Routing: Swinoujscie/Gdynia-Katowice-Ostrava/Žilina-Bratislava/Vienna/Klagenfurt-Udine - Venice/Trieste/Bologna/Ravenna/Graz-Maribor-Ljubljana-Capodistria/Trieste
Members: PKP (Poland); SŽ (Czech Republic); ŽSR (Slovakia); SŽ - Infrastruktura (Slovenia); ÖBB Infrastruktur (Austria); RFI (Italy)
Legal Form: European Economic Interest Grouping
Registered Office, Permanent Office and One Stop Shop: Mestre (Italy)
Website: https://www.rfc5.eu/
The geographical extension of the Baltic-Adriatic Corridor covers a total extent of some 5,200 kilometres of railway lines connecting the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic Sea, united with around 80 multimodal terminals and seaports, serving industrial basins such as Silesia, Ostrava, Vienna, Bratislava, Veneto and Bologna.
The countries through which the Baltic-Adriatic Corridor passes have a GDP of approximately 3,200 billion euro (source: Eurostat 2021), with a population of around 125 million people.
According to the most reliable estimates, demand for freight transport along this route is expected to increase considerably over the next few years. The main factors are the growth in GDP of the former “Warsaw Pact” states, the opportunity to intercept rail traffic with Asia and in particular China, plus the growth of seaports linked to global trade.
In this context, the Baltic-Adriatic Corridor must face the challenges posed by rail transport, characterised as the key factors in choosing the mode of travel for end-users of transport with: a fragmentation of the logistics chain, difficulty in finding information regarding timely traceability of freight, along with a lack of reliability, in turn reflected on levels of punctuality with ample room for improvement.
The approach of the Baltic-Adriatic Corridor has always aimed at becoming established as a platform for facilitating cooperation between all those operating in the logistics channel and to act as a provider of Market Intelligence. Furthermore, considering the context in which the Corridor has been operating and reasoning from past experience, the operational direction in recent years has been to focus on what are referred to as “soft measures”, meaning experimenting with small, relatively low-cost projects with immediately measurable results. Apart from lower costs, the advantages of this approach are the possibility of being able to apply corrective actions immediately or, if successful, to enjoy them straight away, setting a benchmark for other Corridors.
During 2020, the Transport Market Study (TMS), initially carried out in 2014, was updated in order to analyse freight traffic volumes and provide recommendations for developing the rail freight market along the Corridor.
Since 2021, the Baltic-Adriatic Freight Corridor has significantly improved performance in terms of the demand for rail capacity. In fact, the ratio of the capacity volume demand to supply increased by 12% compared to the previous year, whilst the capacity demand in absolute terms rose 28%. During 2021, the EEIG also continued its customer-oriented approach by maintaining, for the 2022 and 2023 timetable for example, the offer of Extra Long Train” routes to/from the port of Koper and again for the 2023 timetable, two pairs of “Extra Heavy Train” routes from the port of Trieste and from the Pordenone freight village to Villach, allowing the circulation of heavy trains (weighing up to 1800 tonnes).
Also on the capacity supply side, the Baltic-Adriatic Corridor is able to offer train paths during the timetable period that can be requested up to 5 days prior to departure of the train (the rule for what is referred to as short-term capacity – reserve capacity – under the European Regulation is at least 30 days).
Finally, an extensive capacity study with an innovative approach was completed in 2021 to develop a simulator capable of designing an optimal capacity offer for different scheduling scenarios and taking into account all factors influencing demand, supply and traffic management.
The above are examples of the approach described at the beginning (soft measure) and, in particular, that of focusing on the quality of supply rather than quantity by experimenting with a so-termed premium offer for each railway timetable and analysing the response from the market.
In terms of transport reliability, the Baltic-Adriatic Corridor respects the Handbook for International Contingency Management (ICM), which defines the procedures to be implemented in the event of incidents affecting international rail traffic in order to minimise the effects. In this context, the Corridor organised annual simulations, one of which involved the participation of railway companies, as well as handled real cases by coordinating teleconferences between the IMs involved. In 2022, the Corridor developed a case study on capacity allocation rules in the case of ICM at the request of the European Executive Board Network.
In addition, a pilot was introduced to offer re-routing priority to trains using a PaP route in the event of an ICM event in the countries north of the Corridor.
The Corridor Members signed a Strategy Paper indicating further priority projects and efficiency targets.
Improving the commercial offer in response to specific market demands and reducing dwell times at the border (specifically in Tarvisio) through concerted actions between operators and railway companies are part of the future Corridor strategy. Another area for improvement concerns the procedures for coordinating capacity disruptions due to works. The Baltic-Adriatic Corridor intends to promote the integration of the logistics chain with increased involvement of Railway Companies and Terminals in managing interruptions and in improving punctuality, with optimum results in terms of the quality of the data underlying the statistics.
Finally, the Baltic-Adriatic Corridor intends to contribute to developing innovative, modern communication and information tools, in particular by focusing on digitalising and integrating the various information systems.
