CER Position on The Future of Transport – a Railway Perspective

Post war economies have been based on increasingly cheap transport. But this may change with the price of energy beginning to reflect scarcity and insecurity of supply, the resistance to constructing new roads and airports, congestion increasingly affecting the fastest growing modes and the growing realisation that, whilst transport may be cheap for the individual, it imposes increasing external costs on society which need to be internalised.

Since the 2001 Transport White Paper, two events have occurred which have changed the context of European transport policy. First, climate change has become a far more important issue. The key long term challenge for the transport sector is now to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. Given the targets to reduce emissions by 50-80% by 2050 and the high historical rate of growth of transport demand, all possible means must be used: reducing specific emissions, reducing the rate of growth of transport demand in general and shifting traffic to less polluting modes such as rail.

Second, new Member States have joined and they have very different problems. The poor financial architecture for rail in these states has caused rail freight traffic to decline rapidly and this will continue unless action is taken. The goal of EU transport policy is to transfer traffic to rail. However, of the three elements of the 2001 White Paper designed to do this in freight, only one – the introduction of intra-modal competition - has been implemented. The other elements, introducing fair competition between modes and improving rail infrastructure, have not been implemented in all countries. As a result, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, the targets of the White Paper have not been met.

In passenger transport, given increasing urbanisation, commuter rail will continue to be the main passenger market, in competition with car and bus which are not paying their full costs. The intercity sector will also grow with the expansion of high speed rail. However, as with much transport infrastructure, high speed lines do not fully cover their construction costs. Therefore, state intervention will continue to be required, either to increase the price of alternative modes to reflect external costs, or to provide financial support for investment, or both.

In short, more progress on rail policy must be made if rail is to play its full potential role in the future. The future of rail requires the formulation and effective implementation of a comprehensive European transport strategy and, based on this, policy decisions at EU and national levels.

CER: Position papers http://www.cer.be/publications/position-papers

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