Rolling highway

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 is often high enough to accommodate double stack containers, so the height of a truck on a flat car is no issue. However, in Europe, except for purpose built lines such as the Channel Tunnel or the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the loading gauge height is much smaller, and it is necessary to transport the trailers with the tyres about 30 cm above the rails, so the trailers cannot be simply parked on a deck above the wagon wheels. 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 with modified trailers. This technology did not survive, due to the market resistance to modified trailers. Today two designs for these special wagons are in commercial service, "Modalohr" and "Cargobeamer".

During a rolling-highway journey, if the drivers accompany the trailer, they are accommodated in a passenger car with seats or beds. At both ends of the rail link there are purpose-built terminals that allow the train to be easily loaded and unloaded.

Rolling highways are mostly used for transit routes, e.g. through the Alps or from western to eastern Europe.

In Austria, rolling highways exist from Bayern via Tyrol to Italy or to Eastern Europe. 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 8,500,000 tonnes (8,400,000 long tons; 9,400,000 short tons) of freight (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 and the harbour of Trieste, Italy, where the trucks arrive on ferries from Turkey. In those cases, drivers arrive by plane via Ljubljana airport, to take over the trucks.

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Wikipedia