{"id":375779,"date":"2026-02-25T19:57:28","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T09:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/?p=69621"},"modified":"2026-02-25T19:57:28","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T09:57:28","slug":"data-of-the-week-italian-trucks-outpace-rail-but-trains-dominate-in-international-traffic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=375779","title":{"rendered":"Data of the week: Italian trucks outpace rail, but trains dominate in international traffic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The Italian rail freight sector remained stable in 2024. The total volume transported was virtually unchanged compared to 2023. Conversely, the road sector grew by 5.2%. This confirms a trend which we already knew about all too well, namely that the modal shift is failing. However, trains do beat trucks in one segment.<\/strong><br \/>\n<span id=\"more-69621\"><\/span>In total, rail moved 94.6 million tonnes of freight in Italy in 2024. The Italian statistics agency Istat published these numbers earlier in the week. This is a decline of 1.2 million tonnes compared to 2023, which Istat calls a sign of the \u201csubstantial stability\u201d of rail activity.<\/p>\n<p>It is doubtful that the rail freight industry will take a similarly positive view on the matter. Despite Europe\u2019s modal shift goals, the road sector captured a bigger share of the pie in 2024. Its freight volume grew by 5.2% to 1,110.5 million tonnes.<\/p>\n<div class=\"flourish-embed flourish-chart\" data-src=\"visualisation\/27787948\"><script src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/resources\/embed.js\"><\/script><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/visualisation\/27787948\/thumbnail\" width=\"100%\" alt=\"visualization\" \/><\/noscript><\/div>\n<h2>Rail wins internationally&#8230;<\/h2>\n<p>Rail freight is already known to be mostly about international flows of goods, and the Italian strongly confirm this. Let\u2019s take a look at domestic freight first: trucks transported 1,084,249 tonnes of goods in Italy in 2024. By contrast, trains only managed 35,706 tonnes, a tiny fraction of the road sector.<\/p>\n<p>Internationally, the picture looks much different. Here, the road sector moved 26,243 tonnes. Rail freight transported more than double that: 58,898 tonnes.<\/p>\n<div class=\"flourish-embed flourish-chart\" data-src=\"visualisation\/27788036\"><script src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/resources\/embed.js\"><\/script><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/visualisation\/27788036\/thumbnail\" width=\"100%\" alt=\"visualization\" \/><\/noscript><\/div>\n<p>Clearly, international traffic is vital for Italian rail freight. For large railway companies (as per the definition used by Istat), international transport accounts for 64.6% of their total activity.<\/p>\n<h2>&#8230; but trucks still take the performance prize<\/h2>\n<p>A small \u2018sobering\u2019 remark must be made here, however: trucks still outperformed trains internationally when measuring their activity in tonne-kilometres. In raw tonnage, rail does better, but trucks transport their goods over longer distances.<\/p>\n<div class=\"flourish-embed flourish-chart\" data-src=\"visualisation\/27788163\"><script src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/resources\/embed.js\"><\/script><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/visualisation\/27788163\/thumbnail\" width=\"100%\" alt=\"visualization\" \/><\/noscript><\/div>\n<p>The Italian data also confirm the importance of intermodal business. Among the types of goods transported, the \u201cother\u201d category accounts for 59% in tonnes and 49% in tonne-kilometres. This includes containers and swap bodies.<\/p>\n<p>Metals and agricultural products, hunting and forestry also grew their volumes in 2024. The former increased by 6% in terms of tonnes of 8.6% in terms of tonne-kilometres. The latter grew by a modest 1.5%, but tonne-kilometres saw a positive +18.2% dynamic, which indicates an increase in the average transport distances for these products.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"readmore\">\n<div class=\"readmore-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/railfreight\/2026\/02\/11\/data-of-the-week-intermodal-remains-resilient-despite-dutch-rail-freight-volume-collapse\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/29344650398_b4b91c6d90_k-128x128.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"readmore-thumbnail\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"readmore-info\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/railfreight\/2026\/02\/11\/data-of-the-week-intermodal-remains-resilient-despite-dutch-rail-freight-volume-collapse\/\" class=\"readmore-title\">Data of the week: Intermodal remains resilient despite Dutch rail freight volume collapse<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Italian rail freight sector remained stable in 2024. The total volume transported was virtually unchanged compared to 2023. Conversely, the road sector grew by\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17312,11313,19697,345,471,78,47],"tags":[12634],"class_list":["post-375779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-data-of-the-week","category-in-depth","category-istat","category-italy","category-news","category-rail-freight","category-rail-news","tag-railfreight"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=375779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":375780,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375779\/revisions\/375780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=375779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=375779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=375779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}