EU grants to improve rail freight corridors

The European Union will co-finance four projects aimed at preparing the implementation of four Rail Freight Corridors across Europe with a total of €5.7 million from the TEN-T Programme. The projects focus on establishing fully operational rail freight corridors as required by EU Regulation 913/2010, providing optimal rail freight transport and increasing rail transport competitiveness across the EU. The four projects were selected for funding under the 2011 TEN-T Annual Call.

1. The first, which will receive €1.3 million in EU co-financing, will prepare the managerial structures and activities needed to establish Rail Freight Corridor 2, a trans-national rail freight axis starting in Rotterdam (The Netherlands) and then, via Belgium, Luxembourg and France, reaching Basel (Switzerland) and Lyon (France).
2. The second project, which will receive just over €1.6 million in EU co-financing, covers the preparatory studies and activities needed for the organisation of Rail Freight Corridor 8. This axis runs from the key ports of Bremerhaven (Germany), Rotterdam (The Netherlands) and Antwerp (Belgium) to Kaunas (Lithuania), crossing northern Europe on an east-west path.
3. The third project, receiving nearly €1.7 million in EU support, concerns the establishment of Rail Freight Corridor 6, which runs along the south of Europe from Almeria and Madrid in Spain to Záhony in Hungary, crossing France, Italy and Slovenia.
4. The final project will receive just over €1 million in EU co-financing to prepare the implementation of Rail Freight Corridor 4, which runs from Lisbon, Sines and Leixões (Portugal) to Algeciras, Madrid, Bilbao, San Sebastián and Irun (Spain) and all the way up through Paris and into northern and eastern France. The project will undertake the required analyses for the freight corridor and prepare the implementation plan.

Rail Freight Corridor 6

Establishing the managerial and operational structures of these four rail corridors is of paramount importance as they will have to coordinate and bring together all the relevant stakeholders to ensure an improved rail freight flow along each individual corridor, to enhance the interoperability and to foster cooperation among the Rail Freight Corridors. All four projects are set to be completed by December 2014.

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Fourth railway package proposals

The European Commission announced on 30 January 2013 the fourth comprehensive package of measures to deliver better quality and more choice in railway services in Europe.

1. The Commission wants to cut the administrative costs of rail companies and facilitate the entrance of new operators into the market. Under the new proposals, the European Rail Agency will become a "one stop shop" issuing EU wide vehicle authorisations for placing on the market as well as EU wide safety certificates for operators instead of member state rail safety authorities. 
2. Companies will be able to offer domestic rail passenger services across the EU: either by offering competing commercial services or through bidding for public service rail contracts, which account for a majority (over 90%) of EU rail journeys and will become subject to mandatory tendering.
3. To ensure fair access for all to the railway, independent track ("infrastructure") managers must run networks in an efficient and non-discriminatory manner and coordinate at EU-level to underpin the development of a truly European network.
4. Under the EU regulatory framework, Member States will have the possibility to protect workers by requiring new contractors to take them on when public service contracts are transferred, going beyond the general EU requirements on transfers of undertakings.

Some key figures of the industry.

• The rail industry has a turnover of €73 billion, which corresponds to 65% of that of air (€112 billion), and has 800,000 employees.
• Rail is critical to the effective functioning of the European economy. More than 8 billion passenger journeys are made by rail each year. Rail carries about 10% of all freight traffic across Europe, with estimated revenue of €13 billion.
• The Rotterdam Genoa freight corridor, for example, runs approximately 130,000 trains per year, the equivalent of nearly 4 million trucks per year.

Each year public authorities invest huge sums in the railway sector. In 2009 this amounted to some €46 billion of public subsidies. This kind of public funding is becoming scarcer.

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"River vs. Ship" part 2

Everybody “wants something from the Danube“: freight shipping companies, environmentalists, politicians as well as the economic sector. But the river can’t please everybody. Part one of our two-part article of wieninternational.at looked at the Danube from a historical and political point of view. Part two presents views from shipping companies, environmentalists and businesses have to say about the Danube.

