Towards green and sustainable seaport transport systems via enhancing multimodal transport options for passengers: a case study of Italian and Croatian passenger seaports of Ancona and Zadar

Abstract

Constant socioeconomic changes coupled with technological innovation render passenger mobility options a subject of unprecedented transformations in the European Union’s maritime industry within the domain of passenger seaports. The complexity and uncertainty in such perception of passenger seaports hinder passenger – centric transport planning approaches due to the lack of reliable environmental transport related data. To address the stated problem, the article evaluates the operational performance of water and land transport modes in the most passenger flows intensive Italian and Croatian passenger seaports of Ancona and Zadar respectively. The evaluation was performed via utilization of activity based methodology for each transport mode by adherence to collected vessels’ AIS and transport service providers’ data with regard to carbon footprint emissions. Results indicate that the water transport mode carbon footprint emissions during port stay exceed emissions during sailing at open sea by 24% and that the most environmentally friendly land transport mode is the public bus under consideration of 100% passenger capacity