The recent presentation of the Competition Report (2011) by PhD Rudiger Grube, CEO DB, has determined me to change a bit the content of this page and publish several graphics that should make us all reflect. Beyond DB Schenker’s praiseworthy performance of ranking second in the top of logistics companies, it is interesting to observe that the top ten published by Deutsche Bahn includes five European companies, four American companies and a Japanese company.
Among the five European companies, two (DB Schenker and SNCF Geodis) are the subsidiaries of two state-owned companies. The common factor of European and Japanese companies is the global approach of the means of transport and related activities, while, it should be noticed that the activities of all four American companies are focusing strictly on railways.
If we correlate the “Logistics top ten, worldwide” graphic with those presented by the International Transport Forum in the publication Trends in Transport Sector, 1970-2009 (2011) and in the statistics graphics on freight transport, we can notice, on the one hand, a great discrepancy between the USA and the EU railway markets, but also an obvious failure of the transfer policies of freight transport to non-polluting systems, when comparing the reduction of the volumes carried on railways by around 20% during 1990-2008, based on the 80% growth of road transport.
To leave room for graphics, I’m launching a question: what is the right strategy for the implementation of EU’s objectives on the shift of the goods transport to railways?
by Ştefan Roşeanu
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