The Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER) published an extremely useful report providing a detailed perspective on the current stage of the European railway freight transport. The CER report analyses the last decade marked by many strategies and objectives dedicated to the revitalisation of the European railway transport market share but also for the consolidation of its position in relation to the other modes of transport.
In the published compendium, CER mentions that more than ten years ago a series of objectives and many strategies were established to increase the competitiveness of the railway freight transport sector by publishing the White Paper on Transport, the 2001 version. A series of policies have been implemented and most likely, since they were not sufficient, a new White Paper on Transport was published in 2011. The difference between the two consists in the fact that the latest Paper contains more ambitious strategies for a more efficient and sustainable transport facing strong competition. Moreover, the Fourth Railway Package completes the previous legislative packages and the European Commission hopes and wishes that it will be the last legislative package and that its rules should be sufficient for a Single European Railway Area.
Nevertheless, with all the measures and rules in force, actors in this market seem to be unsatisfied with the progress of the railway freight transport in relation to its competitors. The compendium elaborated by CER confirms the same thing: the competitiveness of the railway freight transport is rather disappointing compared to the one of the competitors, especially to the road transport. The reasons are multiple, starting with the poor quality of the infrastructure in some European states (particularly in Eastern Europe) which led to the reduction of the speed of trains, the difficulty of the access to intermodal terminals, the prioritization of investments for conventional and high-speed railways for the passenger transport to the economic recession which led to the dramatic drop in the purchasing power in most EU states and implicitly to the decrease of the freight volume and of demand, and the list could be easily completed as you read this article.
Despite a significant development of the intra-modal competition in the last decade, the highly desired modal shift to the railway, a measure which would improve energy efficiency and would reduce CO2 emissions, is far from being a reality, according to the CER report. The unbalance between road and railway transport is increasing, in a fairly worrying manner for sustainability of the entire transport sector.
The railways have proven their commitment to quality and efficiency adhering to different quality management programmes and systems, and at present they are about to improve their procedures and products, both as sector and at company level. These positive evolutions must be acknowledged. However, on their own, it is less likely that they prove sufficient to revitalise the railway freight transport.
The report drafted by CER approaches subjects that are useful to the entire European railway freight sector, as well as to the railway sector in the Eurasian platform. The chapters of the report refer to topics such as the improvement of the intermodality in the Eurasian transport and the efficiency of the CIM/SMGS consignment note, the x-Rail Freight project, noise reduction, the utility of longer freight trains, the solutions for infrastructure accessibility, the challenges of intermodal transport, the utility of transport in individual wagons, as well as the importance of the ERTMS implementation at a scale as large as possible in the European railway networks.
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