In conformity with the world tendencies on urbanization, it is estimated that 4.5 billion people will live in cities by 2020 which means 60% of the world’s population. This will continue to accentuate urban transport demand in these areas, as they become dependent on the intelligent transport networks in order to facilitate travelling and the transport of goods and services in the big cities that will form in the future.
Experts believe that an important condition to improve the passengers’ comfort is a combined day & night operation of vehicles allowing sufficient seats for day travel and comfortable sleeping possibilities for night services.
A more flexible use of the rolling stock on long distances can create significant improvement in terms of efficiency thus leading to a more economic and competitive passenger railway transport.
New interior design concepts are needed in order to use passenger coaches in a more flexible way and to guarantee that this flexibility does not interfere with the attractiveness of the vehicles in the diverse market segments. The aim of innovating concepts in terms of comfort for railway vehicles is to improve the competitiveness of long distance travel compared to short distance flights. Moreover, to maximise the potential of railway high-speed transport on long distances, transport operators need innovating equipments such as the automated train protection systems to answer new demands for interoperability, economy, reliability, energy efficiency, as well as the ability to operate both on conventional and dedicated lines.
In terms of innovating concepts, the industry has offered more and more attractive ticketing solutions so as to make long-distance railway traffic more attractive and, why not, a viable competitor to air transport.
Current practices in the EU suggest that ticketing integration on long-distance passenger transport services is a complex issue, as a study elaborated by the European Parliament, the Department of Internal Affairs, shows.
Its feasibility encounters a number of legislative, technical and competition-related hurdles resulting from the differences between the many transport environments that have to be combined. Integrated ticketing is not an objective per se: rather, it is a means of making multimodal transport more attractive for users and of promoting more efficient use of existing infrastructure and services.
Only limited statistics are available on long-distance intermodal travel and there is no common definition across Europe of long-distance trips. This makes it difficult to provide a precise overview of the main characteristics and size of the long-distance market. Nevertheless, it can be said with absolute certainty that long-distance integrated ticketing remains a limited phenomenon, restricted to certain niche markets. However, stakeholders suggest that, even though it may be difficult to estimate, the potential for such a market does exist and may grow in the longer term.
The study shows that as far as the long-distance market segment is concerned, progress has been slow and no significant advances have been made. Rail-rail integration remains weak, as evidenced by the limited number of instances found by this study. Policy measures in this area have essentially focused on improvements in technical interoperability among domestic networks, while less attention has been paid to the integration of booking and ticketing schemes for trips involving more than one operator.
Recent data of the polls conducted by Eurostat in seven member states of the European Union show that long-distance transport represents 20% of the total transport per passenger/km. All national networks are, in fact, virtually interconnected. Overall, however, the network remains inefficiently coordinated at European level, notably because of inadequate transparency as regards market conditions. It remains to be seen – particularly in the absence of any policy action – whether the opening of the market to new operators will lead to an integrated approach or, by contrast, eventually undermine the limited results achieved so far.
Another aspect is that related to the co-operation between air and railway transport, where progress has been achieved over the last decade. Bringing services to the big airport hubs, the air-railway intermodality has been seen as a valuable strategy for reducing congestion and the capacity constraints of European airports by using high-speed railway services, as a substitute of small-distance flights. These being said, most air-railway products are still in the “niche-products” category provided by few operators and subject to bilateral agreements. Multilateral cooperation between air and railway operators is burdened by the fact that these means of transport rely on different commercial models, difficult to integrate and to make compatible, but also by the defensive strategies applied by large operators.
In order to support the intensification of long-distance railway transport, several recommendations are necessary, such as to invest in gathering better qualitative and quantitative information about the long-distance transport passenger market through improvements in statistical data, along with ad hoc studies to fill in the gaps.
It is also necessary to give priority to introducing rail-rail fare integration for international journeys. The opening of the European rail market needs suitable policy instruments in this direction. Increased rail competition should be accompanied by specific measures making the integration of ticketing schemes mandatory, albeit with different degrees of obligation. Also, effective monitoring of the market is important in order to avoid monopolistic attitudes among major players.
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