“Railways need hard investment within the next EU’s multiannual budget and for this, we, as well as each Member State have to support railway transport. This sector needs lobby and if we will not be involved, the other transport modes will increase, as at European level, all actors in these sectors are lobbying on their interest,” Libor Lochman, CER Executive Director said, during Railway PRO Investment Summit, organized by Railway PRO, Club Feroviar and AIF, on 3-4 October in Bucharest.
During 1995-2015, the European rail freight transport dramatically decreased, but rail passenger sector has recovered starting 2005. Comparing with rail freight sector in Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia, Romania registered the highest increase. “Although rail freight traffic and the degree of market opening are on a positive trend, infrastructure financing is crucial. If the level of investment will not be increased, and if there is not a rail development strategy at national level, this sector will lose its market share,” Lochman explained.
Currently, there are various tools for railway financing, and infrastructure charging is another aspect for infrastructure projects’ implementation.
Besides infrastructure investments, the railway competitiveness can be boosted by the ongoing 4th Railway Package – Technical Pillar, and Road Package, based on user- and polluter-pays principle, by the future EU fiscal and VAT policy and passenger rights-redressing imbalances like force majeur application. Also there are some sector’s initiatives such as digitalisation of operations, ERTMS, research and development, as well as functional specifics for rolling stock procurement.
During the summit, CER Executive Director explained the necessity of 10 priorities in 4 clusters. Relating to infrastructure investments, there is the need for technical requirements (with trains of 750 m everywhere) and ERTMS deployment; in service planning the timetable needs to be redesigned, the international freight capacity offer must be improved, the temporary capacity restrictions must be coordinated and the path coordination system has to be enhanced.
Regarding the operation, the border-crossing procedures must be harmonised and on customer relations, there have to be taken into account the key performance indicators as well as electronic documents.
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