The new VIIA Britanica rail highway entered service. VIIA Britanica is Europe’s longest rail highway, avoiding a 1200 km journey by road, and enables road hauliers to cross France in approximately 22 hours.
The trains operating on VIIA Britanica carry unaccompanied semi-trailers from the port of Calais to Le Boulou on the Franco-Spanish border six days a week.
Each 20-wagon train is 680 metres long and can carry up to 40 semi-trailers. Operated by VIIA, a subsidiary of SNCF Logistics, this service will enable modal shift of 40 000 semi-trailers per year over the next five years, representing an annual saving of 50 000 tonnes of CO² and the equivalent of 50 million truck-km.
Situated for the first time in a seaport, the rail highway terminal in Calais is a trimodal (rail/sea/road) hub for unaccompanied semi-trailers travelling between Spain and Great Britain or Spain and northern France & Belgium.
This strategic location gives carriers the option of an integrated rail-sea service between Dover and Le Boulou, whereby semi-trailers arriving by train in the port of Calais can be loaded (still unaccompanied) onto ferries for the Channel crossing.
“This new service will add to the network of rail highways, offering our road haulier customers ever-more efficient and competitive services. We are already working on adding new connections to link Calais to other terminals across Europe”, VIIA Chairman Thierry Le Guilloux said.
“We are delighted by the opening of the VIIA Britanica rail highway, and are proud to be the first port in Europe with such innovative infrastructure”, Port Boulogne Calais Chairman and CEO Jean-Marc Puissesseau added.
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