The French region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, which includes Lyon, said it is willing to cover the 20 million euros missing for the studies for the French access routes to the future Turin-Lyon railway. The region President, Laurent Wauquiez, claimed that the money allocation is dependent on state investments in everyday mobility in the region. The French […]
Author: Marco Raimondi
CER urges for more pragmatism in rail capacity allocation
The Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER) said Europe needs a more pragmatic approach to reach the goals set by the Green Deal. For rail freight, this means “more flexibility on short-term capacity allocation”, as CER mentioned. The need for more concrete solutions was brought up on Tuesday, 23 January, during a meeting […]
DB vs GDL: strike ends, negotiations to resume
The strike announced by the German Train Drivers (GDL) trade union between 23-29 January ended 24 hours earlier than planned. This means that for rail freight, trains started running again in the evening of Sunday, 28 January. GDL will now sit back at the negotiating table with Deutsche Bahn (DB) between 5 February and 3 […]
Faster wagon damage reporting: how can it be achieved?
Marcus Roth is a software developer based in Frankfurt, and Thomas Heydenreich is a rail freight consultant based in Hamburg. Together, they ‘digitally’ founded RailAppSolutions to improve the exchange of information concerning wagon damage reports. More recently, they launched TrainChecker, an app that allows quicker wagon inspections via a photograph, thus speeding up rail freight […]
Volkswagen Navarra slightly reduced rail freight volumes in 2023
The Volkswagen Navarra factory in Pamplona, near the Spanish border with France, has slightly reduced the volumes they move via rail. Between 2022 and 2023, there was a decrease from 54.1 per cent to 51.9 per cent in the number of units the company moved via freight trains. Despite the last drop, the company claimed […]
EU Commission wants to extend trade liberalisation agreements for Ukraine
The European Commission wants to extend the measures concerning the liberalisation of agricultural trade between the EU and Ukraine. David Clarinval, Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium, the country holding the EU presidency, said that Member States will soon receive information about the initiative. EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis added the Commission will present amendments to […]
Port of La Spezia gets 9 million euros from CEF to build new rail terminal
The Eastern Ligurian Sea Port Authority, which manages the port of La Spezia, will get nine million euros from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF). The funds will be deployed in the development of the new La Spezia Marittima rail terminal, which should start in February 2024. The initiative to upgrade the La Spezia Marittima terminal […]
GDL sends proposal to DB to end strike and resume negotiations
After launching a seven-day strike that might paralyze the transport sector in Germany, trade union GDL drafted a proposal for Deutsche Bahn (DB). If accepted, the union said it “will result in the suspension of strikes and the resumption of collective bargaining”. The union just rejected the third offer brought forward by DB, claiming that […]
Ukraine wants to ban Russian rolling stock imports for 50 years
The Ukrainian government asked the National Security and Defense Council to introduce a bundle of sanctions against Russia for the next 50 years. Among other initiatives, there is the proposal for a five-decade ban on the imports of Russian rail rolling stock in Ukraine. Other than the ban on rolling stock imports, the Ukrainian government […]
Bottlenecks on Rhine-Alpine Corridor to remain at least until 2030
The 2020s will be a stagnant decade for the Rhine-Alpine Rail Freight Corridor (RFC), which runs from Genoa, in Italy, to Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. Various bottlenecks along the corridor are expected to remain at the very least until 2030, according to the Corridor Information Document recently published by the body managing the corridor. The […]