The European Commission (EC) will not get involved in reactivating the rail highway service between France and Italy, despite the request of the two countries. The EC’s transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said that decisions on the matter “remain within the competence of the relevant national authorities”.
Tzitzikostas’ words were part of his answers to questions raised by MEP Massimiliano Salini, vice-president of the European People’s Party. The questions were submitted over three months ago, right after the service was discontinued. However, it seems that the EC has no intention of deploying funds to reactivate this combined transport service, the end of which already led to a significant number of semi-trailers going back on the road.
The Alpine Rail Highway
The service, known as Alpine Rail Highway (Autostrada Ferroviaria Alpina, AFA) transported semi-trailers on freight trains between Orbassano (Italy) and Aiton (France) through the Frejus tunnel. Launched in the early 2000s, the initiative contributed to move a significant amount of traffic from road to rail along the main border crossing between Italy and France, with 29,000 units in 2022.
With the 19-month closure of the Frejus railway due to a landslide between August 2023 and March 2025, the service was halted and has not restarted since. With this closure, public subsidies stopped as well, making the situation significantly more difficult. The official discontinuation of the AFA service came in April 2025, and the situation remains bleak with no happy ending in sight.
Not an easy task
Putting more non-cranable semi-trailers on trains is one of the key factors for increasing the modal share of rail, which is one of Europe’s main goals for transport. However, such initiatives are often complicated to implement for various reasons, spanning from rolling stock and infrastructure to finances.
First, special equipment is needed to place the semi-trailers on trains. Some companies developed a platform that can be lifted with a crane, while others focussed on new types of wagons. However, there currently are only a few players in this business sector, with some remaining highly reliant on external funding to survive.
Along many routes, the infrastructure needs to be adapted to the 4-metre profile to allow the passage of wagons loaded with semi-trailers, especially when it comes to tunnels. These are also time-consuming and costly procedures. Finally, some of these services serve the single wagonload traffic segment (as in the case of AFA), which is rarely a profitable one.