The development of an increasing number of railway connections between Europe and Asia is still challenging and barriers can only be removed through an adequate decision policy on joint projects, for each member state of the Wider Black Sea Area, such as the development of proper investment strategies and the elimination of regulatory or institutional barriers which prevent the development of efficient transport services.
Fortunately the governmental policies adopted in recent years by WBSA states seem to bring an ascending evolution for the railway infrastructure, which no longer holds the third place in the preferences of the population and of large project developers. Moreover, the railway infrastructure is beginning to outrun road and air transport, which until now seemed to be its unbeatable rivals.
“The railway network in the Western Balkans is still facing insufficient investments and the granted investments are directed to isolated railway sections and not to the improvement of the overall network. Due to infrastructure problems, its share is below 50%. Practically, the biggest problem in this region is represented by the infrastructure deterioration”, declared Yanni Papapanagiotou, Infrastructure Expert within WBIF.
The economic, political, environmental and technical challenges represented one of the main debate topics of the session dedicated to the Railway Infrastructure, on the occasion of the Railway Days 2012 Summit held at Bucharest.
The development of the railway infrastructure in the Wider Black Sea Area has brought forward other interesting topics to be discussed, such as fully interoperable pan European corridors – myth or reality, Projects on the innovation and research for railway infrastructure, but also debates on the topic of execution of high-speed projects in WBSA. The participants in the debates have talked about projects carried out at macro-region level (WBSA) or at the national level.
“One of the projects that we plan to develop is the connection Chişinău – Iaşi through a standard gauge infrastructure of 1435 mm. Transhipment and transfusion alternatives are much more varied in Chişinău than in Ungheni.
On October 10, we discussed the possibility of launching a railway passenger transport service to Vienna and thus we could offer a good competition to air transport. Since no low-cost air services exists in the Republic of Moldova, a train to Vienna would be much cheaper than the airplane”, declared Vitalie Strună, the General Manager of Moldovan Railways.
“We must be aware that when we talk about interoperability, we talk about ERTMS. The new EU Member States have little material stock or few lines equipped with ERTMS, however a careful analysis is needed to evaluate the necessary costs for the installation of such a system”, stated Boris Živec, Director of the Public Agency of the Republic of Slovenia for Railway.
“From the ten freight corridors included in the Regulation no. 913/2010, nine corridors are located in the EU territory. By means of the Danube Strategy, we try to support the development of these corridors or even to suggest the development of new ones”, mentioned Franc Žepič, Priority Area Coordinator for the Danube Strategy, Ministry of Transport of Slovenia.
The railway infrastructure acts as a catalyst for an increased regional integration and for the support of trade and foreign investments in the Area. The large project developing companies, the logistics operators will see that, for the projects they develop or for those already under implementation, they will be able to rely on the railway infrastructure.
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