Ricerc@Sapienza

The long-haul passenger transport services assure connectivity inside and between Europen countries. For long in Europe the policy makers tended to foster railways services on road services, through subsidies and, especially, restrictions on coach services activation. In recent years, several countries started processes for coach markets liberalisation with the aim at enhancing the service quality through competition.

The liberalisation had consequences on long-haul transport markets for the price decisions, the market concentration, the level of offered services. Nevertheless, railways operators registered revenue declines and in some areas situation of quasi-monopoly were developed in the coach market, held by companies with strategic advantages (e.g. historically active on the area or characterized by a disruptive business model - Flixbus).

The intermodal competition between intercity bus and railway services has so far hardly been explored by the scientific research. The aim of this project is to clarify the intermodal competition introduced by the liberalisation between operators that offer services on the same paths but with different characteristics (frequency, volume capacity, comfort, cost structure, etc.). Attention is dedicated on the consequences of competition on the economic sustainability and service quality (i.e. frequency) offered by the rail operators, characterized by high indivisibility and high investments, if challenged by competitors with high flexibility and low production costs (e.g. Flixbus).To the extent of the proponent knowledge, this will be the first attempt in the scientific community to tackle the consequences of the bus-rail competition on the long-haul passenger market, integrating the production point of view and evaluating the impacts on the sector overall capacity production and, therefore, the fulfilment of mobility rights of all the demand.