The mobility sector plays a strategic role in achieving the country’s medium- and long-term decarbonization goals. In this context, transportation modeling is a particularly useful tool for identifying solutions that are both the most effective in terms of sustainability and able to meet the mobility needs of people and goods.

RSE has been working in this field for several years, in particular with the modeling project called STORM (Strategies TOwaRds a sustainable Mobility), which makes it possible, starting from the reconstruction of a reference situation, to define potential interventions and measures for sustainable mobility and to evaluate their possible impact in terms of transport, energy and environment.

During the current three-year research period, an important part of the work is aimed at developing a new multimodal model for freight transportation. In the first year of the project, which is the subject of this report, the supply of this type of transport was determined by reconstructing the road network, the rail network and the shipping routes on which the mobility of goods takes place. The demand for transport was then estimated by defining origin-destination matrices for each of the three modes of transport considered (road, rail and waterborne) and validating them with existing surveys and statistical data.

Finally, the combination of supply and demand allowed the simulation of flows and routes on roads, railways and at sea, representative of the current situation and a starting point for the analyses of the next two years of research. In parallel, a second activity was carried out to determine the number of highway charging infrastructure needed to meet the demand for electric vehicles projected by 2030, in accordance with the Fit for 55 goals.

Based on traffic flows reconstructed with a multimodal passenger transport model and an analysis of the “attractiveness” of the service areas, it was possible to estimate the number of charging vehicles and the power required during the peak hours of a weekday, thus defining an initial sizing of the infrastructure, which should include between 2,400 and 3,200 150 kW charging points. The work will continue in the coming year with more in-depth assessments of infrastructure utilization and economic viability.