Rolling country road
The Rollende Landstrasse ( RoLa for short ) is a transport system for accompanied combined transport by rail or a special train in which complete trucks or articulated trucks are transported by rail. The close -coupled, low-floor wagons used for this purpose with small wheel diameters (380/360/335 mm) have lanes running continuously across the entire train. During the journey, the drivers are accommodated in additional accompanying cars (seating or couchette cars ). At the end points of the connections there are special loading ramps so that the trucks can be easily loaded and unloaded. Due to the dead load share of over 50%, the rolling road is the most energetically inefficient and uneconomical form of combined transport .
In Switzerland, the abbreviation RA for Rolling Autobahn was used at times instead of RoLa . In North America and India the abbreviation is RORO for Roll-On / Roll-Off .
Transport offers
,_StVO_1992.svg)
Mostly transit lines, e.g. B. from Tyrol to Italy or to Eastern Europe , served with the RoLa . For Austria as a traditional transit country, the “Rollende Landstrasse” is important for environmental reasons. In 1999 the ÖBB transported 254,000 trucks or truck trains - this corresponds to around 8.5 million tons of cargo (in 1993 there were 158,989 units). In 2007, 19,073 trains carried 288,776 units by Rail Cargo Austria .
A “RoLa” runs directly between Salzburg and the port of Trieste , where the trucks arrive by ferry from Turkey. In Switzerland , RoLa trains run both over the Gotthard and the Lötschberg - Simplon axis.
The most important parameter of routes for truck transport is the corner height, this is the height that a loaded truck may use in order not to exceed the clearance profile of the route. For lines that exist today, corner heights result from the existing clearance profile - often 3.85 m - new lines such as the projected New Alpine Transversal aim for a corner height of 4 m, which the EU allows for trucks .
On September 25, 1994, the first RoLa train ran between Dresden-Friedrichstadt and Lovosice in the Czech Republic. The 115 km were covered in 185 minutes (between loading and unloading). The Free State of Saxony funded the pilot project with almost ten million euros until the end of 1995. With the subsidies that were later reduced, the attractiveness of the offer decreased. On June 11, 2003, the 750,000. Truck transported. In 2003, up to twelve pairs of trains were offered daily with a capacity of 23 parking spaces each. With an occupancy rate of 70 to 80 percent, the offer required operating subsidies of around 7.5 million euros annually; In 2003 this was compared to 6.5 million euros in fare income. After the Czech Republic joined the EU, the occupancy rate had dropped to less than ten percent. On May 18, 2004, it was decided to discontinue the offer.
In India, a rolling highway is operated on the Konkan route on the routes Kolad - Verna (since 1999), Kolad - Surathkal (since 2004) and Ankola - Surathkal. Here, trucks can avoid National Highway 17, which runs parallel to the route. This road is very winding and steep in the foothills of the Western Ghats .
operator
In Austria, the RoLa is operated by Rail Cargo Operator - Austria GmbH. Up to 80 trains with a total of around 1,600 parking spaces run within Austria and from Austria to Italy and Slovenia. In 2015 approx. 195,031 trucks were transported on the rolling road.
From December 2012 to June 2016, a transit RoLa across the Brenner Pass from Trento in Italy to Regensburg was operated by bayernhafen in cooperation with the terminal operator in Trento Interbrennero, Trenitalia , the company Trasposervizi and the private German rail transport company Lokomotion . Today the RoLa runs between Wörgl , on the border with Germany, over the Brenner Pass and to Trento.
The RoLa is operated in transalpine traffic through Switzerland by RAlpin AG in Olten . It has been running the Rola between Freiburg im Breisgau and Novara since 2001 and took over the connection between Basel Kleinhüningen Hafen and Lugano from Hupac in 2011 . In 2010, 102,720 trucks were transported through the Alps. In 2018, the RoLa between Basel and Lugano was discontinued.
development
The idea of setting up a kind of "rolling country road" arose before the first real railway in German-speaking countries. As early as 1828, a committee that promoted the construction of a horse-drawn railway from the Bad Dürrenberg saltworks to Leipzig proposed the construction of special railway wagons on which the horse-drawn vehicles would then be transported. However, the idea had several flaws and turned out to be uneconomical. Nevertheless, due to transport bottlenecks, this approach was used again and again. The first RoLa finally crossed Switzerland in 1968. In the course of the relocation policy , the existing Alpine railway lines were then further expanded so that an improved RoLa could be put into operation from 2001. From now on, trucks with a corner height of up to 4 meters, a width of up to 2.5 meters and a weight of up to 44 tons could be transported. With the RoLa and other measures, Switzerland was able to shift a considerable part of the transalpine freight traffic to the railways or keep them on the rails.
rating
The advantages of the “RoLa” are both economic and ecological: the freight forwarder saves fuel , tolls , lost time due to traffic jams and operating kilometers on his vehicles, and the drivers can observe the legally prescribed rest periods without having to interrupt the transport. In addition, restrictions, such as night or weekend driving bans for pre- and post-carriage, often do not have to be observed. In addition, the gross vehicle weight in combined transport in Austria is 44 instead of just 40 tonnes.
The freight forwarders criticize this facility, however, in addition to the costs incurred, the dependence on timetables and the long loading times. It is also shown that a lot of dead load is transported in relation to the freight load , since the truck tractor is also transported. On the other hand, however, there is the advantage of much lower rolling resistance. An interim solution or compromise is piggyback transport , in which only the semi-trailer is loaded onto pocket wagons while the tractor remains in place.
In Switzerland there is a constitutional mandate ( Alpine Initiative , see Alpine Initiative (Association) ) and a law (Güterverkehrsverlagerungsgesetz, GVVG) that aims to shift transit traffic through the Alps from road to rail. This goal is to be achieved with the completion of the NEAT and is supported with funding measures in favor of rail freight transport, including the RoLa.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ TRAFICO traffic planning: handling systems for combined traffic
- ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: Glossary of the Federal Office of Transport
- ↑ Message "Kurz-RoLa" Dresden - Lovosice accelerated further . In: Eisenbahn-Revue International , issue 3/2003, ISSN 1421-2811 , p. 107 f.
- ↑ Message 750,000 trucks on “Kurz-RoLa” . In: Eisenbahn-Revue International , Issue 8–9 / 2003, ISSN 1421-2811 , p. 368.
- ^ Message out for Dresden - Lovosice . In: Eisenbahn-Revue International , issue 7/2004, ISSN 1421-2811 , p. 328.
- ↑ Five times a week comfortably over the Brenner - the RoLa Regensburg – Trento is rolling again. Rola Aktuell 1/2013. Bayernhafen GmbH Regensburg. Retrieved April 10, 2015.
- ↑ DVZ. Retrieved November 14, 2019 .
- ↑ History - RAlpin AG. Retrieved November 14, 2019 .
- ↑ Ralf Roth, Between Competition and Dependency: A Long and Complicated Relationship between Road and Rail with Many Failed Innovations, in: Christoph Siepermann, Michael Eley (Eds.) Logistics - yesterday, today, tomorrow. Festschrift for Richard Vahrenkamp on the completion of the 65th year of life, Berlin 2011, 15-42, 36.
- ↑ Swissworld.ch Rollende Landstrasse
- ↑ Federal Office of Transport: Traffic across the Alps
- ↑ Jusline.at: § 4 KFG 1967 (Motor Vehicle Act 1967), General - JUSLINE Austria. Retrieved November 14, 2019 .