The UK and Spain have never been so close

The longest rail motorway in Europe

As the longest rail motorway in Europe (avoiding 1,200 km of roads), VIIA Britanica allows road hauliers to cross France in only 22 hours.

Trains on the VIIA Britanica rail motorway carry unaccompanied semi-trailers from the port of Calais to Le Boulou (at the border between France and Spain) six days a week. Initially, there will be one round trip per day, eventually increasing to two round trips per day.

Each train is 680 metres long and is made up of 20 cars, with enough capacity for 40 semi-trailers. This service is operated by VIIA, a subsidiary of SNCF Logistics, and it will shift 40,000 semi-trailers a year from the roads to the rails over the next five years. This will save 50,000 tonnes of CO² per year, equivalent to eliminating 50 million lorry road kilometres per year. 

New VIIA Rail Motorway Terminal within the Port of Calais

An integrated ferry service from the United Kingdom (“RoRo rail”)

The rail motorway terminal in Calais is the first such terminal in a port. It is a tri-modal hub uniting rail, sea, and road transport for unaccompanied semi-trailers moving between Spain and the United Kingdom, or onward to northern France and Belgium.

This strategic location gives transporters the benefit of integrated sea-rail service between Dover and Le Boulou. Semi-trailers that arrive by train to the port of Calais can remain unaccompanied as they are loaded onto ferries to cross the English Channel.

To date, an initial agreement has been signed between VIIA and P&O Ferries, a maritime transport company that is seeking to develop its unaccompanied semi-trailer transportation activity. Today, P&O Ferries offers up to 58 crossings per day between the ports of Calais and Dover.

This is the first ever multi-modal goods transport corridor between the United Kingdom and the France-Spain border. The Boulogne Calais Port is currently France's 4^th largest cargo port, and these new cutting-edge facilities (which required €7 million in investments) will only make the port more attractive and lay the groundwork for the growth expected to follow the "Calais Port 2015" project, which will double capacity.

Increased security around this new service

In order to ensure that the service runs under optimal security conditions, safety measures have been increased, especially around the port of Calais.

These measures go beyond the normal inspections carried out at the Boulogne Calais Port, which are the same as the inspections that lorries undergo before loading when they arrive by road. 

You want to contact us?

You are interested in this new rail motorway service, you want more details, a quotation, or you want to discuss further with us? 

Please contact us! 

Only one adress: sales@viia.com