In rail transportation, a rolling highway or rolling road is a form of combined transport involving the conveying of road trucks by rail, referred to as Ro-La trains. The concept is a form of piggyback transportation. The technical challenges to implement rolling highways vary from region to region. In North America, the

loading gauge A loading gauge is a diagram or physical structure that defines the maximum height and width dimensions in railway vehicles and their loads. Their purpose is to ensure that rail vehicles can pass safely through tunnels and under bridges, and ke ...

is often high enough to accommodate double stack containers, so the height of a semi-trailer on a

flatcar A flatcar (US) (also flat car, or flatbed) is a piece of rolling stock that consists of an open, flat deck mounted on a pair of trucks (US) or bogies (UK), one at each end containing four or six wheels. Occasionally, flat cars designed to carry ...

is no issue. However, in Europe, except for purpose built lines such as the

Channel Tunnel The Channel Tunnel (french: Tunnel sous la Manche), also known as the Chunnel, is a railway tunnel that connects Folkestone (Kent, England, UK) with Coquelles ( Hauts-de-France, France) beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. ...

or the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the loading gauge height is much smaller, and it is necessary to transport the trailers with the tires about above the rails, so the trailers cannot be simply parked on the surface of a flat car above the

wagon wheels Wagon Wheels are a sweet snack food sold in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, other Commonwealth countries like New Zealand and India, and Ireland. They consist of two biscuits that form a sandwich with a marshmallow filling with jam, an ...

bogie A bogie ( ) (in some senses called a truck in North American English) is a chassis or framework that carries a wheelset, attached to a vehicle—a modular subassembly of wheels and axles. Bogies take various forms in various modes of transp ...

s. Making the wagon wheels smaller limits the maximum speed, so many designs allow the trailer to be transported with its wheels lower than the rail wagon wheels. An early approach in France was the ''

Kangourou wagon The '' 'kangaroo wagon' '' is a type of wagon rail designed for the transport of semi-trailers. It has a drawbridge forming a pocket in the low position (hence its name) allowing the carrier train (2 or 3 axles) of the semi-trailer to be placed ...

'' with modified trailers. This technology did not survive, due to the market resistance to modified trailers. Today, three designs for these special wagons are in commercial service, "

Modalohr The Lohr Railway System or Modalohr System (french: Système Modalohr) uses special railway wagons of a type known as piggyback wagons, to carry standard road semi-trailers on the European rail network.CargoBeamer Cargobeamer is an intermodal transport system. It involves specially designed pallets which can be carried on a road trailer; the pallets are fitted on top of flatcars but can slide sideways to allow trucks to drive on and off smoothly at inter ...

" and "Niederflurwagen" . During a rolling-highway journey, if the drivers accompany the trailer, they are accommodated in a

passenger car A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods. The year 1886 is regarded as ...

or a

sleeping car The sleeping car or sleeper (often ) is a railway passenger car (rail), passenger car that can accommodate all passengers in beds of one kind or another, for the purpose of sleeping. George Pullman was the American innovator of the sleeper car. ...

. At both ends of the rail link there are purpose-built terminals that allow the train to be easily loaded and unloaded.

Examples of rolling highways

Rolling highways are mostly used for transit routes, e.g. through the

Alps The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Sw ...

or from western to eastern Europe.

Austria

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

, rolling highways exist from

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

via

Tyrol Tyrol (; historically the Tyrole; de-AT, Tirol ; it, Tirolo) is a historical region in the Alps - in Northern Italy and western Austria. The area was historically the core of the County of Tyrol, part of the Holy Roman Empire, Austrian Emp ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

or to

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russ ...

. Traditionally, Austria is a transit country and therefore the rolling highway is of environmental importance. In 1999 the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) carried 254,000 trucks, which equals of load (including vehicle's weight) (158,989 trucks in 1993). The rolling highway trains in Austria are operated by Ökombi GmbH, a division of Rail Cargo Austria, the cargo division of ÖBB. There is a direct rolling highway between

Salzburg Salzburg (, ; literally "Salt-Castle"; bar, Soizbuag, label=Bavarian language, Austro-Bavarian) is the List of cities and towns in Austria, fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020, it had a population of 156,872. The town is on the site of the ...

and the harbour of

Trieste Trieste ( , ; sl, Trst ; german: Triest ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital city, and largest city, of the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, one of two autonomous regions which are not subdivided into provi ...

