Rail freight between France and Italy via the Fréjus Tunnel remains well-below the levels recorded before a major landslide struck in August 2023, leading to the closure of the line for a period of 19 months, according to a senior industry executive. Combined rail-road transport in particular, which accounts for an estimated 40% of freight transported by train between France and Italy, has been particularly hard-hit by the closure.
While traffic has been slowly picking up since the line’s re-opening at the end of March, in an interview with French media, Raphaël Doutrebente, the president of France’s 4F rail freight industry alliance, put the shortfall at approximately 50%. Doutrebente, who also heads French private rail operator Europorte, also highlighted the drop in automotive-related traffic transported on the route, as a result of a sharp downturn in the industry in Europe. His comments were confirmed to RailFreight.com by the company.
DB Cargo France CEO Alexandre Gallo agreed with Doutrebente’s analysis but reckoned that current rail freight traffic volumes were probably closer to 40% of pre-closure levels (than 50%). At the end of last month, the line suffered another setback with severe weather and a mudslide leading to its closure. The incident brought into sharp relief the line’s apparent susceptibility to extreme meteorological episodes which, to a backdrop of climate change, could become a more regular occurrence.
Restricted traffic for a while longer
Passenger traffic resumed on 5 July, followed by freight activity on 7 July albeit with restrictions. Gallo revealed that freight trains were presently operating to limited schedules because not all of the service tracks had been restored after the mudslide. “We are also having to deal with track works in the Maurienne Valley, so we can’t run trains when we’d like to. We have resumed traffic for our customer T3M (part of the Open Modal group), but are having to deal with a strike by Captrain Italia set to last until 11 July”, he said. SNCF Réseau, France’s infrastructure manager, is said to be expecting a full return to normal by the middle of this month but this has not been confirmed.
Reverse modal shift
The 19-month closure of the line saw some shippers transfer cargo to other rail routes to Italy via Switzerland or Nice and the French-Italian border at Vintimille. However, the vast majority switched to road haulage routing loads through the Fréjus and Mont-Blanc road tunnels. A major question now is whether these shippers that have switched to trucks will return to rail when their contracts with road hauliers, generally covering a period of one year, expire.
“For now, shippers are honouring their commitments to road hauliers and what combi operators are hoping for is a recovery of traffic by the end of the year and early-2026,” Doutrebente noted. Gallo, who is also president of rail industry association, AFRA, is certainly not under-estimating the challenge of convincing shippers who switched to road haulage during the line’s closure to return to rail. “They say it takes six months to attract a customer to rail and six days to lose them. But if I weren’t an optimist, I wouldn’t be in this business!”, Gallo concluded.