of the emerging figure of the blended-school form at the intersection between different possible configurations of the space(s) and time(s) of schooling and isolate four strategies for the (self-)governing of its subjectivities: therapy, prudentialism, discipline and enhancement

Delusions of success: costs and demand of high speed rail in Italy and Spain

Mismatches between forecasted and actual costs and traffic figures are common in transport investments, especially in large scale ones, and so are delusions on future demand. High-speed rail project are often among the worst practices for cost overruns and demand overestimation, even where traffic figures may tell a history of apparent success. In the paper, we analyse two significant cases of delusion of success, namely Italian and Spanish HSR programmes. The Italian one shows excellent demand performances, but is among the continental worst cases for construction costs. The Spanish one, recognised worldwide as one of the most successful cases, is the one where potential demand estimations was systematically neglected and the planned network appears largely out-of-scale compared to actual traffic. The two cases show that the core of the problem does not lay in the wrong estimations of costs and demand, but on deliberate choices of overinvestment, overdesign and overquality