Europe wishes to implement joint mechanisms for establishing a single European railway area, but there are still hindrances in terms of safety and interoperability demands, lack of transparency, dispersed national procedures and costs valid for the existing railway companies, but also for the new-entrants: for example, additional costs that a new-entrant should cover, compared to older operators or the costs for meeting the management demands of every “host-country”. In some cases, the barrier concept on market accession is related to the operators’ scale economies which cannot be equalled by those of a new company.
But most of the times, a borderless railway transport requires a focus on comparing fees with those from road transport, and financing infrastructure projects for harmonising and integrating networks. All these affect the continuous development of the operators’ activities and the real market opening.
“Currently, all limits to prices and this has to influence railway transport services in a way that would make it cheaper than road transport and more attractive. But we have to admit that politically this is hard to achieve. When railway transport becomes profitable and customers, especially those on the freight transport side, will be persuaded of its efficiency, then we can talk about a levelling of European services”, declared Peter Füglistaler, Executive Director of the Transport Federal Bureau in Berlin.
But to achieve this, the European single rail transport area needs financing dedicated exclusively to the infrastructure to prevent losing attractiveness. An efficient infrastructure will convince new-entrants to access the market. “European infrastructure projects need EUR 250 Billion. It is not enough to only have upgraded corridors, national infrastructure where operators could carry out their activity are also necessary”, pointed out Markus Pennekamp, Transport Policy Manager, Germany.
Major discrepancy between EU15 and CEE
One of the most debated problems remains that of track access charge. Different track access charge approaches poses problems in railway transport. “Related to the different approaches towards infrastructure charges, the actual level of infrastructure charges across EU member states also show substantial variation. In particular, there are two core differences between the old EU Member States and the new Member States; average freight charges are in general significantly higher in the New Member States than the old. Secondly, charges for passenger transport are in general lower than for freight transport in the New Member States while the opposite order is the case in most of the EU15 countries”, said Torben Holvad, Economic Consultant of ERA.
This reflects major discrepancies in terms of railway transport costs at European level and hinder the establishment of the single European railway area.
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