“Missing links” e “bottlenecks”: cause, effetti e possibili soluzioni di Angela Airoldi, Tatiana Cini e Roberto Zucchetti

ABSTRACT

The role of the transport infrastructures is to efficiently satisfy the mobility demand of people and goods, offering a network of connections with functioning times, modalities and costs. In their current design, the transport infrastructures are the result of the historical sedimentation of successive projects, which have defined specific territorial development paths in the course of time.
The WP moves from the analysis of the concepts of solidity, reliability and completeness of a transport network and proceeds with a distinction between “bottleneck” and “missing link” and the recognition of the criteria that identify the two kinds of lack, often interdependent.
The main cause of critical issues in the Italian network is the modal and technical approach to the transport infrastructures question, that has characterized the planning and the programming phases for long time; furthermore,the priority given to the strategic projects by Legge Obiettivo and, more generally, an idea of planning in exclusive reference to the entire infrastructure, have determined an insufficient financing of minor works, actually able to inhance the overall transport capacity of the network.
The aim of the WP is to present a policy proposal for the implementation of the effectiveness and the efficiency of the Italian transport system, in order to correctly inspire the future territorial planning and programming;the multimodality of the network, the satisfaction of the demand for travel, the financial and economic balance of the management and, not least, the cohesion, equality and social development functions covered by the transport systems are the conceptual and operational cornerstones of that activity. Among the policy lines, the WP highlights the importance of implementing the knowledge of the transport networks operation and improving the ex-ante assessment tools of the investments,with a clear regulation wpwpand a wide sharing of criteria and goals.