Routing: Almería-Valencia/Algeciras/Madrid-Zaragoza/Barcelona-Marseille-Lyon-Turin-Milan-Verona -Padua/Venice-Trieste/Capodistria-Ljubljana-Budapest Ljubljana/Fiume -Zagabria-Budapest-Zahony (Hungarian-Ukranian border);

Members: ADIF (Spain), Línea Figueras Perpignan (Spain-France), SNCF Réseau (France), Oc’Via (France), RFI (Italy), SŽ - Infrastruktura (Slovenia), MÁV (Hungary); VPE (Hungary), e HŽ Infrastruktura (Croatia).

Legal Form: European Economic Interest Grouping

Registered Office, Permanent Office and One Stop Shop: Milan.

Website: https://www.railfreightcorridor6.eu

The Mediterranean Corridor is Europe’s most important horizontal rail freight axis, stretching 7,779 kilometres from Spain to the border of the European Union, connecting the Mediterranean Basin with Central Europe and Ukraine.

For this reason, the Mediterranean Corridor has a high potential to capture significant shares of Europe-Asia traffic flows, albeit currently under threat by the vicissitudes of war involving Ukraine.

Along its route from East to West, the Mediterranean Corridor interconnects with seven other Freight Railway Corridors and crosses 3 of the 4 main manufacturing areas of Europe, namely: Catalonia, Auvergne-Rhone-Alps and Piedmont-Lombardy. The countries through which the Mediterranean Corridor passes have a GDP of approximately 5,800 billion euro (source: Eurostat 2021), with a population of approximately 190 million people. The Corridor connects over 100 intermodal terminals, 5 of the main Maritime Ports in the Mediterranean and 2 important river ports (Lyon and Budapest).

For Italy, the Mediterranean Corridor is an important logistics link to France to the west and to Slovenia to the east, crossing some of the most economically-advanced Italian regions, including the ports of Venice and Trieste.

With regard to exchanges between Italy and France, the volumes of freight transported across the Frejus pass are shown in the table below (2019–2020 Alpinfo data, Ed. July 2022):

 

 2019

2020

Modane Pass Total Freight Volume – Thousands of Tonnes
 
14,462.00 13,088.90
Modane Pass Rail Freight Volume – Thousands of Tonnes
 
2,863.70 2,406.30
Modane Pass Modal Share – Percentage
 
19.8% 18.4%

Ventimiglia Pass Total Cargo Volumes – Thousands of Tonnes

21,705.00

19,515.70

Ventimiglia Pass Railway Freight Volumes – Thousands of Tonnes

743.60

633.70

Ventimiglia Pass Modal Share – Percentage

3.4%

3.2%
 

This data shows a high freight transport intensity, albeit it not comparable to the Swiss and Austrian passes, with ample room for growth for the railway sector in view of the increasingly pressing need to reduce road congestion, particularly when it comes to exchanges between France and Italy. 

The organisation of the Mediterranean Corridor became operational in 2013, in line with the deadlines set by EU Regulation 2010/913.

From its inception to date, the Mediterranean Corridor has seen a steady increase in the ratio of rail capacity offered and requested, stabilising at around 45% in recent years. The ratio between the railway capacity offered by the corridor and the total scheduled international capacity offered by the managers has also gradually been growing, as a sign of the corridor’s ever-important role as a single point of reference for providing standardised international capacity (C-OSS).

TT = timetable; LTL = late path request. TT2015 22%; TT 2016 25%; TT 2017 27%; TT 2018 33%; TT 2019 30% and 34% after LPR; TT 2020 24%

Over the years, the Mediterranean Corridor has contributed considerably to the improvement of international cooperation between its Infrastructure Managers and the Capacity Allocation Body (with there being a separation of roles in Hungary), culminating in the significant conference in Zagreb in 2017, at which a Letter of Intent was signed by the respective Chief Executive Officers and containing a number of specific measures aimed at strengthening the development of international freight transport.

One of the Corridor’s tasks is to periodically update a market study on observed and expected traffic trends along its route. The Corridor carried out an initial study in 2013, which was subsequently updated in 2016, when Croatia became part of the Corridor. The market study contains a series of projections for a modal shift over the medium- and long-term according to certain crucial factors in modal choice (such as the cost of rail and road transport, infrastructure developments, etcetera). In 2020, in collaboration with the Ten-T Mediterranean Corridor, the Corridor produced a new study with an analysis of the traffic along the Corridor itself plus future development scenarios on the basis of forecasts of developments in certain economic factors and transport policies.

In 2017, the Corridor also completed a study on the last mile by rail, aimed at identifying the main infrastructure measures needed to boost the performance of the logistics chain with regard to connections between the infrastructure manager and terminals.

Since 2019, the Train Performance Management (TPM) Work Group has organised a series of meetings with the Railway Companies operating along the Corridor twice a year, with the aim of:

  • Better understanding developments in the rail transport market and its needs;
  • Identifying shortcomings and possible corrective actions; and
  • Starting and carrying out joint analyses of the main problems in the railway sector along the Corridor, particularly with regard to cross-border transits.

Amongst the various studies conducted by the Corridor in recent years, one of the most noteworthy is “Boost on Rail” developed in 2019 in cooperation with Federchimica, the subject of which is the identification of factors considered by the chemical sector to be decisive for the modal shift.

Throughout 2020, the Mediterranean Corridor carried out a pilot project concerning the implementation of an End-to-End international rail transport control and monitoring function on a sample of bi-national and tri-national traffic rapports.

Activities to improve traffic at borders

Villa Opicina Task Force

Since September of 2020, due to works scheduled to be carried out on the Karavanke Tunnel (on the Slovenia-Austrian border), some Koper-Villach traffic was diverted via Villa Opicina/Tarvisio, with consequent problems with the management of the Villa Opicina plant plus the terminals and plants in the areas on both sides of the border. In response to a 32% increase in traffic at the Italian-Slovenian border crossing, the Mediterranean Corridor coordinated a Task Force made up of Italian and Slovenian Infrastructure Managers with the aim of jointly monitoring the planning and operational management of freight traffic, sharing the rules for managing cross-border traffic and setting up a round table with Railway Companies to share actions to improve punctuality at the crossing.

In 2023 and 2024, the Villa Opicina Task Force shall continue its activities to streamline railway traffic between Italy and Slovenia. The priority objective is to achieve a significant reduction in the dwell time of freight trains at the Villa Opicina station.

Click here for more details

Modane Task Force

At the border between Italy and France at the Modane facility, with the involvement of RFI and SNCF Réseau, the Corridor has launched an initiative called Quality Circle Operation (QCO), aimed at reducing transit times through the identification of joint initiatives with railway companies, also in anticipation of the construction of the new Turin-Lyon link.

One of the future challenges of the Mediterranean Corridor is certainly to achieve the transfer of freight traffic from road to rail, to reach a rail share of 30% by 2030, in line with the objectives set by the European transport policy.

In the medium term the Mediterranean Corridor will concentrate its efforts on:

  • Improving border transits by carrying out actions to develop greater interoperability and to ensure regular monitoring of traffic in order to identify and implement corrective actions so as to decrease transit times and ensure greater transport reliability;
  • Improved monitoring of performance with a focus on bettering data reliability and greater computerisation of information management;
  • Development of an international capacity offer increasingly in line with the needs of the end-user, extending the offer with a higher degree of coordination with terminals and ports. 

 

Organizzazione corridoio merci mediterraneo