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The purpose of this paper is to examine the rule compliance behavior of pedestrians at signalized intersections located in two different urban contexts in Italy, a tourist context and a typical working urban context, and to highlight if there is any influence, of the specific urban context, on the non-compliance behavior of pedestrians. Digital video camera images are gathered in two different urban contexts and data are processed using automated software, self-written in MatLab. Both test places are located in Tuscany (Italy) and they are only 20 km apart. The tourist, or recreational, context is the beach town of Viareggio. The typical working, or commuter, urban context is the historical city of Lucca. Factors such as age, sex and group size are analyzed. Pearson's chi-square test has been applied to investigate whether the difference between observed values and expected values of variables is statistically significant. The average crossing speed in tourists is found to be 1.50 m/s and the average 15th percentile is 1.09 m/s, whereas in commuters, the average crossing speed is found to be 1.78 m/s and the average 15th percentile is 1.42 m/s. The obtained results highlight that pedestrians in a tourist urban context are generally more compliant to traffic lights than in a commuter urban context. Moreover, the results point out that pedestrian behavior is highly linked to the urban context, and the obtained results of this exploratory study on pedestrians, in a recreational context as compared to a working one, raise some interesting questions that deserve further research work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, an analysis of deep sea shipping (DSS) container services, calling at Italian ports, is carried out. A comparison with analogous sets of data collected in the years 2011 and 2014 has been performed. The most important Italian port system is the Ligurian one, which includes the main Italian port, Genoa, which is the main access gate to the Padan Plain, the most productive area of Italy. However, other ports are also important: the Ligurian port of La Spezia and the hub port of Gioia Tauro. The comparison, with 2011 and 2014 data, has shown that while the number of DSS departures, from Italian ports, did not increase, the dimensions of the ships, which call at Italian ports, increased relevantly: this is in line with the current trend in container ship gigantism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the development of Motorways of the Sea (MoS) services offered at Italian ports from 2008 to 2015 is analyzed. In particular, a detailed research on MoS routes calling at Italian ports in the year 2015 is carried out; within MoS routes: ropax and only cargo ro-ro services are identified. MoS routes in the year 2015 are compared with those in the years 2008, 2010 and 2012. The study highlights two main aspects. First, the great majority of MoS routes in Italy are ro-pax ones: ro-ro routes are only 31% of the total, but ro-pax service frequencies are highly variable during the year, from high to low season. Second, due to the economic crisis, carriers are trying to operate services with high load factors and trying to find new markets: in fact, from 2008 to 2015, route frequencies have decreased, whereas the number of port calls in each route has increased. Finally, the capability of ro-ro and ro-pax routes of being competitive versus all-road transport has been analyzed. The analysis has shown that both ro-ro and ro-pax routes show relevant problems in terms of their competitiveness against all-road transport. Ro-pax routes are not reliable and ro-ro routes are not fast and frequent; thus, they both do not fulfill essential requirements for MoS services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]