The goal of France’s Grenelle de l'Environnement initiative is to get 500,000 trucks a year onto the railways by 2020, representing an annual saving of 620,000 tonnes of CO2.River transport is an alternative to avoid congestion in sea ports and on certain major roads inland.
In 2012 , Greenmodal reported 23 455 containers on rail and 12 250 containers on barge, thus saving a considerable amount of CO2, and plans to report 74 537 more by 2020 with a 5% rise in volumes per year