Ralf-Charley Schultze, the Union for Road-Rail Combined Transport (UIRR) president, talked at the Bucharest Railway Days Summit about the Combined Transport’s Policy Expectations for the next five years.
“We need railway to be integrated into the logistics chains in the right moment, in the right way, in the right place. What happens in Brussels is quite astonishing. We had elections and there is a new political wind coming up”, said Schultze.
“There’s a new TEN-T regulation. There’s a new railway infrastructure management regulation.There’s an amendment in the pipeline of the combined transport directive”, added Schultze
The UIRR president stressed the fact that not all EU legislation has entered into effect and progress must be made in this sense.
“We started again the second phase of our campaign CT4EU. First of all, we are asking for finalizing what they started. So all the legislation that are on the pipeline have to be finalized in the next upcoming month and years. The second point we are asking for implementing all those legislations who have been adopted but not implemented so far, like the European Directive and many other legislations,” said Schultze.
The UIRR is also asking for better contingency mechanism to deal with new crises. “We are having new realities, we are facing crises, and we need to have a mechanism, a contingency mechanism, to deal with these new crises. And we ask the Commission to think about the mechanism so that we can be much faster in the future”, said Schultze.
How does the political landscape shape policies
Schultze then talked about how the political landscape in the EU is affecting policy maker’s decision.
“We have a new political leadership, we have a new guidance, and the Green Deal seems to be dead. I don’t think it is dead. It simply has to be integrated into the clean industrial deal. These are the words of Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the Commission, and the clean industrial deal is not only a buzzword, but it means that you have to mitigate and you have to combine economy and ecology in the best possible way. And the main way to go there is competitiveness. So we need more productivity, we need efficiency, and we think that combined transport has the right answers for productivity, for efficiency, and that is the most competitive mode of transport. Another word is resilience. Eno talked about robustness of rail. We are resilient. We are reducing exposures. Even in cases of landslides, of climate catastrophes, we have solutions that are much more resilient than the unimodal road”, says Schultze.
Another important topic is Europe’s re-industrialisation. According to Schultze the EU has to “come back from Asia”.
“There is the topic of the re-industrialization, the own production, so coming back from Asia, coming back from other countries, we really have to think European. And last but not least, the Green Deal, as I said, will be integrated into the Clean Industrial Deal, so that the capabilities are preserving the greening results. We have a new leadership, which means Ursula von der Leyen was re-elected by a majority, but it’s not the same majority today. So she managed to get elected by some parties which are more in the middle, but there are majorities per topic. And the EPP seems to be quite open to the right, there are personal dislikes and there is a kind of reversing the Green Deal, which is a demand from the right side, but I think that the Green Deal as such is not wrong, it simply has to be dealt in a different way”, says Schultze.
100km/h for freight trains
Ralf-Charley Schultze says freight trains don’t have to go fast, they have to be more efficient.
“TEN-T regulation is not only ERTMS. ERTMS is very important because this is harmonizing Europe. We have infrastructure parameters for freight trains. It will be 100 km per hour instead of 160 km per hour. You can say, okay, speed is also a good way to make your trains more efficient, but we don’t need 160 km per hour for freight”, said the UIRR president.
“For passengers it’s a minimum requirement, but for freight it is not particularly needed and if we can have more capacities through lines which are not having 160 kilometers per hour we are ready of course to take them. The KPIs, the key performance indicators for freight trains, 75% of cross-border crossing freight trains should be on time, 90% of freight trains should to complete the border crossing process on internal EU borders within 25 minutes. This, of course, is quite challenging, but this is the future. So we don’t have to focus on national issues, we have to focus on the European network. And what combined transport does today is bringing together the industrial zones, the urban zones, so we really have a European system and we have to put the network forward”, said Schultze.
European transport corridors
The rail freight corridors have to be merged into the European transport corridors, the pan-European corridors, and this might be negative in the sense that they could be diluted in the TEN-T, but it can be positive as well if it is well done, says Schultze
“And of course, some of the corridors of the rail freight corridors will disappear, some others will be joining others, so they will merge with others. But I think on the whole, it’s quite good development and quite good legislation. One point is important on the terminal development. A country-specific study should be done until July 2027 and an action plan for terminal capacity development within a year thereafter. Why are the terminals so important? Because without terminals you cannot combine the modes of transport. You need the right tools, you need the right terminals”, stressed Schultze.
Combined transport, a “never ending story”
Schultze says combined transport is a never ending story because the directive is from 1992.
“There was an attempt to revise it in 1998, a second attempt in 2017 with the proposal of the Commission, which was good. It was even enhanced by the Parliament, but then, unfortunately, under the Council, it completely failed and was completely disharmonized. So we hope that this time, with a new proposal of the Commission from last year, we are heading to something positive, which will boost and incentivize combined transport. The Hungarian presidency was quite constructive in trying to solve the issue of the definition of combined transport. In the proposal of the commission, they base the definition on external costs. But the values of these external costs will only be known in two years, so this was not accepted and was a bit complicated. As UIRR, we made a proposal based on distances, which is something which you can easily also show through the FT platform, so we can do it in a digital way”, said Schultze.
Accordin to UIRR, Combined Transport offers a perfect alignment with the Clean Industrial Deal through its efficiencies:
- 70% better energy efficiency,
- infrastructure efficiency through using heavy duty modes over the longest segment of the logistics chain,
- superior labour productivity and work/life balance for employees of intermodal transport chains,
- outstanding environmental and climate efficiency enabled by the direct use of European generated non-fossil renewable electricity (90% less CO2 emissions),
- effectively reducing accidents and related congestions through a superior safety performance.
What is proposed by the Combined Transport community?
- Adopt open legislative dossiers: primarily the Rail Infrastructure Capacity Management Regulation and the revision of the Combined Transport Directive
- Correctly implement outstanding EU law, primarily: the new TEN-T Guidelines Regulation, the Electronic Freight Transport Information (eFTI) Regulation, and legislation that internalises currently external costs of transport.
- Establish a resilient European contingency and crisis management mechanism for the transport sector.
- Advance digitalisation through an effective and standardised European digital framework.
- Additionally, provide effective organisational support, refrain from imposing technical obligations not validated through a targeted cost-benefit analysis, enable the issuance of carbon certificates in freight transport, and establish a uniform European codification regime for intermodal transport
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