On behalf of  freight shipping companies wieninternational.at quotes Valdet Farizi of Multinaut Donaulogistik, part of Imperial Shipping Group / Imperial Reederei, who is responsible for freighting services in Vienna. Imperial Shipping Group has an annual freight volume of 60 million tons is transported by a fleet of about 200 company-owned and approximately 500 chartered vessels via rivers, lakes and seas. “Practically nothing is done about the Danube as a waterway. Policy-makers could definitely show more commitment”, says Farizi. “Along the entire shipping route to Constanta there are several sections of one to two kilometres in length requiring ships to make a detour, e.g. via the Borcea, a branch of the Danube in Romania (causing a delay of one day) or making it necessary to unload a ship and distribute its cargo over three vessels to facilitate navigation in shallow water." Mr. Farizi mentions Serbian, Hungarian and Romanian places.


Schaufler, a company based in Ybbs, is active in the recycling industry. Schaufler-Metalle ships up to 5,000 tons per month to Turkey. Mr. Weichinger calculated that it would be worthwhile to have a company-owned port and had a 60,000-square-metre cargo port (including the necessary infrastructure) built. “Indeed, a recycling enterprise should operate in the most environmentally friendly way. But the inadequate navigability of the Danube river poses a problem. We have to use trucks frequently, and this also results in additional costs of up to 50,000 euros per month!“

The Korneuburg-based company “Agrar-Speicher“ faces similar difficulties. Its manager Jürgen Heidenreich is annoyed about the fact that contrary to their promises “policy-makers have not made any investments for several decades”. “Uncertainty poses a major problem to us. We know the freight rate for transporting cargo from Vienna to Rotterdam when the water level is normal. But if the journey has to be interrupted or the vessel has to be re-loaded or in the worst case both, the cost calculation becomes uncontrollable.“

On behalf of environmental protection NGOs, wieninternational.at quotes Jurrien Westerhof, energy spokesperson of the environmental organisation Greenpeace, the discussion about deepening the riverbed of the Danube for cargo ships does not go far enough.“The building sector has a very powerful lobby in Brussels. Of course it struggles to get as many contracts for large-scale projects as possible – the deepening of the riverbed of the Danube would practically be an almost ideal project, it involves a lot of construction work and a lot of money.“ Westerhof believes that problems such as those of the companies Schaufler and Agrar-Speicher (see below) are exceptions: “I think that it is wrong to say that cargo transport on the Danube is environmentally friendly because it reduces truck traffic. There is an existing panacea to remove trucks from the road, i.e. the railways.“  Greenpeace is afraid of a domino effect if the Danube was dredged to deepen the riverbed in Austria. This measure would not make sense unless the southern Danube countries participated in the project. And this would pose a tremendous threat to the flora and fauna of the still natural or nearly natural Danube river section from the Lobau to the Black Sea. “Due to the numerous barrages, the deepening of the riverbed is already problematic at this stage. One of the problems is the drying up of wetlands, and to date no solutions have been found.“

Quoting mobility experts, the Development Centre for Ship Technology and Transport Systems for the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development examined whether the navigability of rivers can be improved by developing “river-compatible” inland navigation vessels: “Based on state-of-the-art technology, the innovative measures analysed will lead to higher production and operating costs. To cover the extra investment and operating costs, freight rates would have to be increased to a level that is not competitive even after the introduction of the truck toll (...). New innovative vessels would, however, offer only inadequate competitive advantages. While innovative technical measures could help to use the existing waterway infrastructure more efficiently, they will not make up for inadequate infrastructure.“

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EU Clean Fuel Strategy

According to the European Commission, clean fuel is being held back by three main barriers: the high cost of vehicles, a low level of consumer acceptance, and the lack of recharging and refuelling stations. It is a vicious circle. The Commission is therefore proposing a package of binding targets on Member States for a minimum level of infrastructure for clean fuels such as electricity, hydrogen and natural gas, as well as common EU wide standards for equipment needed. The Esuropean Clean Fuel Strategy has the following proposals:

