The North American and European intermodal sectors welcome the World Leaders Summit on Climate that is to commence Thursday, April 22nd, Earth Day, in Washington D.C. The Intermodal Association of North America and UIRR would like to take this historic opportunity to highlight the benefits of intermodal freight transportation to the Summit participants.   

From a climate perspective, the intermodal system offers important benefits across a variety of dimensions: reducing congestion, saving money for both governments and shippers, providing increased transport capacity while at the same time benefiting the environment through reducing fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

In North America, high capacity and efficient rail intermodal trains move goods between cities and moving millions of trucks off the long-haul highways. Then trucks provide the flexible capability for the final miles that enable the intermodal option to be extended to and from shippers in all locations.

The European Combined Transport sector operates an extensive network of intermodal connections that provide the hinterland delivery of containers from deep-sea ports, as well as forward diverse cargo on continental relations.  Electric rail traction and superior energy efficiency are crucial to achieve the very low carbon footprint of intermodal transport services. 

IANA and UIIR support governments adopting national freight master plans, which identify intermodal transport – based on its many benefits – for an accelerated role in achieving the decarbonisation objectives shared in the world today.  

“Looking to the future, the benefits of intermodal freight transportation will continue to be more fully realized,” shared Joni Casey, president & CEO of IANA. “These include reducing highway congestion, highway maintenance, port congestion, fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions while producing efficiencies, cost savings and providing additional freight capacity.”

“Intermodal freight transport has been delivering effective solutions to the diverse challenges posed during the past half century,” pointed out Ralf-Charley Schultze, President of UIRR. “Our capability to efficiently insert sustainable modes of transport into road-only transport chains will continue to produce positive results for humanity in terms of low carbon footprint, energy efficiency, safety and security, labour productivity and pollution impact.”