, Italy, where the trucks arrive on ferries from

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

. In those cases, drivers arrive by plane via

Ljubljana Ljubljana (also known by other historical names) is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It is the country's cultural, educational, economic, political and administrative center. During antiquity, a Roman city called Emona stood in the ar ...

airport, to take over the trucks.

India

In 1999, the

Konkan Railway Corporation Konkan Railway Corporation Limited (KRCL) is an Indian public sector undertaking which operates Konkan Railway and also undertakes other railway-related projects. It is wholly-owned by the Government of India under the administrative control of ...

introduced the ''Roll On Roll Off'' (RORO) service on the section between

Kolad Kolad is a village in Raigad district, Maharashtra State, India. It is 117 km from Mumbai on the National Highway no 66(Mumbai-Goa) its also connected Pune via kolad Pune- kolad state highaway . It lies on the banks of River Kundalika. T ...

Maharashtra Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a states and union territories of India, state in the western India, western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. Maharashtra is the List of states and union te ...

and Verna in

Goa Goa () is a state on the southwestern coast of India within the Konkan region, geographically separated from the Deccan highlands by the Western Ghats. It is located between the Indian states of Maharashtra to the north and Karnataka to the ...

, which was extended up to

Surathkal Surathkal is one of the major localities in the northern part of Mangalore city located on NH-17, National highway 66 (previously as NH-17) in the Dakshina Kannada, Dakshina Kannada district, Karnataka state, India on the shore of Arabian sea. ...

Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...

in 2004. The RORO service, the first of its kind in India, allowed trucks to be transported on

s. It was highly popular, carrying about 110,000 trucks and bringing in about 740 million worth of earnings to the corporation until 2007. These services are now being extended to other parts of India

Switzerland

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

, rolling highways across the Alps exist for both the Gotthard and

Lötschberg The Lötschberg is an Alpine mountain massif and usually associated with a major, historically important transit axis of the Alps in Switzerland with, at its core, the Lötschen Pass (german: Lötschenpass, Swiss German: ''Lötschepass''). The m ...

- Simplon route. They are operated by RAlpin AG, headquartered in

Olten Olten (High Alemannic: ''Oute'') is a town in the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland and capital of the district of the same name. Olten's railway station is within 30 minutes of Zürich, Basel, Bern, and Lucerne by train, and is a rail hub o ...

. On April 15, 2015, BLS cargo launched a service between Cologne and Milan capable of transporting 4-meter articulated lorry trailers.

Italy

In 2018, 51% of the Ten-T network has been made adequate to P\C 80

, required for

ERA An era is a span of time defined for the purposes of chronology or historiography, as in the regnal eras in the history of a given monarchy, a calendar era used for a given calendar, or the geological eras defined for the history of Earth. Compa ...

Technical Specifications for Interoperability A technical specification for interoperability (abbreviated as TSI) is a text provided for in European Directive 2016/797 adopted by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union on the interoperability of the European rail system ...

to conveying road trucks by train. Further upgrades are underway.

France

Two rolling highways are currently in operation in France, both using French Modalohr technology: the Autoroute Ferroviaire Alpine, connecting the

Savoy Savoy (; frp, Savouè ; french: Savoie ) is a cultural-historical region in the Western Alps. Situated on the cultural boundary between Occitania and Piedmont, the area extends from Lake Geneva in the north to the Dauphiné in the south. Savo ...

region to Turin through the

Fréjus Rail Tunnel The Fréjus Rail Tunnel (also called Mont Cenis Tunnel) is a rail tunnel of length in the European Alps, carrying the Turin–Modane railway through Mont Cenis to an end-on connection with the Culoz–Modane railway and linking Bardonecchia in ...

owned and operated jointly by

SNCF The Société nationale des chemins de fer français (; abbreviated as SNCF ; French for "National society of French railroads") is France's national state-owned railway company. Founded in 1938, it operates the country's national rail traffi ...

and

Trenitalia Trenitalia is the primary train operator in Italy. A subsidiary of Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane, itself owned by the Italian government, the company was established in 2000 following a European Union directive on the deregulation of rail transp ...

