Within a European context marked by growing concern about the unbalanced modal split and its consequences, the aim of the PREVITRANS project was to model and estimate forecast scenarios for international freight transport between Spain and the rest of Europe. These scenarios were to be checked against the existing capacity and service level of the infrastructures and services available for road, rail and SSS transport. This enabled the identification of bottlenecks and the proposal of solutions for improving and optimizing the use of the transport system.

The tasks performed included:

• Construction of a tool for simulating future scenarios in the freight transport market between Spain and the rest of Europe, using multiple methods of traffic forecasting: aggregate demand modelling, time series analyses, cointegration and modal choice modelling.
• Study of the capacity and level of use of the road, rail and port infrastructures that provide service to the freight transport lines connecting Spain and the rest of Europe.
• Conceptual expansion and continual updating of the LinePort and LineRail databases, which provide information on available SSS and rail services, respectively, connecting Spain and Europe.
• Methodological definition and analysis of different service quality indicators for transport modes available to and from Spain, identifying the potential for improvement in each.
• Analysis of the regulatory framework of the freight transport market between Spain and the rest of Europe, establishing a proposal for transport policy recommendations.
• Design of new public-private collaboration schemes for the provision of intermodal transport services tailored to the requirements of the freight transport demand.
• Proposal of best practices in the management of different transport infrastructures and services in order to help optimize the capacity and service level of the road, rail and port infrastructures that serve existing and future demand. These best practices also contribute to improving the management of the rail and SSS lines to or from Spain and their adaptation to the demands of current or potential customers.