The rolling highway service between Italy and Germany will be discontinued at the end of 2025. The Swiss Federal Office of Transport (FOT) accepted the request from RAlpin, the company operating the service to interrupt traffic three years before previously agreed upon “due to an unexpected number of restrictions on the rail network”.
RAlpin, co-owned by Hupac, BLS and SBB, claimed that the service connecting Novara, in northwestern Italy with Freiburg, in southwest Germany, is no longer economically viable. The company said that it will cease operations with the timetable change planned for December 2025 instead of waiting until the end of 2028. RAlpine’s three shareholders will continue to finance the service “to ensure an orderly cessation of operations and fulfill its business obligations”.
RAlpin stated that the rolling highway service, which entails the transport of lorries by rail, is no longer viable despite ongoing financial support, existing demand and good capacity utilisation. On the other hand, the decline of this service was already visible in 2024, when around 10 per cent of the total trains planned had to be cancelled. Things did not improve with the start of 2025, as RAlpin highlighted. In the first quarter of 2025, there was a 20 per cent drop in the number of trains compared to the same period last year: from 1,018 to 794.
A dying concept?
The past couple of weeks have been quite negative for rolling highway services that from Italy cross the Alps. Other than the premature announced interruption of the Novara-Freiburg, the service connecting Orbassano with Aiton, in France, was also discontinued on 21 April, which will likely lead to a significant reverse modal shift. In other words, transalpine roads will see more trucks running, both between Italy and France and between Italy and Switzerland.