Combined freight: a solution to driver shortage and reduced emissions 14/10/20
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COMBINED FREIGHT: A SOLUTION TO BOTH DRIVER SHORTAGES AND REDUCED EMISSIONS
Emissions can be reduced by 70% for long-distance transport of more than 300 kilometers by combined transport of goods, ie by transferring lorries and trailers to a train or boat.
At the same time, the share of intermodal transport is currently insignificant, only 1.8 percent in Hungary, but in order to meet climate goals, at least 100,000 truck traffic would have to be diverted from road to rail or water per year. The development of intermodal transport also addresses the growing shortage of drivers in road transport, which is in the hundreds of thousands in Europe, because a driver can take over the work of fifty drivers, said the Eastern European Intermodal Conference in Budapest, organized by the Hungarian Logistics Service Center. MLSZKSZ).
The aim of the event was also to draw attention to the need to develop environmentally friendly modes of transport.
Zsolt Fülöp, the president of the MLSZKSZ, emphasized that without the rapid spread of intermodal transport, the goals set in the European Green Deal could not be achieved, ie to reduce the burden on our environment by fifty-five percent by 2030 and ninety percent by 2050. The essence of intermodal transport is that it diverts traffic from road to environmentally friendly modes of transport, such as rail and waterborne transport, with the help of complex technical solutions. At intermodal terminals, a truck trailer, a container load or the entire truck itself can be put on a railway. The European Union expects that 30% of road transport over 300 kilometers will be diverted to other modes of transport, mainly rail.
- The development of combined transport is the simplest and most obvious solution for achieving climate goals - Ákos Érsek emphasized in his presentation. The chief adviser to the Association of European Combined Transport Companies has emphasized that combined transport, which can currently reduce the carbon footprint of the same transport by 65-70%, will be completely climate-neutral by 2050. To do this, the technology is already available, there is no need to achieve a breakthrough as in the case of green hydrogen. The combination of electric trucks, electrically operated transhipment terminals - which are excellent charging points for trucks - and rail can lead to the use of completely renewable sources throughout the supply chain.
The transition to combined transport also provides a solution to one of the most pressing problems of road transport, and to a shortage of tens of thousands of drivers in Hungary and hundreds of thousands in Europe. In a few years, there will be literally no one to take the freight, as hundreds of thousands more drivers will retire in the next decade in Europe with no supply at all.
"The Hungarian road haulage sector, which transports seventy-eight percent of goods, is fragmented: 13,000 of the 14,000 companies are micro and small enterprises, with high customer exposure and an uncertain market situation," said Gábor Dittel. According to the Executive Secretary General of NIT Hungary, intermodal transport opens a promising market for transporting small and medium-sized enterprises. However, they can only be diverted to intermodal transport through subsidized cooperation between road and rail transport. Normative support based on freight tonnes should be implemented, rail infrastructure should be developed in terms of combined transport and support should be provided for the purchase of crane semi-trailers. Ninety-seven per cent of road freight is accounted for by semi-trailer transport, while only a few hundred