The rolling highway (RoLa) between Novara and Freiburg has experienced a 12 per cent increase in trucks transported via rail during the first nine months of 2023 compared to the same period last year. According to RAlpine, the consortium operating the RoLa the figures for the last three months, “the figures also exceed those of the same months in the pre-pandemic year 2019”.

The main reason for this growth, according to the company, is the position of the terminal in Freiburg, located “south of the bottleneck on the German Rhine Valley railway”. This trend, as Ralpine pointed out, proves the Swiss government right, which decided to keep financing the RoLa until 2028. The only negative trend for 2023 is a slight decrease in train punctuality. “A good 70% of all RAlpine trains reached their destination with a delay of less than 60 minutes”, the company specified. This was due to staff shortages with the company’s service providers.

Novara-Freiburg Rolling Highway

The Novara-Freiburg RoLa, connecting northern Italy with southwestern Germany via Switzerland, was launched in 2001 and has been managed by RAlpine ever since. The RAlpine consortium comprises three of the largest rail freight companies in the country: private operators BLS and Hupac and the Swiss national railway holding SBB. So far in 2023, the RoLa has kept growing despite a general decline in rail freight in Switzerland. The Swiss Federal Office of Transport recently underlined that tonnes moved via rail throughout the country decreased by six per cent.

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