• Electricity: The leading countries are Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. The aim is to put in place a critical mass of charging points so that companies will mass produce the cars at reasonable prices.A common EU wide plug is an essential element for the roll out of this fuel. To end uncertainty in the market, today the Commission has announced the use of the "Type 2" plug as the common standard for the whole of Europe.
• Hydrogen: Germany, Italy and Denmark already have a significant number of hydrogen refueling stations although some of them are not publicly accessible. Common standards are still needed for certain components such as fuel hoses. Under this proposal, existing filling stations will be linked up to form a network with common standards ensuring the mobility of Hydrogen vehicles. This applies to the 14 Member States which currently have a Hydrogen network.
• Biofuels: already have nearly 5% of the market. They work as blended fuels and do not require any specific infrastructure. A key challenge will be to ensure their sustainability.
• LNG: Liquefied natural gas is also used for trucks, but there are only 38 filling stations in the EU. The Commission is proposing that by 2020, refuelling stations are installed every 400 km along the roads of the Trans European Core Network. The Commission is proposing that LNG refuelling stations be installed in all 139 maritime and inland ports on the Trans European Core Network by 2020 and respectively 2025 for waterborne transport.
• CNG: Compressed natural gas is mainly used for cars. One million vehicles currently use this fuel representing 0.5% of the fleet - the industry aims to increase this figure ten-fold by 2020. The Commission proposal will ensure that publicly accessible refuelling points, with common standards, are available Europe-wide with maximum distances of 150 Km by 2020.

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"Ship vs River" by Wien International

Part one of our two-part article on Wien Internatinal.at looks at the Danube from a historical and political point of view. (Part 2 here)

"The Danube has always been among Europe’s main waterways. The river used to be one of the borders of the Roman Empire, facilitating the supply of Roman border posts. Some centuries later, the Danube continued to be of vital economic and political importance – downstream during the Christian crusades or upstream during the campaigns of the Ottoman army. [...] The shipping sector is annoyed over the fact that the river running through this beautiful landscape is by no means fully navigable along its entire length. Rocky fords, sandbanks, steep bends and above all a total of 20 barrages pose obstacles to traffic on the river even along the 2,414-km stretch of the Danube between Kelheim (Germany) and Sulina (Romania), which is navigable by large cargo ships"

The Danube countries pledged their commitment to the “effective waterway infrastructure maintenance on the Danube and its navigable tributaries” in the Luxembourg Declaration of 7 June 2012. The political and historical background is the so-called Belgrade Convention of 1948, which stipulates that “the Danube riparian states undertake to maintain their sections of the Danube in a navigable condition for river-going and, on the appropriate sections, for sea-going vessels, to carry out the works necessary for the maintenance and improvement of navigation conditions and not to obstruct or hinder navigation on the navigable channels of the Danube“ (Art. 3). Future-oriented initiatives are being developed under the EU Strategy for the Danube Region (in the framework of the Europe 2020 Strategy for Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth) and the “Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area” that Austria has signed up for by federal minister Doris Bures in June 2012.

In response to questions on the Danube waterway by wieninternational.at, Christian Salzmann, the spokesperson of the regional government of Lower Austria, provides his comments by using a very “future-oriented terminology”... Regarding content, the statement of the regional government of Lower Austria may be interpreted as follows:

– A well-functioning infrastructure is considered a prerequisite for boosting cargo capacity and demand; therefore all the “countries along the Danube must do what needs to be done.“
– The Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology as well as via donau (Austria’s waterway management and development company) have launched the “Integrated River Engineering Project for the Danube east of Vienna” to redress ecological problems as well as to improve navigation conditions near the Danube Flood Plains National Park. This project is a pilot phase, as remarked above.
– The ecoplus Logistics Cluster was established to serve as an information hub and project platform for Lower Austrian companies.
– High & Heavy. The Ennshafen port in Lower Austria (H2E) is a relevant project; its aim is to develop a comprehensive concept for a heavy cargo port on the Danube river.

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“To improve mobility and intermodality of inland waterways”

An interview with Mr Serban Cucu, Romanian Ministry of Transports and Infrastructure, and Mr Reinhard Vorderwinkler, Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Priority Area Coordinators.

How has the coordination of PA 1a been a challenge and how has it been an opportunity?

