From road to sea -from road to waterways - on the possibilities of shifting cargo from land routes to water routes in transport between Poland and Germany

Nowadays we can observe a competition between alternative transport routes, between maritime transport and road transport. And putting the question "is it possible for short sea shipping to take over the cargo which is presently carried by road transport", we should take into consideration two main factors: (I) is there a potential demand- or in another way- is there a cargo volume which can tend to carriages between Polish ports and other ports of the Southern Baltic ? (2) and the second factor: is a maritime transport competitive to the road transport? As German road network and Polish-German road -cross border posts are nowadays the most congested points of the European road infrastructure, the scientists from the Maritime Institute carried out a study aiming at estimation of potential volume of cargo transported nowadays by road but which could be shift to maritime transport. This paper presents some conclusions of this study.