The Italian rail freight association Fermerci sees many concurrent problems for the industry. That not only applies to domestic Italian business, but also international European rail freight. It poses a serious risk to the competitiveness of the sector.
“European rail freight is going through a phase in which several critical issues are coming together, with serious repercussions on the competitiveness of a system that is currently in great difficulty.” Those are the words of Clemente Carta, president of Fermerci.
Carta identifies an “extremely complex” situation for European rail freight. The reasons for that are various: construction sites, infrastructure backlogs and poor cross-border coordination.
Poor cross-border or international coordination has been a major topic in recent weeks. For example, the infrastructure works on the German railway to the Netherlands were already poorly coordinated before they started, but now it turns out that they will last for a decade or more. The Dutch side was not prepared for that, counting on 80 weeks of work. The unexpected delay poses many challenges for domestic Dutch infrastructure work planning.
At the same time, Switzerland has unilaterally imposed new wagon wheel safety rules. Since all operators that go through Switzerland would need to adapt their rolling stock, that would seriously shrink the wagon fleet in Europe while wagons are updated. The Swiss rules undermine European interoperability at a time when that is an important point on the agenda. A court has rejected the rules for the time being, however.
What about Italy?
Within Italy, Carta also sees the situation as challenging. “The infrastructure works linked to the PNRR [National Recovery and Resilience Plan], which are necessary to bridge historical gaps in the national railway network, are causing numerous scheduled interruptions and an increase in construction sites, with negative effects on rail freight companies at a time of intense operational and competitive pressure”, the Fermerci president stated.
It is a well-known story, whereby rail freight companies lose customers due to external factors and find it difficult to convince them to return to rail as the preferred mode of transport once the disruptions pass.
Despite the difficulties, Fermerci finds that communication with infrastructure manager RFI has improved. Yet, the association sees room for improvement in terms of European coordination and time slot allocation where those time slots are currently available only to passenger traffic.