Governance of Maritime Transport Services in the Mediterranean
This project takes on the shared challenge of sustainable growth through the innovative management of maritime freight transport services to mitigate the isolation of the islands. Go SMarT Med studies a new strategic governance to coordinate the connections between the Core ports (Genoa, Livorno, Cagliari, Palermo) and the Comprehensive ports (Toulon, Bastia) and improve the competitiveness of the islands. The current system for offering maritime freight transport services is uncoordinated and encourages the use of land transport. The general objective of the project is to contribute to developing coordinated maritime freight transport systems to improve the connection of the secondary and tertiary nodes of the cooperation area to the TEN-T networks. Go SMarT Med carries out a feasibility study that checks the degree of efficiency of a new network system optimised for the coordination of existing maritime transport services of goods by Ro-Ro and containers. This system, which is the subject of the governance project, is aimed at integrating tariffs (lower customer costs), schedules (shorter travel time) and frequencies of maritime transport lines operating in the study area.  The new system benefits shipping companies, companies that send/receive goods (service customers), port operators (maritime agencies, freight forwarders, port employment agencies, transporters), representatives of public institutions and policymakers. The feasibility study is a strictly coordinated cross-border effort, carried out with the contribution of partners from all the regions involved in the programme. Go SMarT Med is innovative; its performance evaluations derive from real supply and demand data collected through interviews with the various supply chain actors. It also introduces goods traceability as a parameter to estimate the new network model that evaluates the effects of the coordinated system.