8. Conclusion

Faced with steadily rising demand for small shipments to diverse areas, fueled in part by massive container imports at ports, and confronted with ever-increasing competition from road transport, including in the area of GHG emissions, rail freight will make increasingly intensive use of all forms of intermodal land transport: rail-road, river-road, coastal shipping-road, and rail motorway.

The ongoing digitization of the rail sector will accelerate to improve customer service quality and reduce production costs. The use of infrastructure and its development or upgrading will determine the capacity of intermodal transport to keep pace with traffic growth.

The goal of achieving zero-carbon transport by 2050 cannot be achieved primarily through a massive shift from road to rail. Each mode of transport will have to contribute to the achievement...