First of all we see the coordination role as an opportunity to bring together all the relevant stakeholders
(international bodies, public authorities, industry, NGOs) of the Danube Region in the field of inland navigation. The Strategy is an instrument which enables us to tackle thematic priorities in an integrated way, while also considering other topics of the Strategy, such as environmental protection, tourism and competitiveness.A specific challenge of the first year of implementation of the Strategy was to find a common approach for identifying the main problems in our Priority Area and for elaborating respective thematic roadmaps to solve them step by step. For us, a general challenge is to bring the relevant stakeholders together and to keep their interest (including the political level) in the implementation of the different actions. In the end our coordination efforts shall result in an added value for the Danube Region.

What have been the main steps taken in your PA so far?

The first year was focused on the set-up of the organisational framework of our Priority Area, to identify relevant projects (including proposals) and to elaborate specific roadmaps in order to implement the respective targets and actions in the the field of inland navigation. Within the first year we had three Steering Group meetings and two Working Group meetings dealing with the improvement of waterway infrastructure, the modernisation of ports and inland vessels, the implementation of “River Information Services” and the topic “Jobs & Skills”. The Steering Group meetings showed a high number of participants of the Danube Region countries (8 to 11 countries per SG meeting); the Working Group meetings were attended by 80 to 100 stakeholders of the Danube Region. Furthermore, over 90 relevant projects and project proposals have been identified in the first year (see www.danube-navigation.eu for details) and the Steering Group has issued nine letters of recommendation for projects.

In July 2012 we submitted the first progress report of PA1a to the EC. Additionally, the Danube Region Ministers of Transport signed a declaration on “Effective waterway infrastructure maintenance on the Danube and its navigable tributaries” (Luxemburg Declaration).Another notable success of the first year was the set-up of a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding between the Governments of Romania and the Republic of Bulgaria on setting up an Interministerial Committee for sustainable development of inland waterways transport on the common Romanian – Bulgarian sector of the Danube.

What is the most promising project/action(s) identified to date?
As previously stated, we identified more than 90 relevant ongoing projects and project proposals in the first
year, therefore it is difficult to highlight a single one. In general we see good progress in the implementation of the waterway infrastructure projects, especially with regards to an integrated approach including the environmental needs. Furthermore, the Declaration on effective waterway infrastructure maintenance was quite an important milestone for the Danube Region countries. The full implementation of harmonised “River
Information Services” was brought one step further with the start of the project IRIS Europe 3. In the field of fleet modernisation we commissioned a study called “Innovative Danube Vessel”. This study shall bring concrete results and proposals how to modernise the Danube fleet.

What do the next months look like for PA 1a?

The next months will focus on the continuation of ongoing works and the further strengthening of the network of stakeholders. We are already planning the next Working Group and Steering Group meetings for spring 2013 and will continue cooperation with all the relevant Danube Region country authorities and the navigation sector in order to monitor the implementation of the Declaration on effective waterway infrastructure maintenance.

Furthermore, we will continue to collect information on relevant projects, including the issuing of letters of recommendation for new project ideas in the field of inland waterway transport. In addition, the implementation of the agreed thematic roadmaps will be one important activity in 2013 – this implementation needs the continued involvement and commitment of all the relevant stakeholders.

Last but not least we aim to further deepen the cooperation with other relevant Priority Areas, such as environment (water quality and biodiversity), tourism and competitiveness.

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The first Advisory Groups meeting for RFC6 in Budapest

The first Advisory Groups meeting for Rail Freight Corridor n°6 (RFC 6) was held in Budapest, Hungary on November 30th, 2012.

RFC6 timeframe

The RFC 6 Management Board organized the first meeting with Railway undertakings, Ports and Terminals willing to use Rail Freight Corridor n°6. The project, also called «Mediterranean Corridor», will link Spain to Hungary via France, Italy and Slovenia, on more than 3000 km of efficient and interoperable rail network.
That meeting brought together around 15 companies coming from the various countries related to RFC 6 , among which, Fret SNCF, Trenitalia, Railcargo, Hungarail, Bilk Kombiterminal, the ports of Marseille, Barcelona, Valencia, Venice. 

The future users were presented up-to-date information on the governance, the route, the One-Stop-Shop, the ERTMS deployment and the publication of the Corridor statement structure.
The next consultation will deal with the Transport market study and the implementation plan.

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