Mercitalia Rail, the rail freight arm of Italian state railway Ferrorie dello Stato Italiane, is aiming to attract business from express operators following the launch of what it claims is Italy’s first overnight, high-speed rail service for cargo.
The weekday service, ‘Mercitalia Fast’, connects Caserta, in the Naples region and Bologna in northern Italy. It offers loading capacity per train equivalent to 18 TIR trucks and operates at an average speed of 180 km/h, with journey times of three and a half hours.
“The Mercitalia Fast service was designed to meet the needs of customers such as express couriers, logistics operators, producers, distributors and real estate developers”, the company said in a statement.
CEO Marco Gosso said Mercitalia’s goal was to offer a tailor-made service to customers who need to deliver goods quickly, reliably, and on time – features that were increasingly in demand with the current e-commerce boom.
“In the future, we plan to extend Mercitalia Fast services to other terminals located in the main Italian cities serviced by the high speed (rail) network”, he added.
Italy’s Minister of Labour and Economic Development, Luigi Di Maio, said the launch of the new Mercitalia service was a paradigm shift in the transport of goods in Italy, making the movement of goods fast, remarkably safe and environmentally friendly.
“We are taking the first step of a broad and defined project that aims to make Italian high-speed freight transport a cutting-edge model in the European context. It is an important step for the South, which must increasingly be central to trans-European routes and which will have important employment effects.”
Mercitalia estimates that the Fast service will reduce traffic on the main Italian motorway (Autostrada A1) by about 9,000 HGVs annually, reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere by 80% compared to road transport.
