The chief executives of four rail freight companies have called for the elimination of bottlenecks on the important Rotterdam-Genoa rail freight corridor.
The four companies, DB Schenker Rail of Germany, TX Logistik of Germany, SBB Cargo of Switzerland, and BLS Cargo of Switzerland, agreed on a joint position which will be promoted to policymakers and national infrastructure managers.
On the Rotterdam-Genoa Corridor, bottlenecks are in Oberhausen, Basel, Chiasso and Milan.
BLS Cargo chief Dirk Stahl said: “The new infrastructure of the Betuwe line, the Lötschberg Tunnel and the Gotthard Base Tunnel must be linked to create an efficient end-to-end corridor. Furthermore, capacity bottlenecks need to be alleviated.”
The European Union plans to establish nine international rail freight corridors, giving more priority to freight trains, by 2015.
Corridor 1, also known as ERTMS Corridor A, connects Rotterdam (Netherlands) and Zeebrugge (Belgium) with Genoa (on the Italian coast) via Cologne, Duisburg, Mannheim, Basel, and two parallel routes in Switzerland. This corridor is one of the most important routes in the European rail network. It was therefore selected for investigation by the four rail operators.
