The request submitted to RFI dates back to July 2019. Local authorities, along with operators represented by the management of the Gorizia freight terminal (Sdag), urged the national rail infrastructure operator to move forward with a long-awaited project of strategic importance to the area. Only now, nearly six years later, at the end of May 2025, has RFI awarded the contract for the design of what is referred to as the Gorizia freight “lunetta”, the link directly connecting the Udine-Gorizia-Monfalcone line with Gorizia-Nova Gorica and hence with the Slovenian network.
The petition launched in 2019 aimed to shake the stalemate created by RFI’s apparent disengagement, though it is clear that the operator’s planning priorities were elsewhere, despite opportunities offered by the national recovery plan. The current phase concerns only the first step, the design of the project, not yet the tender for construction works, which will follow later. The design contract has been awarded to Infrarail, a company within the same FS group. Meanwhile, the estimated costs for the project have risen from an initial forecast of 12 million euros to 20 million.
The final design of the lunetta foresees the construction of a single-track connection almost one and a half kilometres in length, including line electrification and a short realignment of the historic railway on the Slovenian side for about 260 metres. The turnout at the freight terminal junction on the Gorizia-Nova Gorica line will also be relocated to allow 750-metre freight trains to enter the link. Train control systems located at Gorizia Centrale will be upgraded as well.
Though the infrastructure may appear modest in scope, it will enable direct freight train connections from Trieste or Venice to the Slovenian line (and vice versa) without the need to reverse direction at Gorizia, eliminating the locomotive turnaround. This will translate into shorter journey times and, more significantly, the elimination of shunting operations. Due to such limitations, freight services are currently effectively suspended.
The benefits will extend beyond through-trains from the national network or the port terminals of Trieste and Monfalcone, enhancing the value of the Sdag terminal in Gorizia, an intermodal logistics platform covering 60 hectares and specialising in agri-food and temperature-controlled goods. The rail lunetta will serve the terminal and allow the freight village and surrounding logistics hub to fully operate as a hinterland extension of the ports, particularly as all connections will be electrified.
However, the puzzle of cross-border connectivity will only be complete when Slovenia upgrades the Transalpine railway as far as Jesenice, a junction with Austria, not to mention the need for a new section linking the existing Gorizia-Nova Gorica international route with the Nova Gorica-Ljubljana line.
Piermario Curti Sacchi
