European rail freight reached 410 billion tonne-kilometres in 2018, then the pandemic set it back. Since then, private operators have captured significant market shares in several national markets, and CargoBeamer operates an intermodal link Ashford-Calais connected to its continental network. Competition between operators is insufficient to finance infrastructure; coordinated public financing remains indispensable, alongside other levers for decarbonising freight.

The Essentials

  • Competition between rail operators improves service quality and supply, but does not generate the necessary investments in infrastructure.
  • European rail freight peaked at 410 billion tonne-kilometres in 2018 according to Eurostat; the recovery trajectory remains insufficient relative to 2030 climate targets.
  • CargoBeamer is expanding its rail-road links between the United Kingdom and France, moving from 4 to 6 weekly trains between April and June 2026, a signal of a developing multimodal market.
  • TEN-T corridors suffer from border bottlenecks and chronic under-capitalisation that the market alone cannot resolve.
  • Decarbonising freight transport depends less on the ownership model of operators than on coordinated public financing of cross-border infrastructure.

Liberalisation Has Delivered on Service Promises, Not Infrastructure

The opening of European rail networks to competition has produced real effects. In several countries, private operators have won significant market shares in freight: DB Cargo has had to restructure, and players such as TX Logistik, Captrain or Rail Care have established their presence on high-traffic corridors. Service quality has improved on routes where competitive pressure was strongest. Prices have fallen on certain routes. Tariff and logistical innovation has progressed.

CargoBeamer exemplifies this movement. The company has developed a system for loading semi-trailers onto flat wagons without special equipment at the end of the truck, which considerably extends the pool of freight accessible to rail. Its announcement of expansion between the United Kingdom and France, raising frequency from 4 to 6 weekly trains in spring 2026, illustrates how private innovation can find profitable niches that former public operators had not explored.

This partial success masks a structural limit. Operators contribute to network financing through tolls, but major network investments are primarily the responsibility of infrastructure managers and public authorities. Rails, tunnels, marshalling yards and signalling systems are managed by separate infrastructure managers, financed through tolls and public subsidies. Competition does not create additional capacity by itself; in case of saturation, coordinated slot allocation and management as well as investments are necessary.

Border Bottlenecks: Where European Rail Stops

Cross-border coordination difficulties particularly penalise international freight, but bottlenecks and disruptions are not limited to borders. The reasons are well known. Signalling systems differ: ERTMS, the European standard supposed to harmonise all this, has been rolling out for twenty years with deadlines systematically pushed back. Track gauges vary on some Iberian routes. Customs procedures, even within the Schengen area, create waiting times that road transport does not suffer.

A truck loading in Warsaw and unloading in Barcelona crosses a series of relatively smooth administrative procedures. A wagon doing the same route changes infrastructure manager, signalling system, slot allocation procedure, and technical regulations. Every border is a friction point. On major TEN-T corridors, Rhine-Alps, North Sea-Mediterranean, Baltic-Adriatic, these frictions can degrade the competitiveness of rail in terms of transit time.

The Oliver Wyman analysis published in June 2026 on the transformation of the European transport system identifies a set of brakes, including service deficits, operational rigidity and capacity bottlenecks linked to insufficient infrastructure, without allowing them to be ranked ahead of ownership model or tolls. The diagnosis aligns with the work of the European Commission on TEN-T corridors, which has documented over several budget cycles a persistent gap between announced capacity objectives and actual achievements.

This reality has a direct consequence for transport data logistics: you cannot optimise what you do not measure, and interoperable information systems between infrastructure managers remain fragmented at the continental level.

Chronic Under-Capitalisation of European Corridors

Behind the bottlenecks lies a financing problem. Rail infrastructure produces positive externalities, notably in terms of decarbonisation, road decongestion and safety, which are not all captured by the private investor. A rail operator investing in a new track or in modernising a border hub could benefit competitors and the public of some of the returns. The market uses rail infrastructure and can invest in certain infrastructure or related assets; major networks and cross-border projects, however, rely mainly on public and coordinated financing.

Infrastructure managers in Europe are in a delicate situation. Their toll revenues rarely cover their maintenance costs, let alone their investment needs. The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) finances some cross-border projects, but the envelopes remain modest relative to needs. The Union’s 2021-2027 multiannual financial framework allocated approximately 25 billion euros to the CEF for transport, all modes combined. This is a real effort, but below estimates of investment needs for priority TEN-T corridors alone.

The situation of DB Cargo summarises this paradox. The historic German operator has suffered significant losses in recent years, partly because it must maintain unprofitable links that competitors avoid, and partly because the network it uses suffers from accumulated maintenance deficits. The German government had announced 86 billion euros by 2030 to modernise the rail network; Deutschlandtakt is part of this but does not necessarily correspond to this entire envelope. Public investment in the network is an important lever to improve operating conditions for DB Cargo, but it complements, without necessarily replacing, competition, access regulation and the operator’s internal transformation.

