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Promoting sustainable freight transport modes such as trains and shipping by inland waterways can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental pressures. The EU Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy underlines the importance of a shift towards greener freight transport. However, the share of train and inland waterways in Europe's total freight transport peaked in 2012 and has been declining since. Achieving a modal shift towards greener freight transport will require decisive action and a change in long-standing trends.

Figure 1. Share of inland waterways and trains in total inland freight transport in the EU-27

In 2020, under the scope of the European Green Deal, the European Commission (EC) adopted a Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy emphasising a shift towards more sustainable transport modes. Targeted actions included doubling rail freight traffic by 2050 or supporting multimodal logistics, increasing transport by inland waterways and short sea shipping by 25% by 2030. Achieving these results could reduce greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions, and other environmental pressures such as noise. Changes to the EU’s mobility system are vital to realise the green and digital transformation ambitions and become more resilient to future crises.

Since 2010, the share of total freight transport demand met by trains and inland waterways peaked at 27% in 2012. It has steadily fallen since, reaching a share of 22% in 2023.

At the same time, total inland freight transport activity increased by 11% between 2010 and 2023, indicating an increase in the use of both road and non-road transportation in absolute terms. Significant efforts to encourage the use of rail and inland waterways freight transport are needed to achieve a shift towards more sustainable modes. This requires improvement in the existing infrastructure and its use, e.g., by modernising rail corridors and upgrading port facilities, as well as more efficient and digital logistics.

The EC launched important initiatives for the supply side, such as the revised TEN-T regulation and rail capacity regulation. Effects are yet to be seen, however they aim to improve European infrastructure and make its use more efficient by improving cross-border rail connectivity and optimising the network capacity. As part of the Greening Freight package, initiatives such as CountEmissionsEU provide a common methodological approach for transportation companies to calculate their greenhouse gas emissions and benchmark their services. This allows citizens to make informed choices on transport and delivery options.

Digitalisation also provides practical tools to internalise the external costs of transport and raise awareness of the pressures exerted by our freight mobility needs. The EC is developing frameworks to support combined freight transport and smarter, paperless logistics, as outlined in EEA's TERM report. In this context, investments and funding are required to finance safe, clean and modern infrastructure that ensures access to a sustainable freight transport system.

Figure 2. Changes in the share of inland waterways and trains in freight transport across European countries between 2010 and 2023

The use of trains and inland waterways in freight transport activity varies across Europe, in terms of share values and time evolution. Between 2010 and 2023, three EU Member States (Belgium, Italy and Portugal) increased their shares. For the last two, the increase is greater than one percentage point. Portugal experienced the greatest growth, by 2.8 percentage points. Shares of trains and inland waterways has declined by more than five percentage points in 12 countries: Poland, Sweden, Austria, Hungary, Czechia, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

For other EEA member and cooperating countries for which data are available, Norway's share decreased by -2.0 percentage points and Switzerland's share increased by 0.4 percentage points.

To fully transition to a more sustainable mobility system, an integrated approach is essential to reduce environmental and economic impacts along supply chains. This includes making freight transport more efficient through modal shifts and dynamically managing demand so that it is aligned with sustainability goals. Leveraging the opportunities offered by digitalisation from an environmental perspective, and simplifying administrative burdens will boost the clean transition of the freight transport system.