Octavian Udriste, Senior Technical ConsultantClub Feroviar
After World War I, the development of the automotive industry has made the automotive vehicle a serious and many times, disloyal rival of railways. Consequently, railway management authorities have taken protection, as well as equipment measures, in order to keep passengers and build the customers’ loyalty and in order to maintain the same level of revenues. Therefore, the European railways, and not only, equipped with buses, after the model of post buses (“Post-Bus”), which replaced the former post coach (“Post-Kutsche”). Railway companies (more specifically “the State”), backed by legislation, have managed to ban road operators from providing services on routes parallel to railways.
Also, in big urban agglomerations, the different public transport systems have integrated functionally and from the point of view of charges (ÖPNV), with the support, including financially, of local authorities, thus providing to the broad public an attractive alternative from all points of view.
In Germany, for example, “DB-Bahn Stadtverkehr” company (urban transport), part of the DB-AG group, manages 22 transport units, with a fleet of 12,500 buses, covering a daily 150,000 transport links, being the most important bus operator in urban agglomerations! Starting with January 1, 2011, this activity merged with DB-Regio.
A bus service of the railways had operated in Romania as well, providing “regular vehicle connections, on the roads parallel to railways or on the extensions of these lines that ended in different localities in the country”. In 1948, the new social and political system set up after war, took over this means of transport and set up the Automotive Surface Transport Operator (RATA). Unfortunately, the own past experience or that of other European developed countries have not served as example in 1990 either, or after “the reorganisation of railways” in 1998. Consequently, at present, CFR Călători company in Romania has come to the verge of bankruptcy, also because it couldn’t keep its passengers and, implicitly, incomes. The passengers have been “taken over” by “road transport companies”, mostly tax dodgers, which affect the revenues of the railways and implicitly, those of the state. This situation has also been generated by the infrastructure conditions which makes railway transport lose its attractiveness, because of endless journeys on rails.
My opinion is that the state-owned “CFR Călători”SA has to make all necessary efforts to organise its transport activity with own buses as soon as possible, in order to take over, first of all, the routes parallel to railways, where they don’t operate to their full capacity. A state which respect itself has to defend the interests of its people and those of its institutions.
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