Rail cargo in full-blown crisis: 90 million in damage estimated in 2024

The crisis of rail cargo, i.e. freight transport by rail, is now well and truly over. And it also risks dragging intermodality, i.e. combined road-rail transport, into the abyss, thus thwarting a valuable opportunity to make freight transport in Italy more sustainable, as it continues to be dominated by road, i.e. by trucks. Rail transport, which has a share of 11% of the national total (against the European average of 23%) is the most sustainable mode because it rarely uses fuel, thanks to the railway infrastructure, which is almost entirely electrified (73% of the total), 'with a more than positive environmental impact,' observes Giuseppe Rizzi, general director of Fermerci, one of the associations representing the sector. Indeed, the European Union's Grean deal has put rail freight at the centre, setting the goal of transferring 30% of road freight over 300 kilometres by 2030 to other, more environmentally sustainable modes of transport, including rail and waterways. But this is a goal that, as things stand, seems almost unattainable. Rizzi continues: 'By comparing the rail mode with road transport, an emission saving of 60 grams of CO2 has been calculated for every tonne of goods a train carries for every kilometre it has to travel. In Italy, 90.76 per cent of HGVs are powered by diesel and 7.7 per cent by petrol, while electric trucks account for just 0.3 per cent of the circulating fleet. Rizzi continues: 'Let me give an example: considering the transport capacity of a train to be on average 700 tonnes and that of a heavy goods vehicle to be around 14 tonnes, it can be estimated that each train replaces the transport of around 50 trucks on long-distance roads. From the energy point of view, moving goods on the train results in up to 85 per cent less consumption than the equivalent 50 HGVs'. In reality, things are different.

For this reason, the presidents of Fermerci and Fercargo, Clemente Carta and Mauro Pessano respectively, wrote a letter in the middle of August to the Minister of Infratsrutture, Matteo Salvini, denouncing the unsustainable conditions in which rail freight operators are forced to work, without any feedback or support requested for months. "This creates profound inconveniences for the Italian industrial system and local economies. We strongly demand urgent intervention by Minister Salvini to avoid a disastrous crisis with unpredictable consequences,' say Fermerci and Fercargo. In Italy, alongside the public operator and market leader Mercitalia Logistics (leader of the Ferrovie dello Stato logistics hub), there are both private companies (Cfi, Medway, Gts Rail) and public companies, such as Captrain, a subsidiary of the French state railway Sncf.

According to the cargo companies, 'the continuous interruptions of the railway lines, caused by the works of the NRP until 2026, are leading to a reduction in transport capacity of more than 50% in 2024, with peaks of 80% during the summer months'. Added to this are the closures of the Alpine tunnels, including the Frejus (which is not expected to reopen until November 2025 at the earliest) and the St. Gotthard (unusable for more than a year, until it reopened on 2 September), which have caused serious repercussions on the entire Italian logistics system. These problems, together with natural events such as the floods in Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany and the Red Sea crisis, are causing a collapse in rail freight traffic, with a loss of 3.2% in 2023 compared to the previous year and a forecast of a further drop of 6.7% in 2024. The estimated economic damage for 2024 is around EUR 90 million, with similar prospects for the following two years. "This context," conclude the two associations, "not only prevents the development of the sector and modal rebalancing, but also risks compromising the integrity and future of the companies and the approximately 15,000 workers employed. Further worsening the picture are rumours about the upcoming budget law, which could cut state incentives for the purchase of locomotives and freight wagons. In the past, these incentives had led companies to invest around EUR 700 million in the purchase of 196 machines. "If these rumours were to be confirmed, the defunding of rolling stock would be a hard blow to the development of intermodality and modal rebalancing in our country," says Massimo Marciani, founder and president of Freight Leaders Council. For the cargo companies, on the other hand, a fund or restorative mechanisms would be necessary to support them until the end of the work envisaged by the Pnrr.