Sustainability

Noah's Train: The longest mobile artwork to protect the climate

10. 02. 2019

“We can’t save the whole world, but we can set a sign to protect our climate.”

Noah’s Train is the longest mobile artwork and is inspired by the oldest history of environmental protection, Noah’s Ark. A train to draw attention to the Rail Freight Forward coalition’s goal of shifting 30% of freight to rail by 2030, because rail freight transport produces at least 6 times less CO2 than road freight transport.

It departed on 14.12.2018 in Katowice, Poland. Via Vienna, Berlin and Paris it finally travels to Brussels. The containers are green in their initial state and are continuously transformed into artworks. Two containers each are contributed by the Railway Undertakings PKP Cargo, DB Cargo, Lineas, SNCF and us, the RCG and are designed by local Street-Art artists on its way. So it finally transforms into the longest mobile artwork to protect the climate.

But what is the background?

The background to all of this is the enormously growing transport industry in Europe. The freight volume is expected to increase to 30% by 2030. Today, however, 75% of all freight is transported on the roads, and that figure is rising steadily. This means that if no action is taken, the current emissions of the freight industry – around 275 million tonnes of CO2 – will increase by 80 million tonnes per year.

A modal shift from road to rail is a fundamental step towards improving the climate friendliness of freight transport.
Rail Freight Forward

By 2030, the transport industry must reduce its current CO2 footprint by 25%, and a third of this effort must be in freight transport. Rail freight transport is nine times more efficient than transport on the road in terms of CO2 emissions.

Rail Freight Forward – European Rail Freight Vision 2030

To draw the attention to all this the Rail Freight Forward coalition was formed. Rail Freight Forward is a coalition of rail freight companies that have set themselves the goal to drastically reduce the negative effects of mobility and freight traffic on our planet.

Our major common goal is to achieve a share of rail freight of 30% by 2030 (at the moment the share amounts to 18%). In other words, a doubling of the quantities transported by rail.

To achieve this shift, rail freight operators will develop innovative products that are competitive with road transport in terms of frequency, reliability, flexibility, price and service. With the possibility of intermodal transport concepts, i.e. an intelligent combination of road transport to and from the rail, especially for long distances, fast and environmentally friendly transport – with 6x less CO2 emissions – becomes possible.