Italy’s rail freight slump puts green transport goals at risk

Rail freight transport in Italy is entering a critical phase, with fresh data showing a third consecutive year of decline that is pushing more cargo back onto the country’s already congested roads and casting doubt on national and European climate ambitions.

Three years of falling traffic on the rails

Recent figures from Italian and European monitoring bodies indicate that rail freight in Italy has recorded negative results every year since 2022, both in terms of trains running and tonnage moved. Industry monitoring for 2025 points to about a 3.5 percent drop in train-kilometres compared with 2024, extending a slide that now totals almost 8 percent over the 2022 to 2025 period.

This downward trend contrasts with the relative stability seen in earlier official statistics. National data for 2023 and 2024 suggested that, measured in tonne-kilometres, overall rail freight activity had broadly stagnated after the shocks of the pandemic and the energy crisis. The latest operational indicators, however, suggest that the apparent plateau has given way to a more entrenched contraction on the network.

The squeeze is particularly evident on international corridors, where Italian rail operators face intensifying competition from both foreign rail companies and long-haul trucking. European monitoring reports describe international rail freight as the main driver of the recent downturn, with cross-border volumes falling faster than domestic flows across many EU countries and reaching their lowest levels in a decade.

For travellers and businesses, the consequence is subtle but significant: fewer freight trains mean more trucks on motorways and mountain passes, especially on north–south routes linking Italian ports and logistics hubs with Central Europe.

Road dominance deepens despite EU shift targets

Italy already relies heavily on road haulage, and the renewed slump in rail risks locking in that dominance. Environmental indicator series compiled from national accounts show that road transport accounts for well over 60 percent of total domestic freight movements by tonne-kilometre, with rail capturing only a modest share and struggling to grow.

Across the European Union, the picture is similar, but Italy stands out as a large economy where the long-discussed modal shift from road to rail has yet to materialise at scale. European Commission reports note that rail’s overall share of inland freight in the EU has actually edged down in recent years, even as policymakers have reiterated goals to move substantial volumes off highways and onto rails and waterways.

For Italy, these trends collide directly with climate policy. Rail is responsible for only a tiny fraction of transport-related greenhouse gas emissions in Europe, even though it carries a significant portion of passengers and freight. Each percentage point lost by rail and gained by road therefore makes national decarbonisation targets harder to reach, particularly on heavily trafficked freight corridors passing through the Alps and the Po Valley.

The imbalance also has practical implications for Italy’s role as a logistics gateway. With road already saturated around major ports and intermodal hubs, further erosion of rail freight limits the country’s ability to capture new trade flows linked to reshoring, e-commerce and growth in Mediterranean shipping routes.

Structural hurdles on a crowded network

The weakness of Italian rail freight is not new, but the current downturn exposes structural issues that have long constrained the sector. Rail infrastructure across key north–south and east–west axes is heavily used by dense passenger traffic, leaving limited capacity for slower, longer freight trains during daytime hours. Much freight traffic is pushed into night-time slots, complicating operations and reducing reliability for shippers.

At the same time, charges for accessing the rail network have been rising. Recent European-wide monitoring points to an uptick in track access fees for freight services in 2024, reversing earlier reductions that were designed to support the sector during the pandemic and energy crisis. For operators already working on thin margins, higher access costs further blunt rail’s price competitiveness against trucking.

Market structure adds another layer of complexity. Italy’s freight market is dominated by Mercitalia, part of the state rail group, alongside a handful of private and foreign-controlled operators. While liberalisation has brought new entrants, critics argue that open-access rules and competitive pressure have not yet delivered the scale of innovation or service quality needed to persuade logistics customers to shift from road to rail.

Operational reliability is also under scrutiny. Logistics users point to congestion on key European corridors, long recovery times after disruptions and a patchwork of national rules and priorities that still hamper cross-border freight. For Italian exporters in sectors such as automotive, steel and consumer goods, these issues can make road haulage appear the safer choice, even on distances where rail should have a natural advantage.

Investment plans versus on-the-ground reality

Paradoxically, the slump in rail freight comes at a time of significant planned investment in Italy’s rail system. The national infrastructure manager is pursuing projects to upgrade transshipment yards and intermodal terminals, with the aim of making it easier to transfer containers and trailers between trucks and trains. These upgrades are tied to broader European initiatives to strengthen the Trans-European Transport Network and improve north–south freight links.

Publicly available planning documents highlight the ambition to create higher-capacity corridors suitable for longer and heavier freight trains, as well as to streamline terminal operations so that loading and unloading can match the speed and flexibility offered by road transport. The expectation is that better infrastructure will eventually support more frequent, more reliable services for shippers.

Yet the recent traffic decline suggests a disconnect between the long-term investment cycle and the short-term reality faced by operators. Some rail companies have reduced services or rationalised routes in response to rising costs and weakening demand, while others are focusing on niche intermodal products that can still compete with road on price and reliability. Until these strategies translate into visible growth in train numbers and tonnage, the risk remains that new infrastructure will be underused.

For travellers, these developments may not be immediately visible, but they shape the broader ecosystem that supports passenger rail. Freight revenues help justify maintaining and upgrading lines that might otherwise face underinvestment, particularly in peripheral regions and along secondary routes.

What a continued slide means for Italy’s mobility future

If the current negative streak extends beyond 2025, rail freight in Italy could find itself in a structural downsizing that is difficult to reverse. Analysts warn that once logistics chains have been reconfigured around road, winning cargo back to rail requires more than marginal improvements in price or punctuality. It demands a step change in service design, cross-border coordination and digitalisation.

At the policy level, a sustained contraction in rail freight would force a rethink of how Italy plans to reach climate and congestion objectives in the transport sector. Measures such as incentives for combined transport, tighter regulation of heavy road vehicles or targeted support for key rail corridors may gain prominence if current trends persist.

For the wider European network, Italy’s difficulties are a test case of whether the vision of shifting long-distance freight from road to rail can be delivered in practice in a large, complex economy with dense passenger services and challenging geography. As other countries grapple with similar pressures, the trajectory of Italian rail freight over the next few years will be closely watched by planners and logistics operators across the continent.