The constant attention given to the market requires more extensive involvement of end logistics chain clients. For the Scandinavian-Mediterranean Freight Corridor, this includes simplifying access to the network and the services offered to transport companies and carriers, to make using rail increasingly easy and convenient. In this respect, the Terminal Integrated Capacity Offer (TICO) is an important product, having grown from a pilot project into an integral part of the commercial offer of the Corridor, involving an increasing number of terminals. The Integrated Commercial Offer is currently being refined in view of the feedback from railway companies.
In 2020, the second phase of the preliminary “Longer and Heavy Trains” study shall be completed, with the aim of estimating the capacity offer to be allocated to the circulation of longer and heavier trains than the current set-up and across various periods of time, taking into account market developments and the infrastructure investments currently planned.
A new market study on modal transport costs was completed in 2020, providing an analysis of the costs of rail and intermodal transport along specific traffic routes in order to identify key learnings for the further development of the commercial offer and an improvement of market knowledge to facilitate the acquisition of new customers.
The Scandinavian-Mediterranean Corridor was the first European freight corridor to apply on a real-case basis the International Contingency Management (ICM), being the international emergency management process shared by all European infrastructure managers in the event of unplanned disruptions to international rail traffic. The procedure has been applied to a real case for managing rail traffic interruption which took place on the Italian network along the Brenner adduction line in December 2020. Under such circumstance, the Scandinavian-Mediterranean Corridor organised the ICM meetings with the Infrastructure Managers and the Corridors involved (RFI, ÖBB-I, DB Netz, SBB-I, Baltic-Adriatic Freight Corridor and Rhine-Alpine Freight Corridor), working together to jointly identify the best options for re-routing the traffic affected by the disruption and to agree on a harmonised communication strategy towards railway companies.
In order to improve the competitiveness and attractiveness of international freight transport on the Munich-Verona line, a Task Force coordinated by RFI, ÖBB-I and DB Netz was set up at the beginning of 2020 under the aegis of the Scandinavian-Mediterranean Corridor to improve traffic management and optimise capacity management.
The Task Force initiated and completed the assessment of the European agreements (bilateral and trilateral) currently in force between the three managers in terms of scheduling and traffic management and identified actions to rapidly update and extend them, which were then tested as part of the pilot project in 2021. In parallel to conducting the pilot phase, the Task Force envisaged the involvement of railway companies for the subsequent identification and implementation of actions under their direct responsibility.
