Combined transport: Cheaper and greener. A successful Italian case study

In 2019, road transport was responsible for almost 72% of total greenhouse gas emissions from transport in the EU-28, and light- and heavy-duty vehicles accounted for 40% of it. Although combined road-rail transport offers a more environmentally sustainable alternative to unimodal road transport, in Europe it remains largely underused, with an average modal share of 18%, and its economic advantages are seldom studied. In order to shed some light on both issues, we analyse how the demand for combined transport has changed over time, and we show that, within the European context, the demand trend is highly heterogeneous. Our investigation of the policies implemented to support the uptake of combined transport reveals that they suffer from poor promotion and scarce cross-border coordination and that they do not effectively address the lack of competition characterizing this transport sector. Finally, we describe a case study of an Italian company successfully shifting its incoming shipments from unimodal road transport to combined transport. We summarize the feasibility study we carried out to evaluate the economic benefits arising from the modal shift, and we report the cost reduction, transport time, punctuality and environmental performance of the combined transport service actually used by the firm compared to the unimodal one. Via this modal shift, the company was able to significantly reduce not only the generalized transport costs of its shipments but also the related negative externalities. However, the logistic reorganization adopted by the company was mainly due to the management's proactive approach and the availability of tailor-made combined transport solutions designed by the partnered multimodal transport operator, with the policies implemented at the European and national level having little effect. We conclude by proposing some remedies to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the current transport policies, including information campaigns on the benefits achievable by both carriers and shippers via the modal shift and an ex-post evaluation and cost-effectiveness analysis of the policies implemented to support combined transport.