Kinnock makes tracks for new rail freeways

Date: 22/05/1997

By Tim Jones

TRANSPORT officials are putting the finishing touches to ambitious plans to create a new free-market network of freight railways in Europe and save the train from extinction.

Neil Kinnock, the European Commissioner in charge of transport, will present the fruits of his 'big idea' of a web of cross-border rail freeways to colleagues next Wednesday (28 May).

Only last month, the Community of European Railways (CER) handed Kinnock its blueprint for the freeways experiment including, as an example, 16 possible routes from Belgium and the Netherlands to Italy where average speeds of 50 kilometres per hour could be reached by slashing the waiting time at borders by 80&percent;.

Rail-track and signalling managers throughout Europe consistently give priority to passenger trains, while freight trains are shunted into sidings to let them pass or are kept waiting for hours at internal borders.

This, along with diverse technical standards, high fixed costs for railways and the industry's opposition to allowing open access to tracks, have pushed up the rates charged for moving freight by rail and encouraged firms to transport goods by road.

As a result, railways' share of the European freight market has halved to 15&percent; over the past decade while the proportion taken by lorries has risen to 70&percent;. “The harsh truth is that standing still means sinking,” warned Kinnock in a recent speech.

This means that while talks continue over how to liberalise the entire rail sector, interim measures must be taken now - and the creation of open-market freeways is seen as the answer.

In a communication to the Commission, Kinnock will provide an overview of the work carried out in technical groups on how to make the freeways run and of talks between four EU member states and Switzerland on setting up their own freight-path by the end of the year.

The authorities in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland are within months of forming a prototype freeway between Europe's northern ports - Hamburg, Bremen, Rotterdam and Antwerp - and their Italian counterparts in Milan, Venice and Genoa.

They have already established an Internet site to advertise their services and are negotiating over where to base their 'one-stop shop' rail infrastructure manager.

They expect to be able to offer a variety of freight routes to train operators depending on their needs. In theory, multi-annual contracts to move freight three times a week could be negotiated as easily as a one-off deal to carry cargo from Bremen to Milan.

“The whole idea is to turn it into something that is very similar to using the road,” said a Commission official.

The Commission will want to repeat this experiment across the EU, assigning one-stop shop infrastructure managers to each route complex - with each one setting prices for access to tracks, and allocating train paths and services to licensed operators.

Competition Commissioner Karel van Miert has expressed concern, however, that this could lead to market restrictions. In response to this, Kinnock's paper will specify that exemptions from the Union's normal competition rules will only be granted to one-stop shops if they provide open access to their tracks for all-comers and maintain independence between management and operating divisions in integrated railway companies.