Munich/Verona. “20 years of successful cooperation in rail freight: We are relieving the Alpine region of truck traffic and thereby protecting residents, the environment, and the climate,” with these words Armin Riedl, founding Managing Director of Lokomotion Gesellschaft für Schienentraktion, summarizes two decades of successful German-Italian railway history. “Together with our partners, we move approximately 800 trucks from the highway to the rails every day, saving over 160,000 tons of CO2 in Brenner transit every year,” says Riedl. “We are quite proud of that. We are showing that cross-border cooperation benefits the climate and can be economically successful.”
To ensure the success story continues, the company is also making demands of policymakers on the occasion of the anniversary. “We need improved infrastructure and finally fair competitive conditions on equal footing with road transport,” makes Martin Ausserdorfer, CEO of Rail Traction Company (RTC), clear. For him, this includes not only important new infrastructure projects but also careful and preventive maintenance of the existing lines and, above all, better coordination of all parties involved on the Brenner axis. This year alone, the Brenner has been unusable for rail freight for a quarter of the total time so far. “At the same time, we are in competition with road transport, which receives numerous subsidies—for example, for gas-powered trucks. Here, the change in political thinking must finally be followed by action.”
On October 15, 2001, the company’s first freight train left the Munich Riem station for Verona, marking the start of a long-term growth phase. Today, 10-15 trains run daily in a round trip on the Verona-Munich route and vice versa; since 2005, the route via the Tauern Pass has also been served. With over 145,000 trains in the last 20 years, both companies have shifted nearly 3.6 million truck trips from Alpine roads to environment- and climate-friendly rail on the Brenner route. With the anniversary train almost exactly 20 years later and the specially painted locomotive, both companies now want to highlight the contribution of rail freight to climate protection.
Both companies are also focusing on sustainability in the fight against the shortage of skilled workers. RTC and Lokomotion each maintain their own training center for locomotive drivers at their locations in Verona and Munich. “Instead of complaining about the shortage of skilled workers, we focus on opening up new perspectives for young people through training,” says Riedl. This costs money, but it is the right way forward in the long term.
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