The Stazioni Marittime Terminal at the port of Genoa is mostly known as a facility for ferry passengers. However, the ferries are also loaded with semi-trailers, which might start to leave the port by rail once two key projects, the Terzo Valico and the node of Genoa, will be completed. RailFreight.com reached out to Alberto Minoia, CEO of Stazioni Marittime, who highlighted the potential of the initiative.
Together with passengers, the company transports about 150,000 semi-trailers every year on its ferries to and from the terminals in the port of Genoa. The area occupied by Stazioni Marittime borders to the west with one of the two PSA hubs in the Ligurian port, the Southern European Container Hub (SECH).
The SECH terminal will soon get nine new rail tracks and as many cranes. Moreover, with the Terzo Valico and Genoa Node projects, the terminal will be connected to Italy’s main railway network with an infrastructure equipped for the transport of semi-trailers. “If we could use one of those nine tracks to load our semi-trailers onto freight trains”, Minoia said, “it would already be beneficial for decongesting the port, the city and its highways”.
Semi-trailers at the port of Genoa
Currently, there are four realities handling semi-trailers at the port of Genoa, and they all have to rely on road transport, at least until the Terzo Valico and the Genoa Node will be ready. Stazioni Marittime moves the highest volumes together with the San Giorgio Terminal, roughly 150,000 each every year. Concerning Stazioni Marittime, most of the semi-trailers moed by ferry are exchanged with Sicily and Sardinia, followed by Malta and the Maghreb area.
“I am not expecting that all semi-trailers will go on rail”, Minoia specified, “but if we manage to move 10 per cent of our semi-trailers on the rail, we would already remove 15,000 trucks from the port, the city and the highways every year”. He added that roads will likely remain the main mode of freight transport, especially in Italy. “Boosting the modal shift is not necessarily a knock against road freight, but our infrastructure is saturated. Additional volumes should thus be redirected to the railways, especially considering the Terzo Valico and Genoa Node initiatives”.
A once-in-a-lifetime investment
According to Minoia, the Terzo Valico and Genoa Node, which together require roughly 10 billion euros, are “epochal investments which only occur every 50 or even 100 years”. Together, these two projects will create a significantly improved rail connection between the port, northern Italy and the Rhine-Alpine axis. Genoa is one of the few hubs in the area not yet equipped for rail transport of semi-trailers. “This will be the true innovation of the Terzo Valico”, he claimed.
The project entails the construction of a new and improved railway between Genoa and Tortona through various tunnels, including the Valico Gallery, which will be the longest rail tunnel in Italy at over 27 kilometres. Moreover, the Genoa Node project will create a connection between the port and the Italian main railway network, creating a first and last-mile link. The deadline for the grand opening of these projects was set for June 2026, but various issues caused delays, making it difficult to currently come up with accurate estimates.