The paper focuses on the Trans Alpine Freight Transport system in light of the future integration of single national transport system into the European transport network. The environmental, social and institutional peculiarities of this "region" have favoured - in the past - the development of strong nationally - oriented policies, partly in contrast with the goals promoted by the European Union. The present analysis aims to highlight opportunities and limits inherent in the implementation of various infrastructure projects oriented towards a drastic change of the Alpine Transport system structure. In this framework, a descriptive analysis of the existing and "planned" situation will be offered.
In addition some new forecasting analyses for road transport will be offered on the basis of the new transport scenarios. In particular, in light of the high dimension of our database on transport flows, two different approaches will be compared, viz. the logit model and the neutral network model. Logit models are well - know in literature; however, applications of logit analysis to large samples are more rare. Neutral networks are nowadays receiving a considerable attention as a new approach that is able to capture major patterns of spatial flows, on the basis of fuzzy and incomplete information. The tentative results of both approaches in this context may then be used as a benchmark for judging the results of other models and offer also a more "flexible" range of results to policy actors.