This imbalance between operational dynamism and under-investment in infrastructure recalls a broader pattern we examined when analysing how China builds its roads: when infrastructure precedes demand, the result can be a bubble; when demand precedes infrastructure, congestion and modal shift to road are produced.

Multimodal as Adaptation Wager, Not Systemic Solution

CargoBeamer, HUPAC, Kombiverkehr: operators making progress in European rail freight all share a multimodal approach in common. They do not propose rail against road, but rail with road: solutions where the truck handles the first and last mile, and where the wagon handles the long-distance stretch. This logic responds to shippers’ real constraints, who value the flexibility and capillarity of the road network while seeking to reduce costs and carbon footprint over long distances.

CargoBeamer’s expansion on the Eurotunnel axis is emblematic. Six weekly trains between the United Kingdom and France is a frequency still modest but growing. The model works because it solves a concrete problem: standard semi-trailers, which represent the majority of the European road fleet, cannot be loaded on all wagons without adaptation equipment. CargoBeamer designed a pallet that eliminates this constraint, mechanically widening the addressable market.

But this service innovation runs up against the same infrastructure limit. The rise in frequency on the cross-Channel axis depends on available capacity on the infrastructure concerned. It also depends on national networks’ capacity to absorb trains at requested times. New multimodal traffic may encounter slot constraints on some routes and time slots, but additional capacity exists on some sections, notably for international cross-Channel freight. The market produces supply; the State largely directs and finances capacity development, while infrastructure managers plan, implement and operate it.

2030 Targets Require More Than the Market Alone Can Deliver

The European Commission has set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030 compared to 1990. Transport accounts for approximately one quarter of European emissions, and road freight constitutes a significant fraction of this. To achieve sectoral targets, modal shift to rail should accelerate sharply relative to the current trajectory.

The problem is that the current trajectory starts from a low level. With 410 billion tonne-kilometres in 2018, before the pandemic decline, rail freight represents a still minority modal share in European freight transport, far behind road. Post-2020 recovery has been real, but insufficient to reverse the long-term trend in favour of road.

This tension between climate objective and actual trajectory highlights a limit of the liberalised market model: achieving ambitious modal shift targets means acting on competitive conditions between modes. Road benefits from a network of largely depreciated infrastructure, whose external costs—accidents, pollution and congestion—are partially socialised. Rail benefits from more modest tolls on some networks, but from ageing infrastructure and border bottlenecks that tolls alone do not finance.

Pricing that would further internalise road transport’s external costs would alter the competitive equation in rail’s favour. Several transport economists have documented this. But this pricing falls within political choices whose implementation remains incomplete and uneven across member states.

Infrastructure as Common Good, Operator as Lever

The scenario in which competition between operators suffices to decarbonise European logistics is unlikely in the medium term. The mechanisms are lacking. A private operator rarely finances alone a very large cross-border project; such projects generally require public intervention and multinational coordination, possibly supplemented by private capital. It can choose its routes, its slots, its clients. Rail operators primarily provide services on infrastructure managed by separate infrastructure managers; their degree of network optimisation cannot be generalised without precise indicators.

Financing of the future structural network is generally ensured by States, local authorities and European instruments, while infrastructure managers plan, implement and manage investments within the framework of these financings.

European policies recommend combining financing and coordination of cross-border projects, accelerated deployment of ERTMS and improved market efficiency; they do not demonstrate that such a combination constitutes by itself a sufficient scenario. This scenario already exists in part, but its implementation remains progressive.

The signals to watch are precise. The actual pace of ERTMS certification on Rhine-Alps and Baltic-Adriatic corridor sections. The envelopes of the next multiannual financial framework allocated to the CEF for Transport. Member States’ capacity to agree on heavy goods vehicle pricing that internalises external costs. And the effective scaling up of multimodal operators like CargoBeamer on routes today still dominated by road.

The question posed by the current situation is not ideological. It concerns a division of roles between public and private actors that liberalisation policies in the 1990s-2010s partly left unanswered. The private operator is an effective lever for improving service quality on existing infrastructure. It does not replace the financer of that infrastructure. Acknowledging this limit, and organising public investment accordingly, is the condition for railway competition to actually produce the climate gains attributed to it.

Sources

  1. Oliver Wyman / GEODIS, Freight: Reshaping Europe’s Transport System (June 2026): https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-expertise/insights/2026/may/freight-reshaping-europe-transport-system.html
  2. Eurostat, Railway freight transport statistics (July 2026): https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Railway_freight_transport_statistics
  3. European Commission, Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), freight corridors: https://transport.ec.europa.eu/transport-themes/infrastructure-and-investment/ten-t_en
  4. CargoBeamer, Strategic Expansion Announcement UK-France (May 2026): https://www.cargobeamer.eu