, and the Lorry-Rail which connects

Bettembourg Bettembourg ( lb, Beetebuerg , german: Bettemburg) is a commune and town in southern Luxembourg. It is part of the canton of Esch-sur-Alzette, which is part of the district of Luxembourg. , the town of Bettembourg, which lies in the east of the c ...

Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...

, to

Perpignan Perpignan (, , ; ca, Perpinyà ; es, Perpiñán ; it, Perpignano ) is the prefecture of the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France, in the heart of the plain of Roussillon, at the foot of the Pyrenees a few kilometres from the ...

operated by SNCF. Lorry-Rail only carries trailers, while the AFA carries accompanied and unaccompanied trailers. Since June 2012, these two are operated under the brand "VIIA" by SNCF Geodis. In 2013, plans were announced to add more routes in France. One was planned to link

Dourges Dourges () is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Hauts-de-France region of France. Geography An ex-coalmining commune, now a light industrial and farming town, situated some east of Lens, at junction 17 of the A21 and the A1 autor ...

(near Lille) to

Tarnos Tarnos (; eu, Tarnose; oc, Tarnòs) is a commune in the Landes department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in southwestern France. Geography Tarnos is in the far southwest corner of the department, 5 km north of Bayonne. Population See also *Commune ...

(near Bayonne) in spring 2016 and the other was an extension North from Bettembourg to Calais. Eurotunnel announced its intention to build a terminal at Folkestone to extend the Dourges-Tarnos route to the UK . However, in April 2015 the French ministry of transportation announced the cancellation of the Dourges - Tarnos route, citing financial concerns. In July 2020, the government announced two further routes,

Sète Sète (; oc, Seta, ), also historically spelt ''Cette'' (official until 1928) and ''Sette'', is a commune in the Hérault department, in the region of Occitania, southern France. Its inhabitants are called ''Sétois'' (male) and ''Sétoises' ...

- Calais and

Cherbourg Cherbourg (; , , ), nrf, Chèrbourg, ) is a former commune and subprefecture located at the northern end of the Cotentin peninsula in the northwestern French department of Manche. It was merged into the commune of Cherbourg-Octeville on 28 Feb ...

Bayonne Bayonne (; eu, Baiona ; oc, label= Gascon, Baiona ; es, Bayona) is a city in Southwestern France near the Spanish border. It is a commune and one of two subprefectures in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine re ...

. French Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari confirmed in September 2021 €15m funding in 2021 for further development of ''autoroutes ferroviaires'' including Calais – Sète, Cherbourg – Bayonne and Perpignan – Rungis. As of August 2021, the following routes are offered in France: VIIA *

Calais Calais ( , , traditionally , ) is a port city in the Pas-de-Calais department, of which it is a subprefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's prefecture is its third-largest city of Arras. Th ...

le Boulou Le Boulou (; ca, El Voló ) is a commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France. It is situated 12 km from the Spanish border. Geography Localisation The town of Le Boulou is located in the canton of Vallespir-Albè ...

(1200km, 22h) * Calais -

Mâcon Mâcon (), historically anglicised as Mascon, is a city in east-central France. It is the prefecture of the department of Saône-et-Loire in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. Mâcon is home to near 34,000 residents, who are referred to in French as M� ...

* Calais -

Orbassano Orbassano is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Turin in the Italian region Piedmont, located about southwest of Turin. Orbassano borders the following municipalities: Turin, Rivoli, Rivalta di Torino, Beinasco, Nichelin ...

(Italy) * Mâcon - le Boulou *

(Luxembourg) - le Boulou * Aiton - Orbassano Cargobeamer * Calais -

(1100km, 24h) * Calais - Domodossola (Italy) (950km, 19h)

References

External links

* {{cite web, url=http://www.privatbahn-magazin.eu/index.php?cat=Magazine&page=Comparison , title=System comparison: Concepts for combined cargo , date=June 2011

Comparable concepts

Environmental Advantage

Flexiwaggon, corporate website

Kockums Megaswing
Freight rolling stock Intermodal transport Trains