Freight transport demand in the mechanics’ sector of Friuli Venezia Giulia: the choice between intermodal and road transport

Abstract

During recent years, freight transport has been experiencing an enormous growth, affecting in particular the road transport. In Italy as well as in most developed countries, this has called for appropriate policies aimed at a modal switch. A notable role in this context could be played by intermodal transport. This paper supplies a new transport attributes’ evaluation, estimating the possibility that firms rely on intermodal transport rather than on road transport. Consistently, the transport mode is threaded as a choice attribute. Differently from other studies (see for example Matear and Gray, 1993 and Lu, 2000), the modelling framework introduces attribute cut-offs (Swait, 2001), in order to account for a two-stage decision process. The dataset used for this study is the result of 30 interviews, which have been realised in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. Results show that the transport mode does not represent a discriminatory choice variable, while attributes related to the quality level of the service (e.g. damages and losses) are as important as cost attributes