The Fehmarn connection has the potential to make Lolland-Falster and South Zealand the new major logistics hub on the TENT-T corridor from northernmost Scandinavia to Sicily in the Mediterranean. The business community has also gradually found out, and transport and logistics centers are popping up like toadstools on the Danish part of the route.
In the Maribo Business Park on Lolland, German HUB 48 Maribo has purchased 55,000 square meters of land – primarily intended for logistics companies. In Nørreballe on Nordfalster, Business Park Falster has also made good progress, and in Køge a large transport and logistics center has already been established. There are also plans for a large logistics center around Rønnede in South Zealand. All locations centrally located in relation to the European transport corridor.
No rails
What all these transport and logistics hubs have in common is that they are located right next to the connection facilities to the E47 motorway. And that there is no rail connection. The investors believe that there are returns in trucks – not in freight trains.
The EU Commission sees it differently. In November 2023, the commission came up with a proposal for a directive on intermodal freight transport. The idea is that only the first and last kilometers of the transport should take place with rubber wheels against asphalt pavement. Where possible, the goods must be transported by either rail or ship. That proposal must be considered by the EU Parliament, which we will elect on the ninth of June this year.
If you look at the CO2 accounts and the Paris Agreement, the proposal makes extraordinary sense. It costs an average of 15 – 25 grams of CO2 to transport one ton of goods one kilometer by rail. A diesel-powered truck emits 60 – 150 grams of CO2 in the same kilometer with the same tonne of goods.
429,000 tonnes of CO2 from trucks
As long as we are talking grams per ton-kilometer, it may seem somewhat arbitrary. But with 13.6 billion tonnes of goods transported on the EU’s roads in 2022, it will still be a pittance. If we imagine, for example, that the 13.6 billion tonnes of goods are transported an average of 300 kilometres, we are thus talking about 429,000 tonnes of CO2. By comparison, the whole of Denmark emitted the equivalent of 44,000 tonnes of CO2 in 2022.
On the railway, the same 13.6 billion tonnes transported 300 kilometers would have emitted 81,600 tonnes of CO2. The CO2 reduction by moving from trucks to freight trains would thus be a good 347,000 tonnes or around 81 percent. And that also counts.
No demand
Freight transport via rails, however, belongs to another era. Thus, the last freight train ran on the rails across Lolland in 1989, according to Lokaltog, which is responsible for the train operation on the Lollandsbanen. And there is no immediate prospect of that changing:
– There is currently no demand. Lokaltog is obliged to make the track available for freight transport according to current regulations, but it has been a number of years since this has been requested, says Lars Wrist-Elkjær, director of Lokaltog.
German railways need a loving hand
Supply and demand for Danish freight trains is, however, far from the biggest obstacle to getting freight transport on track. The German railway network needs a loving hand to that extent. Deutsche Bahn is responsible for upgrading a total of 9,000 kilometers of railway network. This is a printing of up to 80 billion Euros, and here there is now 12.5 billion Euros missing in the financing. And even if the money were to appear suddenly, these kinds of projects take time and require manpower. Both resources are scarce in European infrastructure.
It seems at first glance that the investments in logistics centers along the motorway will be profitable.
