{"id":333038,"date":"2025-12-19T19:00:54","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T09:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/?p=68220"},"modified":"2025-12-19T19:00:54","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T09:00:54","slug":"italian-rail-freight-sees-a-laundry-list-of-problems-situation-is-extremely-complex-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=333038","title":{"rendered":"Italian rail freight sees a laundry list of problems: situation is \u201cextremely complex\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/strong>
\n<\/span>\u201cEuropean 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.\u201d Those are the words of Clemente Carta, president of Fermerci.<\/p>\n

Carta identifies an \u201cextremely complex\u201d situation for European rail freight. The reasons for that are various: construction sites, infrastructure backlogs and poor cross-border coordination.<\/p>\n

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Poor cross-border or international coordination<\/strong> has been a major topic in recent weeks. For example, the infrastructure works on the German railway to the Netherlands<\/strong> were already poorly coordinated before they started, but now it turns out that they will last for a decade or more<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Switzerland has unilaterally imposed new wagon wheel safety rules<\/strong>. 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.<\/p>\n