Restructuring coastal shipping: a participatory experiment

Coastal shipping (ro-ro passenger ferry services) has always been an essential means of domestic transportation, especially for islandic states. In the case of Greece, for instance, it would not be an exaggeration to say that maritime transport is responsible for binding the islands and the mainland together as one nation. Coastal shipping presents particular features and may involve seasonality, wide and/or complex network of connections, red tape and institutional rigidities. Nowadays, mainly due to the global economic crisis, it also faces additional impediments to its effective operation, such as the excessive fuel cost, the limited financial liquidity and lower transport demand. In this respect, it is a most important and urgent challenge to identify and assess, through a bottom-up process, the prevailing views of the stakeholders and the experts on the basic elements, principles and key factors of the structure of a coastal transport system that need to be reformed and redefined. The development of a participatory decision-making methodology is a prerequisite for restructuring this system with a smart, efficient and sustainable way, both in the short and in the long terms. This paper presents the results of an empirical research that aims to develop a participatory decision-making method, based on Delphi, adapted to the particularities of the coastal shipping markets and island communities. The method is applied in a case study of the Greek ferries paradigm, recording the critical issues and drafting a roadmap. Based on key findings, a hierarchy process study on key performance indicators of island transport services as well as on the transport models is also presented in this paper.