Even though the liberalisation of the rail freight transport market has allowed the access of new operators, the market mechanisms are not and have never been enough to organise, regulate and guarantee rail freight transport safety. In order to improve the use and reliability of the railway network it is necessary to introduce additional measures so as to consolidate cooperation with regards to the division of international freight corridors between infrastructure managers.
In this context, creating international railway corridors along a European network for a competitive freight transport, on which freight trains can run in optimum conditions and which can facilitate transfer from one national network to another, would allow a major improvement in infrastructure use.
“The Regulation concerning a European rail network for competitive freight will substantially improve cooperation among infrastructure managers and between infrastructure managers and other stakeholders along rail freight corridors. Common objectives will be defined for these corridors, helping all actors to work towards a common goal.
An Implementation Plan will form the basis for the establishment of the corridors within three to five years after the date of entry into force of the Regulation (9 November 2010). A regular update of this plan will ensure the continuous development and improvement of the corridors based on actual market needs”, said Keir Fitch, Head of rail transport and interoperability within DG MOVE.
As part of the Implementation Plan, Regulation 930/2010 foresees to carry out a Transport Market Study. This study does not exclusively focus on today’s rail traffic, but covers the whole transport market in the corridor, that is it should even identify volumes today shipped by other transport modes. This underlines that the ambition of the Regulation is clearly to strengthen the role of rail on the freight transport market in the corridors. Furthermore, the plan will also allow coordinating investments in view of ensuring a consistent approach to the increase of rail infrastructure capacity along the corridors.
Rail freight transport should be a priority on the EU Governments’ agenda for 2011
Starting with 2007, the year in which the rail freight transport market was liberalised, the services provided by railway operators have constantly been improved. Customer information and the commercial responsiveness of rail freight operators have constantly improved over the last few years. Moreover, the incumbent rail operators have embarked on restructuring their output. The development of competition in particular has stimulated rationalisation, the emergence of new methods, and new production methods and an extension of the services offered. Despite this progress, the European Commission regrets that the quality of railway services remains inferior to what the road sector can offer.
However, considering the negative period which rail freight transport is currently crossing, it would be necessary that, for the next three-four years, Member States increase their support. This support actually consists in the rapid establishment of freight corridors, in addition to the six ERTMS corridors.
In order to address the widely varying needs of different market segments, the Regulation foresees the provision of both pre-arranged train-path as well as ad-hoc capacity. “While the pre-arranged train paths are primarily useful for transport service providers which address market segments with more stable and predictable transport demand and traffic patterns, the provision of ad-hoc capacity will also allow to target spot-markets, where demand often arises at rather short notice and where rail today has a disadvantage, especially in international traffic, due to long planning horizons”, said Keir Fitch. The coordination between Member States and the continuity along a corridor will be the task of the Executive Boards and the Management Boards. The Regulation focuses much on creating cross-border functionality along a corridor. This concerns both processes and infrastructure. The governance structures to be set up for the corridors will facilitate to create this functionality.
“In this context it has to be mentioned that the governance structures of most of the corridors will be derived and developed from corresponding ERTMS-corridors. This means that the corridors are not starting from scratch, and there will neither be a duplication of functions nor structures. Even Rail Freight Corridors, which do not have a corresponding ERTMS-corridor to start from, can learn from the experience made in the other corridors. Even the experience from the Rail Network Europe-corridors constitutes valuable input for the establishment of the Rail Freight Corridors”, underlined Keir Fitch.
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