EUROPE: The RAlpin joint venture has announced that its ‘Rolling Highway’ piggyback service carrying accompanied lorries through the Alps by rail is to be discontinued in December, owing to an unexpectedly large number of restrictions on the rail network.
RAlpin said there is continuing high customer demand and capacity utilisation of 80% on the Rollende Landstrasse service between Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany and Novara near Milano in Italy, but it faces significant economic challenges, despite ongoing financial support from the Swiss government.
Around 72 000 lorries were carried in 2024, but about 10% of its trains had to be cancelled because of planned engineering works. This led to a loss of SFr2·2m. In the first quarter of 2025 engineering works meant around 20% fewer trains ran compared to the same period in 2024. RAlpin said this was because of German rail infrastructure’s ‘persistently high susceptibility to disruption’.
As a result, on May 5 RAlpin announced that the service is to end this year, rather than at the end of 2028 as previously planned. It will ensure an orderly cessation of operations, and the Swiss government will increase the average compensation per transported lorry until the service ends.
Combined transport
The RoLa service was introduced in the 1960s to shift trans-Alpine road freight traffic to rail. Entire lorries are loaded on to low wagons, with the drivers travelling in a sleeping car.
The service was modernised in 2001, with RAlpin founded as a joint venture between BLS, Hupac and SBB. In recent years, RAlpin has transported up to 80 000 lorries per year, around 7% of combined traffic through the Swiss Alps.
The service was designed from the outset as an interim measure until the completion of the NEAT programme (Neue Eisenbahn-Alpentransversale) through the Alps, comprising the Lötschberg, Gotthard and Ceneri base tunnels. These enable the efficient rail transport of unaccompanied semi-trailers and containers over long distances. In 2023 the Swiss parliament decided to extend the government’s financial support for the RoLa for the last time and to cease operations at the end of 2028, with the future focus to be on unaccompanied combined transport using advanced handling techniques.
RAlpin said ‘with the completion of the new rail link through the Alps, the future of the north-south corridor belongs to this segment of combined transport’.
