Massimo Marciani, president of the Freight Leaders Council, stressed during the gathering that “Intermodal transport must be a valid alternative to road transport”.
In Marciani’s opinion, industry needs to work to change perspectives on multimodal by involving the entire supply chain, including both shippers and consumers.
One of those to speak at the gathering was Massimo Campailla, Professor of Navigation and Transport Law at the University of Trieste.
Campilla said that the action at his city’s port showed what could be done in Italy:
“The virtuous example of the Port of Trieste, already today the first railway port in Italy and which aims to reach a capacity of 25,000 trains/year within a few years, demonstrates how intermodality can represent a competitive model that can and must be replicated on a national scale.”
The professor also claimed it was no longer the case that the road transport industry in Italy was conspiring against multimodal logistics:
“The cliché that says the greatest resistance to the modal shift is from road transport companies could prove to be unfounded. The now chronic shortage of drivers and the difficult operating conditions they often find themselves in are giving rise to hope that road transporters may find it convenient to seek a synergistic balance point with rail/road intermodality,” added Campilla.
According to the Freight Leaders Council, road freight makes up 87.8% of all land freight transport in Italy.
In order to remedy this by having more goods transported by rail, the council believes concrete actions need to be taken. This means increasing the capacity of existing infrastructure and promoting intermodality.
Another recommendation was to harness IT and artificial intelligence tools to improve the integration between different transport modes.
