DB Cargo France to launch two road-rail services in early 2025
DB Cargo France is planning to launch two rail-road transport services at the beginning of 2025. One will link Metz and Nancy in eastern France with Valenton, in the Paris suburbs, while the second is a new ‘combi’ route to the UK via the Channel Tunnel. The company’s President and CEO, Alexandre Gallo, announced the new services in a French media interview.
He confirmed his comments to Railfreight.com earlier today. The short-line Metz-Nancy-Valenton service will offer five weekly frequencies with a half-train made up of 24 45-foot swap bodies loaded or unloaded in Metz, with the same capacity allocated to Nancy.
Bringing rail freight prices into line with road
“We expect to break even in the train’s first year of operation. Thanks to three road hauliers, two of whom are based in eastern France, we will fill the train to 80 per cent capacity”, Gallo explained. “As for the customers who have already placed their trust in us and those to come, we are trying to bring the price of rail freight into line with that of road haulage.
In this case, it is only a few percentage points higher, given the relatively short distance covered by the new link”.
Combi service via Channel Tunnel
Early 2025 will also see the Deutsche Bahn subsidiary launch a new combi service between Paris-Valenton and Daventry, in Northamptonshire, England, via the Channel Tunnel, on behalf of a UK logistics company whose name has not been disclosed. Trains will also be carrying 45-foot swap bodies with convoys towed by a high-powered diesel locomotive – providing greater flexibility in shunting operations at Calais – and operate two or three times a week. DB Cargo France is also adding a further eight electric locomotives which will join the fleet when the two new lines come into service.
‘No traffic along Frejus until mid-February’
Commenting on further delays to the re-opening of the the main rail border crossing between Italy and France which been has been closed for almost a year due to a landslide. “We don’t see a re-opening of the line before mid-February 2025 at best”.
Gallo previously told Railfreight.com that DB Cargo France would normally operate between 30 and 35 trains per week on the line and that its closure was costing the company one million euros a month in lost business. As for the likelihood of operators such as DB Cargo France receiving state aid for the closure of the line, he added. “For the moment there is no compensation planned, and given the state of France’s finances, I doubt we’ll be able to get anything”.
Modal shift
Gallo went on to underline that it will only be possible to reach State and EU targets of doubling rail freight and tripling combined rail-road activity by around 2030 through the development of cross-sector intermodal services. “This is certainly the right time to do so given that there has never been so much support for launching new services”, he said. The intermodal sector is expected to account for 40 per cent of DB Cargo France’s business this year, compared to 27 per cent in 2023.
DB Cargo France has taken over several traffic routes relinquished by Fret SNCF this year within the framework of the latter’s discontinuity plan imposed by the European Commission.[1]
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References
- ^ several traffic routes (www.railfreight.com)
- ^ See the offer (www.railfreight.com)