EU OK for the Alpine rail motorway service at Frejus

The service had been at a standstill since the summer of 2023 when a landslide affected the French side of the Frejus railway line. Now the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, together with the French Ministry of Transport, has obtained the green light from the European Commission for the support measure for combined transport - road and rail - along the Alpine railway motorway between Italia (Orbassano) and France (Aiton).

"The intervention aims," reads a note issued by the MIT in the evening, "to transfer shares of freight traffic from road to rail, reducing the environmental, health and social impact of traffic across the Alps. The aim is to support rail freight transport on the historic Fréjus line, along the 175 kilometres connecting the two terminals.

The service, which envisages loading up to 100 trains for each direction of travel per day, 52,000 per year, could start up again in September, is the prediction of SITO Logistica's managing director, Enzo Pompilio D'Alicandro. "Operators are looking with interest at this service," he explains, "which makes it possible to increase the load by 15% in intemodal mode.

Slope and structure of the historic link require traction modes for loads with double traction units and make transport more costly for operators, hence the launch of the measure to support intermodality between the two countries, at a cost of approximately 5 million euros for Italia and France.

The ministry expressed strong satisfaction with a long-awaited measure, 'which strengthens the Alpine railway motorway between Italia and France with a market instrument and overcomes the previous model based on the monopoly of a single concessionaire'.