May info-mobility solutions contribute to increase sustainable transport connectivity? Lessons learned from the E-CHAIN project

The tourist cruise industry moves thousands of people every year all over the world by ships and ferries, but the land-sea modal shift during passenger boarding activities often entail critical operational issues. Reason for this is the early arrival of tourists at the port waterfront to comply with the cruise travel schedule, which implies undesired waiting times and traffic congestion. In this context, the INTERREG Italy-Croatia Project called E-CHAIN (Enhanced Connectivity and Harmonization of data for the Adriatic Intermodal Network) aimed at the design, development and implementation of an info-mobility platform to improve passenger connectivity between the two involved countries, promoting an intermodal network to enhance the efficiency, quality, safety and environmental sustainability of maritime and land transport services. The project involved a variety of stakeholders, namely transport companies, public authorities and research institutes, who participated according to their own perspective and goals. Considering the great diffusion of many mobility-related ICT tools, the paper questions the capability of the developed platform to actually support stakeholders in improving tourists’ travel experience according to a multimodal and sustainable point of view. To this end, insights from interviews to stakeholders and data collected during one month of operation of the platform were analyzed and discussed against existing Mobility-as-a-Service best practices. The comparison revealed barriers in the implementation process both on the supply and demand side, including lacks in shared vision and cooperation among public and private operators, and low users’ acceptance of new information systems.