RailFreight.com recently organised the second edition of the rail freight end-of-year market survey, with dozens of industry players responding and providing their perspectives on how the sector did in 2024 and what to expect in 2025. It is clear that the market expects no improvement from the new year, and it wants the EU to take a more leading role in managing European rail.
Respondents rated the rail freight industry’s overall performance in 2024 at a modest 5,6. For the coming twelve months, no improvement is expected: survey participants rated their outlook for 2025 at a 4,9.
Interestingly, respondents believe their own business segment to perform better than others. The same holds true for their own companies, which the market believes performs better than other companies.
In 2024, survey participants said that their own business segment performed with an average rate of 5,8, slightly higher than the industry average. When rating their own companies, respondents give them a score of 6,3.
The same pattern holds true for 2025, but expectations are lower than the 2024 ratings: 5,5 and 6,0 respectively for respondents’ own business segments and their own companies.
When asked about the challenges faced by the rail freight sector, no surprising picture emerges. Unbalanced competition with the road sector, inflation and infrastructure disruptions make up the top three hindrances for success in 2024.
As a result, more than 60 per cent of the market observed a much-feared reverse modal shift to the road sector. Other setbacks include decreased customer satisfaction, lower demand and lower profitability, which were reported by 41, 41 and 48 percent of participants respectively.
We asked participants if the European Union ought to create stricter regulations for cooperation between infrastructure managers (IM). An overwhelming majority of approximately 80 per cent agreed with the statement: “Otherwise each state IM will work to suit their own needs only and ignore the needs of cross border flows, which are a major source of rail freight demand”, one respondent comments.
Yet, not everybody is confident in the ability of EU regulations to improve rail freight. One participant points out that EU rules have flooded the trucking industry with cheap Eastern European labour, which made the road sector more competitive against the rail sector. “Similar results have not surfaced in the rail sector, where workforces to a far greater degree are domestic”, they say. “This has led to more emissions and a less sustainable transport sector, and clearly demonstrates the EU has no idea what it’s doing. As a result I hardly trust the EU to fix the mess it keeps making.”