Trans-Alpine railway traffic under threat

Date: 06/03/1997

By Bruce Barnard

THE European Commission's stance in the transit negotiations with Switzerland risks a massive shift of traffic through the Alps from rail to road, Europe's biggest combined transport company has warned.

Success for the Commission in getting Switzerland to increase the maximum truck weight from 28 tonnes to 40 tonnes and persuading Bern to set a modest transit fee would have a “serious” impact on trans-Alpine rail traffic, according to Dr Werner Maywald, managing director of Kombiverkehr.

Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock has rejected Switzerland's proposal for a transit fee of 350 ecu because it would “perpetuate the current massive diversion of traffic through Austria and France”, and has called for it to be capped at 120 ecu.

Such a low fee would be easily absorbed by trucks, according to Kombiverkehr. The net result would be an additional 30,000 40-tonne trucks crossing the Swiss Alps annually.

“All the efforts of converting road traffic into long and short distance road-rail traffic made until now may be in vain,” Kombiverkehr, and two other leading combined transport companies, Intercontainer and Hupac, warned in a joint letter to Kinnock and Swiss Transport Minister Moritz Leuenberger.

Kombiverkehr is a role model for the EU's much-vaunted combined transport policy which involves trains carrying goods for the bulk of their journey, with trucks limited to short-haul deliveries to and from the railhead.