| Summary: | Background: The new cyclical service, available on the Polish market, related to the railway connection between Port of Koper and the terminal in Silesia, enables delivery of containers, skipping the Polish and German ports. To "the opening" of a direct connection with the Adriatic Sea arises dilemma that requires the identification of sustainability of the containers' transport to the Polish territories in economical and ecological terms. The key to this problem is a solution of the equation with several unknowns, which include the cost and time of transport, sea freight operator procedures, infrastructure constraints and the interests of local and regional communities. The analysis of the impact area of rail connection Koper - Slawkow was carried within Empiric project. The assumptions and results are described below.
Material and methods: Based on the experience of the Slawkow-Koper link's operator and analysis of distances, cost, duration of containers transport, the research has been conducted, intended to estimate the area of influence of ports, located on the shores of the four seas surrounding area of Central Europe: Adriatic, Baltic, Black and North, with particular reference to the Port of Koper. The research used publicly available information, calculators, and disseminated investment plans.
Results: Analysis of factors possible to calculate, especially the cost of containers' transport, by adopted assumptions, the study allowed to estimate the theoretical impact area of the Port of Koper. The area covers a large part of Poland, south from the line Szczecin-Brest. Besides aspect of cost impact area has been expanded due to different rail-gauge along the eastern Polish border. Also the environmental aspects indicate south direction of transport containers, as beneficial to the natural environment. As the factors reducing the development of the connections financial policies of the sea freight operators and infrastructure limitations of the northern Adriatic ports were indicated.
Conclusions: Based on the results of the research it is clear that a "southern" connection of the Polish territory with the Far East in the case of container transport is a viable and beneficial option, with exception of the interests of the communities related to the Polish ports. It is only a matter of time, related to planned deadlines of upgrading of Adriatic ports, that southern direction of transport will become the direction successfully competing with the 'traditional' ones. An important factor will be the change of sea freight operators' attitude and pricing policies.
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