The present paper concerns the design of a city port business model incorporating Public Private Partnership schemes. Extensive literature review was acquired, in order to fully comprehend the organizational schemes and state of practice of Public Private Partnerships at ports. A survey was conducted at the port of Volos, based on questionnaire and interviews, to define the functions and services of the port, which could benefit from the private involvement and improve its role as a transport interchange for all involved stakeholders. The collected data were analyzed, using a modified version of Analytic Hierarchy Process, which revealed the relevant importance of port functions and services. Three different management models were considered to tackle the most important issues that came up during the analysis and they were evaluated based on the literature; the current one, a landlord management model and a partial privatization management model. The results of this process indicated, that the landlord management model would be the most effective for the particular case of the port of Volos. The landlord model seemed to perform better in improving both the operation of the organization and the level of passenger satisfaction, through its increased management flexibility, due to the segmentation of services and reduction of bureaucracy, as well as the additional investment capital that it can attract. Based on the proposed management model, actions and measures improving on the port’s business model are recommended.

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A European Strategy for low-emission mobility of 2016 states that Europe needs to accelerate the transition towards low- and zero-emission vehicles like some plug-in hybrids, full electric cars and fuel cell (i.e. hydrogen-powered) vehicles. Transition to a low-carbon economy is supported in all EU countries including Latvia. Through the Strategy, the European Commission is working to strengthen the economy by promoting sustainable urban mobility and increased use of clean and energy efficient vehicles and looking into how to accelerate this process. Cities are crucial for the delivery of this strategy, and electrification of buses is a step towards reducing the fossil fuel dependency of the transportation sector as well as creation of a healthier urban environment. At the same time electric buses are still a challenge for public transport operators due to high aquisition costs of a new vehicle and lack of charging infrastructure. Therefore conversion of diesel city bus into electric bus is one of the alternatives considered. The development of local economy along with the technological opportunities are important factors to be considered in the decision making regarding the use of electric bus in a city. Economic viability of converted diesel city bus into electric bus can be parameterized using an economic model that allows to estimate an impact of critical variables on the total cost of ownership. In this paper, a specific case of operating converted diesel bus into electric bus in a city of Latvia is analyzed. With the help of economic model critical variables are determined as well as their switching values, which make the use of converted diesel engine bus into an electric vehicle economically viable. The results of economic analysis are in favour of converted electric bus which apart from lower O&M costs provide additional benefits to the environment.

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