Improving Sustainability of Freight Transport in the Port-City Interface Through the Use of Integrated Approaches

The ports represent the land-sea interface and the maritime-land transports junction point and are fundamental links of the global logistics chain. Thus, attention must be paid to a complex system, also made up of retro-ports, inter-ports and intermodal logistics platforms, because the port-city interactions, and between the decision-making actors involved in them, are multiple. Maritime transport and port operations generate externalities on the reference contexts in a direct and indirect way, above all from an environmental point of view. Logistics activities also exert further environmental pressure in the port-city interface and retro-port areas where the transported goods are carried at the end of the supply chain. In fact, the traffic of goods entering/leaving ports by road can influence the dynamics of the urban traffic flow. This paper aims to analyses the sustainability of freight transport in the port-city shared areas through the use of integrated approaches. In order to identify the main critical issues and possible solutions, promoting actions and measures that guarantee the efficiency of the transport of goods (and the relative priority of intervention), the research is articulated into different phases. The first concerns the analysis of the main criticalities in the port-city interface and inland port areas. In the second a literature review of state of the art was conducted. Then, common measures and best practices are examined. Finally, different scenarios have been implemented in order to predict the impact that these options will have on freight mobility. This methodology can allow to evaluate different options and to choose the best strategy.