Transportation turnaround: EU prevents intermodal freight transport?!

The decarbonisation of transport is crucial in order to achieve the EU climate goals in the sense of the European "Green Deal" and to be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is the common and established position among the authorities of the European Union. In this context, as Court of Auditors member Annemie Turtelboom also reminds us, "intermodality plays a central role". But it is precisely in this respect that freight transport in the EU is "not yet on the right track". Regulatory obstacles are to blame, as well as the lack of a centralised plan for the development and promotion of intermodal transport. 

According to a recent report by the Court of Auditors, intermodal logistics is even being slowed down. According to the report, EU rules and bureaucratic difficulties would lead precisely to a further increase in the share of more environmentally damaging freight transport by road - when in fact this should be decreasing in order to make the industry more environmentally friendly. Compared to other modes of transport such as trains, the use of trucks is around 77 percent, and still rising. Above all, however, the EU lacked a special strategy for intermodal freight transport, i.e. transport by two different modes of transport, such as a combination of train and truck - the European auditors complain. Decisions should be taken at European level to create the conditions for sustainable intermodal transport in cooperation with the member states. And thus to make the world of logistics and transport, among others, more sustainable and efficient.  

The infrastructure must also be modernised and expanded in several steps to make a successful intermodal transport system possible at all. Because in its current form, the freight transport network in Europe is not yet suitable for this. The use of larger, 740-metre-long trains could be an attractive strategy for the rails, but such trains could not run everywhere. Only half of the most important long-distance connections could currently use them. So more needs to be invested in the rail network to clear the way for the necessary expansion. To this end, countries like Germany are planning to introduce a higher HGV toll with a value that has not yet been fixed, so that the financial resources thus collected can be made available to rail transport. According to the traffic light coalition, 80 per cent of the toll revenue is to flow into modernisation and expansion of the rail sector.  

Without a clear change of direction through the adoption of new legal guidelines to promote the development of the sector, as well as through concrete measures, the inadequacy of the railway sector can never be remedied. Which is also equally detrimental to the future development of transport into an efficient and profitable system, which at the same time respects the environment in terms of climate protection.  As much as it is possible to reduce the environmental impact of large combustion vehicles such as lorries by means of traffic measures such as driving bans and environmental zones, it would make more sense to directly eliminate the root of the problem. Namely, to reduce as much as possible the number of lorries circulating on the continent. However, what the Union will now decide on the basis of the Court of Auditors' report remains to be seen.