Inland Maritime Transport in Greece after the Lifting of the Cabotage and Full Liberalization: A Review. Part 1: The Situation 'before' and Expected Impacts.

A comprehensive review of the inland maritime transport system of Greece before the application of full liberalization in the provision of transport services and the lifting of cabotage restrictions that existed until 2002 is presented. The review is made both in terms of the quantity of the demand and supply sides as well as in terms of the quality of the offered services. The paper also examines all the elements that affect the operation of the system in a way that lends itself to a comparison of the 'before' situation (presented here) with an 'after' situation, which will be evaluated in Part 2 of the paper after the relevant data are available once the new system has been in operation for a few years. The paper begins with a description of the fully liberalized system that was put in operation in November 2002, and the elements that have changed. It then gives a picture of the whole system (based on data for 1999-2001) in terms of: (1) passenger and freight flows and their temporal variations; (2) the characteristics of the fleet; (3) the characteristics of the port infrastructure; and (4) the levels of services offered (frequencies, travel times, reliability of travel times, congestion at ports, form of the network). Interviews were undertaken with experts working on the Greek inland maritime transport systems at either the operation of the services (shipping companies) or on its administration (ministries and supervising organizations), and the interviews were supplemented by past experience from other countries and the brief experience gained from the new system. The paper first gives an overview of the expected impacts and changes that will be realized with the new system. A brief description is given of a decision support tool created as part of a consultancy study to help the Ministry of Merchant Marine in the management and monitoring of the new liberalized system and taking decisions based on European Union legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]