Motorways of the Sea
MOSES’ main goal is to develop a blue print establishing the detailed criteria and conditions for developing an innovative European network of Motorways of the Sea (MoS) as part of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). Today short sea shipping and intermodal transport have a market share of European transport of 43% and 9% respectively. There is still ample spare capacity for these more environment-friendly transport modes and the issue is how to increase their market share significantly so that the objectives of the Commission's reviewed Transport White Paper can be reached.

In the context of MOSES, a critical factor is to complement the research on constraints and solutions for the development of the sea motorways with research on how the marketing of the intermodal sea motorways may best be achieved. The MOSES blue print will target, through the development of Motorways of the Sea, an increase in the share of Short Sea Shipping in the European Union transport market from 43% to 56% by 2020, i.e. an increase of 30% and an accompanying increase in intermodal transport.

This will be achieved by the development of innovative solutions covering all relevant aspects of the development of sea motorways including marketing aspects which have received insufficient attention in the past; their exhaustive testing in real time along operational sea and land transport corridors; their validation and the assessment of their impacts, and iterative discussion with market participants and policy-makers to identify the mix of actions and investments required to achieve an efficient and sustainable sea motorway network across Europe.

One of the challenges will be to remove the barriers that make the existing intermodal door-to-door solutions more like an endless row of crossroads with red traffic lights, by transforming port terminals into seamless motorways junctions linking sea transport efficiently with all other surface transport modes. MOSES will develop an operational framework within which effective MoS can be successfully established and promoted and within which all stakeholders – ports & port services, ship operators, truck operators, network managers, exporters / importers and regional governments – can have beneficial participation and commitment. MOSES will also include policy recommendations to achieve a successful implementation.

Website :   moses-eu-project.org