Interview with:
Jacques Dirand, CER – Passenger Adviser & Freight Adviser/Matteo Mussini, CER – EU Institutions Adviser
Railway Pro: In the press release issued on April 21st following the near-total closure of the European airspace, CER highlighted the importance of rail infrastructure investments in order to allow railways to act as some kind of alternative to air transport. Do you consider that your opinion was shared by the EU transport decision-makers?
Matteo Mussini: In these special situations the time of reaction has been short for everybody, in particular in the case of this “ash cloud crisis”. To this regard, we had some positive signs from the MEPs, showing special attention to the problem of the railway financing (…). If you want to have an alternative, you have to invest money in that alternative. To have rail as an alternative to air transport, you have to have a good rail infrastructure in order to allow the market to function and operators to run their trains. High speed is of course a special sector in which you should invest.
Jacques Dirand: To give alternative to a certain origin destination by air you have to have rail infrastructure that gives you the same time count. That means two things: first look at the origin destinations that can be covered by train in the same time frame as they are covered by air and you have solutions if the high speed infrastructure is there. But for distances like Paris-Moscow, it is very unlikely that you will have a rail alternative being able to fit within the same timeframe that you would expect from air. At least, for many medium distances in Europe you can certainly consider a railway alternative, provided that the high speed infrastructure is there.
RP: You mentioned high speed infrastructure. The high speed trains in Western Europe proved their efficiency but the situation in Eastern Europe was quite dramatic. Not to mention the connections from Eastern to Western Europe, or the connections to and from EU neighbouring states or Russia. If we cannot talk about infrastructure that gives the same time count, what other solution would you envisage?
J.D.: There is no other solution I’m afraid. If we look at the figures and we see the level of investments in railway infrastructure in the CEEC countries (Central and Eastern European Countries n.n.) and we compare it with the EU average, it falls far behind EU average. You only have the railway infrastructure that you deserve if you pay for it. Let’s see some figures, e.g.: Poland spent on its railway system EUR 4000 per track km/year versus an EU average of EUR 185 000 per track km/year. You can see to what extent Poland falls behind EU average. If you look in most of the CEEC countries, you will see that rail is a net contributor to the state budget. Because in the CEEC countries – and Romania is even more the case – the infrastructure charges are enormously high, far above the EU average. While the financing is almost zero, far below the EU average. It is also true that priority in the CEEC countries has been put on road. Although basically railways are a net contributor to the state budget, what the state puts into the transport system goes to road constructions, upgrades and public money goes to rail it is called a subsidy, although it is for the same purpose. The same kind of money is spent. This shows that there is some kind of twisted approach to the whole issue of road and rail financing.
RP: Most rail companies were able to take advantage of the increased demand in passenger traffic, but others found themselves in the impossibility to run extra trains, especially as international trains are concerned. Which, in our opinion, were the main impediments?
J.D.: The world has changed. In the past, when railways were not supposed to behave like normal companies, when they were a department of the transport ministry, they could have spare resources (e.g. locomotives and wagons) to run extra trains on demand. They were not thinking into saving resources, they were not thinking “yield management”. These days, railways are expected to behave like normal companies and be profitable. They are now sizing their business according to what they think it is going to be the normal usage of their assets. Having these constraints of behaving like a normal company and being confronted with the competition from air and road, they try to limit costs to a minimum and they size assets in a way that would not burden their costs and prices, so that they can keep competition with the other modes. The other side of the medal is that they have to limit their assets to the minimum. They have a capacity of reserve, but it is reduced to a minimum and this, of course, limits their capacity to face extreme situations. These being said, I find the railways which managed to do it did it pretty well.
RP: Is the “ash cloud crisis” the consequence of unfair and bad policies at the level of promoting a means of transportation to the deficit of the other?
M.M.: In case of natural disasters you have the crisis no matter what kind of policy you implement. Of course, we can say that rail transport is not always treated fairly by the policy-makers at the EU and national level. Our main concern regards infrastructure financing and the comparison between track and road access charges. As long as there is no political commitment in providing a level playing field for the two modes of transport, we can say that there is a de facto discrimination.
Interview recorded by Delia Elena Lazăr
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