2011/2012In recent years in Europe the liberalization and privatization processes of the most important transport companies have introduced strong competition elements in traditionally characterized  sectors by monopolistic structures and by a strong presence of public ownership. At the same time, a considerable increase of the Antitrust Authorities’ efforts were carried out in order to encourage an effective liberalization of the transport markets.
The European Commission has always paid a lot of attention to the Ro-Mi corridor in several commissioned studies. However, these studied are not updated or based on qualitative analysis or do not clearly  show the methodology used. The Ro-Mi corridor connects the two most populated and multi-airport cities with especially business passengers. Moreover, the Italian Antitrust Authority has also paid particular attention to this corridor. In fact, recently, an important assessment on the transport substitutability for the Ro-Mi corridor has been formulated, not recognizing the substitutability between air and HSR transport in the Rome-Milan corridor. The Ro-Mi case study is particularly interesting not only for the features of these two cities but also for the recent dynamics observed in both passenger transport markets (e.g. Alitalia-AirOne merger, market entry of Ryanair, market entry of a private HSR operator -NTV-, market entry of Easyjet etc.). 
The main purpose of this research is to develop choice models to test the travel preferences and competition in the Ro-Mi corridor and simulate operators’ reactions to different and potential policy changes. List of the main research questions: 1) Which attributes are important for the Ro-Mi passengers’ mode choice?; 2) Which are the value of time measures for different types of passengers?; 3) Which are the own and cross-point elasticities of mode choice probabilities?; 4) Which are the market shares in the Ro-Mi corridor? Which are the Ro-Mi passengers’ reactions to hypothetical policy changes?; 5) It is possible to create a Decision Support System to evaluate policy changes?; and, 6) Is there substitutability between Ro-Mi transport operators?.XXIV Ciclo198