The mobility of goods in Piedmont: analysis of the critical issues for the development ofrailway transport, with particular reference to the characteristics of the demand and to the network accessibility

The PRIMOLA research project was focused on the study of the goods traffic streams across the western alpine area, in order to define an optimisation process through a whole of international transport services by rail that could compete with the road mode. An extensive and detailed survey among the enterprises in Piedmont, compared with the actual offer of rail transports, allowed us to have some insights on the critical elements that prevent a more intensive use of trains, as well on the real degree of accessibility of the rail network. In this article we present some results of this comparison between transport offer and demand in Piedmont: among the key elements that were found being a constraint far a modal shift towards the railway, we mention the difference between the perception of the accessibility by the managers and the accessibility itself the shortness of the average trip, the dispersion of small enterprises on the regional territory and the type of goods moved.